“Because Obama doesn’t relish confrontation, he often fails to pin his opponents on the mat the first time he gets the chance,” Maureen Dowd has observed in new N.Y. Times column. “Instead, perversely, he pulls back and allows foes to gain oxygen.”

Which has always infuriated me. That too-polite, I-gotta-be-cool wussiness. I’ve never been angrier at President Obama than I have since last week’s debate. For showing me and everyone else that when it comes to one-on-one, do-or-die, be-a-man moments, he’s a sidestepper. Or has this tendency to be. He’s certainly no Lee Marvin.

“It happened with Hillary in New Hampshire and Texas and with Republicans in the health care and debt-ceiling debates. Just as Obama let the Tea Party inflate in the summer of 2009, spreading a phony narrative about ‘death panels,’ now he has let Romney inflate and spread a phony narrative about moderation and tax math.

“Even though Obama was urged not to show his pompous side, he arrived at the podium cloaked in layers of disdain; a disdain for debates, which he regards as shams, a venue, as the Carter White House adviser Gerry Rafshoon puts it, where ‘people prefer a good liar to a bad performer.’

“Obama feels: Seriously? After all he did mopping up Republican chaos, does he really have to spend weeks practicing a canned zinger? Should the man who killed Osama bin Laden and personally reviews drone strikes have to put on a show of macho swagger?

“Plus, he’s filled with disdain for Romney, seeing him as the ultimate slick boardroom guy born on third base trying to peddle money-making deals. Surely everyone sees through this con man?

“Just as Poppy Bush didn’t try as hard as he should have because he assumed voters would reject Slick Willie, Obama lapsed into not trying because he assumed voters would reject Cayman Mitt.”

I don’t remember the script (which I read three or four years ago when it was called “Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho“) being as tart and droll as this. I’m encouraged. Anthony Hopkins has obviously nailed the Hitchcock way. It’s also clear that Helen Mirren matches him line for line. Reactions, please.

“Paramount executives did not want to produce the film and refused to provide the budget that Hitchcock received from them for previous films with the studio. Hitchcock decided to plan for Psycho to be filmed quickly and inexpensively, similar to an episode of his ongoing television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and hired the television series crew as Shamley Productions. He proposed this cost-conscious approach to Paramount but executives again refused to finance the film, telling him their sound stages were occupied or booked even though production was known to be in a slump.

“Hitchcock countered with the offer to finance the film personally and to film it at Universal-International if Paramount would distribute. He also deferred his director’s fee of $250,000 for a 60% ownership of the film negative. This offer was finally accepted. Hitchcock also experienced resistance from producer Herbert Coleman and Shamley Productions executive Joan Harrison, who did not think the film would be a success.” — from the Wiki page.

I could be a cheap smartass and say that Alex Karras, 77, has been traded to that Great Football Team In The Sky, but that would be a shallow and cavalier way of saying he passed this morning from kidney failure at his Los Angeles home. I’m sorry but we all have to go sometime. Karras was by all accounts a likable and compassionate fellow. Condolences to friends, family and colleagues.

Karras’s first push was on the football field with the Detroit Lions from ’58 to ’70, and then as a successful actor from ’68 on. His first Hollywood score was playing himself in the film version of Paper Lion (’68), based on the George Plympton novel. He best-known portrayal was as the hulking Mongo in Mel Brooks‘ Blazing Saddles but he also delivered a very respectable performance as a football coach in Against All Odds.

When I heard the news this morning his Against All Odds emoting was the first thing I thought of, if you wanna know.

I always presumed that Brooks called Karras’s character Mongo instead of Mongol as a capitulation to p.c. massagings of the early ’70s. The reference was obviously to “Mongolian idiot,” the catch-all term for victims of Downs Syndrome in the old insensitive days.

“Telegram for Mongo!” Or was it “Candygram for Mongo!” One of these.

Every time I get a Bluray of an older film that’s been Bob Furmanek-ed (i.e., arbitrarily cleavered into a 1.85 aspect ratio), a little part of me dies inside. But an older film that’s been 1.66 aspect ratio’ed always brightens my day. I haven’t time to watch this now as I have a triple-header tonight (a Santa Barbara Film Festival party, a screening of Anna Karenina and then another party) but I’ll definitely watch it around 11:30 pm tonight.

I’m not saying the polls aren’t temporarily accurate (they are), and that Obama and his idiot advisers (David Axelrod, et. al.) who told him to play it cool and easy just before the Denver debate didn’t shoot themselves in the foot — they did. But what’s better from the perspective of news organizations — a Presidential race that is all but decided or a bit of a horse race?

There are several tasty elements and intrigues in David Chase‘s Not Fade Away (Paramount Vantage, 12.21), but my favorite scene occurs in a movie theatre sometime in late 1966. John Magaro and Bella Heathcote are watching the Maryon Park scene in Michelangelo Antonioni‘s Blowup, which is noteworthy for the sound of rustling bushes and tree branches. Magaro says to Heathcote, “What kind of a movie is this? It’s so quiet, and there’s no music telling you what’s going on or what to expect.” Heathcote says, “I think the wind is the music.”

A portion of this clip of a 6.3.64 Rolling Stones appearance on The Hollywood Palace is used in David Chase‘s Not Fade Away (Paramount Vantage, 12.21), which I saw yesterday. There was no cooler guy in the late 1940s, ’50s and early ’60s than Dean Martin, but he suddenly became an asshole in the wake of the 1964 British invasion, making cheap boozy cracks like an old-school fuddy duddy.

Here’s a 3.16.12 post by Rich Kienzle:

“It’s easy to forget how revolutionary the Stones were in, say, 1964. But here’s an example that just about anyone can relate to. It was still the Mad Men era in those days, Beatle haircuts got kids thrown out of school and music that could (and is) played in churches nowadays was considered subversive and sick.

“The Stones’ music, both the hardcore blues aspects and the blues-based rock, was too authentically black-sounding for white picket fence, white bread Mainstream America. Hell, parents were only beginning to cope with the less threatening Beatles.

“The Hollywood Palace, taped in an LA theater, was produced by old-school showbiz types who had little truck with this whole youth movement, preferring instead to present the old farts of showbiz (Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, etc.) and the young farts who followed in their footsteps. The Stones, no less controversial in England than they were here, were anathema to all that.

“Ironically, Dino’s kids came to the rehearsals for the telecast to get the Stones’ autographs, according to then-bassist Bill Wyman.”

Almost as interesting as last night’s New York Film Festival Lincoln screening was the twitter war that immediately followed. The back-and-forth may have been more dramatically stirring than the film itself. The “Hooray for fantastic Lincoln and its guaranteed Oscar noms!” crowd had the early celebrational advantage, but then the mixed-baggers rushed in and starting taking potshots, and before you knew it the mirth had faded and no one had “won.”

You need to imagine it as a paintball shoot-out between two teams. Initially the whoo-hoo Lincoln team (Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg, Logan Hill, Coming Soon‘s Ed Douglas, FSLC’s Eugene Hernandez, Matt Patches) rushed in and captured the flag on top of the hill. “Yaaay! Whee! The hill is ours! Lincoln is one of Spielberg’s best films ever! It soars! Oscars all around!” Sasha Stone and Glenn Kenny picked up on this quickly and joined in the gaiety.

And then a paintball fired by David Ehrlich hit Feinberg in the head. “What the fuck was that?,” Feinberg yelled. “Who did that? This movie has turned the Oscar race upside down and somebody shoots me?” And then another paintball fired by The Playlist‘s Rodrigo Perez hit Douglas in the back (“aaaaah!…fuck!”). And then Cinemablend‘s Katey Rich called much of the movie “a bear,” and then another paintball fired by Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn whizzed by Hernandez’s head, and before you knew it the “yay Lincoln!” team had scattered and the mixed-bag contrarians were rushing onto the hill and it was chaos all around. Some hand-to-hand combat resulted but at the end of the night no one had taken the flag or the hill. It felt like a standoff, and it still is as we speak.

It’s a Best Picture nominee but not a winner (L.A. Times columnist Steven Zeitchik called it “wonky“), and the performances are the main strength, even though the betting is that Daniel Day Lewis‘s Lincoln isn’t strong enough to win.

In an article this morning about the completion of Penske Media’s purchase of Variety, Deadline reporter (and former Variety headliner) Michael Fleming has inserted some personal views. “I’m sure my former [Variety] colleagues and the newer staff there will be understandably apprehensive,” he writes. “I’m sure there will be a significant readjustment period for everyone as Variety is redefined, and some of that will undoubtedly involve creating a leaner, more efficient operation.”

In other words, I was fairly close to the mark when I predicted on 9.24 that the likely aftermath of the Penske takeover would be analogous to African lions taking over broods and the killing of lion cubs. I repeated this impression on 9.29. Glenn Kenny made fun of this, but who’s prescient now?

TheWrap‘s Alexander Kaufman and Brent Lang are reporting that Deadline honcho Nikki Finke “will have no immediate role” in the running of Variety, according to insiders. Variety sources have told TheWrap that “tension has arisen between Finke and Penske Media Chairman and CEO Jay Penske because he would not give her a role running the trade. ‘She’s having a major tantrum because he won’t give her the keys,’ one of those insiders told TheWrap.”

The key points in this morning’s Lou Lumenick assessment of Lincoln: (a) “I’m not so sure it ‘turns [the] Oscar race upside down,” as a traffic-seeking headline writer at the Hollywood Reporter claims.” (b) A “raft of Oscar nominations will surely [follow], especially in the technical categories”…Best Pic nom plus Best Actor nom for Daniel Day Lewis, but Tommy Lee Jones‘ portrayal of the grumpy Thaddeus Stevens “steals the picture”; (c) “The first hour threatens to become somewhat eyeball-glazing, but the very deliberately paced 145-minute film gradually picks up momentum,” (d) While pic “is in some ways a 180-degree turnabout from Spielberg’s War Horse, it seems to me this is a deeply-felt passion project (Spielberg’s wanted to make it for years) that ends up engages the mind more than the emotions.”