“Over the past few days I’ve noticed something worth commenting on,” writes Spoutblog‘s Karina Longworth. “A number of writers, including Keith Uhlich, Michael Joshua Rowin, Nick Schager, Leo Goldsmith and Daniel Kasman have written reviews which incorporate the criticism that Steven Soderbergh‘s Che is ‘dispassionate’, that Soderbergh has a ‘disposable, inconsequential attitude’ towards his subject, that the whole thing amounts to a ‘prolonged and wearying exercise in disinterest.’
“I’m sure there are more examples out there, but I think the five of them plus me are enough for a focus group. All six of us not only write for what could be called ‘alternative’ publications, but we’re all in our 20s or early 30s — evidence that the ‘new voices, with new perspectives’ that Some Came Running‘s Glenn Kenny cites are in fact almost completely united in our ‘exasperating” take on Che.
“Che’s key defenders, Longworth writes, “are Kenny, J. Hoberman and Amy Taubin — all veteran critics and our seniors by several years.” What, I don’t count?
“Which is not to say that the old guard is wrong just because they’re the old guard, just as I hope no one is really shaking a fist in the air at ‘these kids these days.’ But I do think there may be something significant to the fact that the divide is breaking down this way. Are younger critics frustrated (or just bored) with Che because for the most part, we don’t bring an emotional, historical or intellectual relationship to its subject to the viewing experience? Or are we just braindead children with the attention spans of infants? Or both?”

Alicia Keys and Jack White‘s “Another Way To Die,” a agreeable-sounding throb cut serving as the official Quantum of Solace theme song and, obviously, official music video.

Hollywood Elsewhere is going to shift operations to Manhattan starting on 11.5 — the day after the election. Six months, maybe longer. Not that this will affect things in any way I can imagine. Same screenings, same folks, same junkets, same action. I just want to be closer to my sons and my mom for a while — that’s all. I’ll be parking it in North Bergen, New Jersey — right across the Hudson, view of Manhattan, a little north of Hoboken, 15 minutes into town by shuttle.

Oliver Stone on W: “The movie’s not a smear job. I wouldn’t want to spend a year of my life making something that is demeaning to somebody, being malicious. That’s the wrong approach to art. It’s not a political film, but a Shakespearean one. It’s a film about George W. rebelling against his father, doing better than his father, believing that he’s stronger than his father, and outdoing his father…and it’s about the colossal mistakes he made and the lies he told. In a way it’s Oedipal. One can say he did kill the father because he did destroy the legacy, the name. It’s a big thing with the Bushes.” — speaking to Maxim’s Charlie LeDuff.

“The truth is that it is the excesses of McCain’s own party from which the country needs to be saved. That McCain is now attempting to seize the mantle of ‘change’ for himself is profoundly absurd. And that he expects the American people to swallow it is profoundly insulting.” — from Esquire‘s endorsement of Barack Obama editorial, the first such declaration in the magazine’s history. Coming at this stage of the game with Obama heavily favored, the impact isn’t what it might have been. If Esquire had run this last June or July, it would have been a different deal.

The Iraq War movie curse will be put to the test this weekend when Ridley Scott‘s Body of Lies opens on Friday. It cost a lot of money (I’ve heard $90 to $100 million) and most handicappers will be surprised if it makes more than $17 or $18 million by Sunday night. Even if God smiles down and it nabs $20 million (which won’t happen) it would probably top out in the vicinity of $60 or $70 million.
Today’s Body of Lies tracking is 78 general, 37 definite interest and 13 first choice, up from last Sunday’s tally of 70, 37 and 9. But it only has a 58% positive on Rotten Tomatoes.
Beverly Hills Chihuahua (Disney) will probably be a close second, maybe $15 million or a bit more. The Express (Universal), a good-enough football saga about Syracuse star and first-ever African-American Heisman Trophy winner Ernie Davis, is running at 64, 34 and 9, and should come in third with $13. 5 or $14 million. The R-rated Quarantine is running at 57, 29 and 8 and should come in with something close to $12 million, maybe a bit less.
Among next week’s openers, Max Payne is looking a bit stronger than The Secret Life of Bees with Oliver Stone‘s W. and Sex Drive following in that order.

So how does John McCain “pull this one out of the pooper?,” Stephen Colbert asked MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough last night. You have to hand it to Scarborough for not mincing words.

Richard Linklater‘s Slacker (1991) now playing gratis on Hulu.

Kathryn Bigelow‘s Hurt Locker is opening in Italy tomorrow, hence the availability of this Italian-language trailer plus four clips. The Italian dubbing takes it down two or three notches. If anyone has an embed code for the English-language version…

HE reader Mike Schaefer writes that “if you didn’t see South Park last night, you need to catch the encore tonight at 10 pm. They mercilessly skewer Steven Spielberg and George Lucas for a half-hour. I thought of you all through the episode.” Schaefer didn’t mention that the show includes graphic dream-sequence footage of Spielberg and Lucas having their anal way with Indiana Jones.

Here’s a Comedy Central clip from the show. Here’s another one. Not since Deliverance has the viewer been jolted by such a depiction of violation.

I’m way late to the table, but this audio file of a New Yorker Festival discussion last weekend about various election matters is worth a listen, especially as it includes Henrik Herztberg‘s quote that John McCain is right now “down to stems and seeds.” Hosted by Dorothy Wickenden wth Hertzberg, Ryan Lizza and George Packer participating.

“My name is Joel Goodson. I deal in human fulfillment. I grossed over eight thousand dollars in one night. Time of your life…huh, kid?”

My name is Jeffrey Wells, daily column writer, and I’ve been monitoring Dave Kehr‘s DVD column for the New York Times for a long time now, and I’m amazed that Kehr, a dedicated proselytizer and torch-carrier for film-dweeb DVDs — anything pre-1960, Criterion-released, silent, foreign, early talkie, Howard Otway-ish, auteur-stamped (Dassin, Minnelli, Bunuel, Welles, Godard), downtownish, MOMA-ish, Film Forumy — would write about anything as studio-stamped and mainstreamy as the 25th anniversary DVD/Bluray of Paul Brickman‘s Risky Business (’83).

And perceptively at that.

“‘The dream is always the same,’ says Joel, a high school senior (played by a 21-year-old Tom Cruise) from a prosperous North Shore suburb, speaking directly to the camera as he introduces a fantasy sequence that allegorizes his situation: a beautiful young woman taking a steamy shower invites him to join her, but when he steps into the stall, he finds himself transported to a classroom where he has arrived two hours late for a college entrance exam.

“Like its hero’s dream, Mr. Brickman’s film is suspended between desire and anxiety, present pleasures and future promises, warm flesh and cold cash,” Kehr notes.

“The satire has an almost Swiftian precision and lucidity. While his parents are away on a brief vacation, Joel, with the help of a sloe-eyed young prostitute (Rebecca De Mornay) from Chicago, turns the family home into a brothel for his sexually frustrated high school friends. Applying all the lessons he has learned as a member of his school’s Junior Enterprisers club, Joel proves himself a
budding capitalist of genius.

“A more single-minded satirist — Billy Wilder, for example — might have stopped there, but Mr. Brickman wraps his glinting wit in a velvety style. With his masterly use of visual motifs — the train and the fog of the opening sequence reappear periodically with increasing significance — and slow, contemplative rhythms, he gives the comedy a lyrical dimension, building to a final sense of moral devastation.”

There are things in this film — many things — that are, for me, delightful in and of themselves. Grace moments, cultural minutae, echoes of my own home-town shenanigans, college fears, irony upon ironies, upper middle-class entitlement jokes, the aroma (I guess I should call it the stink) of creeping, inevitable corruption.

I don’t think any actor in any film has ever used finger-wagging sign language with such a deft and perfect touch as Cruise does in the Drake hotel sequence. A little cock of the left index finger across the lobby, a signal to DeMornay that “we’re here, we’re on to you, you’re gonna return my mother’s egg.” But which also conveys Joel’s hesitancy, lacking of aggression and naivete, his Lake Forest-ness.

I don’t know if I can watch this film any more. I’ve seen it maybe 25 times now. But I’m intrigued, as always, by the Warner Home Video remastering that, according to Kehr, “restores the film’s subtle textures.” I’m also interested is comparing the soothing studio ending (which I always thought was more of a mixed-bag thing, given that the happy ending comes from Cruise managing to hoodwink his father along with the ridiculous but satisfying news that Richard Masur‘s “Bill Rutherford” has approved Joel’s admission to Princeton) and Brickman’s “original, more tentative and melancholic conclusion.”

Has anyone seen the DVD, and can they describe how the alt. ending goes?

I’m having difficulty with the fact that this film came out a quarter of a century ago. Call it a mortality moment.