Hollywood Elsewhere has switched servers — happened last night — and of course the usual uh-ohs and “oh, wow…we didn’t think of that” stuff is now being dealt with. Like enabling the new Movable Type 4.0-whatever software to post reader comments. Once again quoting Mickey Rourke‘s felon character in Body Heat as he tells William Hurt not to commit a capital crime: “There are fifty ways you can screw up, counsellor, and if you can think of 35 of them you’re a genius.”

Six years old, and one of Spike Jonze‘s best spots ever. The lamp’s heart is breaking, the woman doesn’t get it and then she does. But that guy who narrates at the end with the Swedish-Danish accent…vat is it you say? You love red lamp too, yah?

Screw future revenues, No End in Sight director Charles Ferguson is saying. I’m loaded anyway, and what matters to me now is to get some fence-sitters out there to consider the message of my film (i.e., “did the Bushies screw things up in Iraq after the invasion or what?”) as they decide how to vote on November 4th.
Which is why as of Monday, September 1st, No End in Sight will be the first widely released feature film to screen in its entirety for free on YouTube. The highly-praised doc will be featured on its own YouTube channel and available to anyone with a computer and high-speed internet connection, as well as via the YouTube service on broadband-connected TiVo Series3 or TiVo HD DVRs, blah blah. Good thing, this.

Bill’s two best lines: (a) “Actually, that makes 18 million of us” and (b) “They actually want us to reward them for the last eight years by giving them four more. Let’s send them a message that will echo from the Rockies all across America: Thanks, but no thanks.”

I’m sorry, but this “Biden’s Under-Message Subtitled” video from 23/6 is funny. C’mon, it is.

Paul Schrader‘s Adam Resurrected has been selected to be shown at the Telluride Film Festival, which sorta kicks off tomorrow night but more precisely on Friday morning. I don’t believe that Tom Luddy or Gary Meyer would invite this film to their festival if it (a) didn’t have merit and value, and (b) if it was any kind of relative of Jerry Lewis‘s The Day The Clown Cried (’71), which has been the rap against it in the columns. Better to reserve comment until people see it this weekend.
It’s been explained that Schrader’s film, based on Yoram Kaniuk‘s novel, is about Adam Stein, an inmate and former circus clown living in an asylum in Israel and looking back on his having agreed to entertain Jews during WWII as they were led to their deaths in the camps.
I’m told Jeff Goldlblum is quite good as Stein; William Dafoe plays Commandant Klein.

Richard Dreyfuss, who will probably kill as Dick Cheney in Oliver Stone‘s W, speaking earlier this afternoon during an MSNBC interview from Denver. “I think the last eight years have destroyed 200 years of respect [for this country]. I think the Republican Party is corrupt through and through. They have been in office too long. They are too adept at thievery and moving the Constitution into places it was never meant to go. I think they have an extraordinary ability to divide rather than unite.” Has Walter Sobchak left the room? I think he has…cool.

“John Edwards admitted to the affair [with Rielle Hunter] but said he’s not the father of her child — Ann Coulter is. Republicans, of course, are outraged. ‘A sex scandal? With a woman?'” — from a Bill Maher video rant (“What I’ve Learned This Summer”), apparently taped for the “Real Time” re-debut this Friday on HBO.

“An anti-spy thriller in which nothing is at stake, no one acts with intelligence and everything ends badly. Those who relish it might treat it as the second coming of The Big Lebowski; those who don’t might wonder at a story in which no character has a level head. ” — Hollywood Reporter critic Kirk Honeycutt, whose review was posted in today’s edition (concurrent with Wednesday night’s Venice Film Festival showing).

I read this Sarah Lyall N.Y. Times piece about drunken Brits in Crete two or three days ago, and I haven’t been able to forget the article’s money term — “alfreso oral sex contest.” Routine Joe Francis stuff on DVD, but reading it in the Times makes it seem almost….historic? On top of perverse, I mean.
Konstantinos Lagoudakis, the mayor of Malia, a northern coastal town on Crete, described the vacationing British youths as follows: “They scream, they sing, they fall down, they take their clothes off, they cross-dress, they vomit. It is only the British people — not the Germans or the French.”

“You make that sound, Keith…I can do the same to you, okay? That’s what I thought…all right? And I said it.” — Chris Matthews to Keith Olbermann during yesterday’s discussion about the Hillary Clinton speech (which hadn’t been delivered at that point).

This morning a Huffington Post person described it thusly:
“Discussing Hillary Clinton’s upcoming speech, Matthews began talking about women ‘s reactions to Hillary. His producers, likely wary of any more cries of sexism against the host and the network, presumably tried to get him to wrap, as he said, ‘I’ll wrap in a second, I’ll wrap in a second.’
“Olbermann then tried to attribute Matthews’ point about women voters to Rachel Maddow, to which Matthews said, ‘Good ideas can be shared.’
“Then, when introducing Steny Hoyer, Olbermann mocked Matthews for ‘[going] off at the mouth’ and made a hand gesture implying that Matthews talked forever.
“‘You make that sound, Keith,’ Matthews said. ‘”I can do the same to you, okay? That’s what I thought…all right? That’s what I thought. And I said it.'”

An excerpt from a panel discussion about the views of the rural anti-Obama contingent expected to vote in the coming election. No, seriously — name the actor and the movie. No hints. Okay, one — the film is famous and respected.