“In a campaign of almost continual surprise, shock, and even awe, we have just turned a corner that might prove Barack Obama either a political genius or someone very close to that,” writes Daily Beast columnist Stanley Crouch. It may sound at first like Crouch is carrying water, but he’s a very sharp observer and he seems to be onto something here.
“The Republicans may have mistaken their adversary for just another Democrat sleeping under a shade tree and looking like a mark. Not. In real terms, that assumption might prove as costly to them as Robert E. Lee underestimating Ulysses S. Grant. This man is a brawler but a quiet one. He may use a scalpel instead if a broad sword but the jugular doesn’t know the difference
“This past Friday, Obama made a decision that either he had conceived himself or recognized the importance of with the sudden kind of clarity necessary for superior leadership. Bob Bauer, the foremost legal representative of the campaign, fired off a letter to the Department of Justice asserting that all of the recent hissing and howling about ACORN by Republicans in many places, and John McCain specifically in the final presidential debate, should be taken off of life support.
“U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey was advised to put Nora Dannehy, special prosecutor, in a position to investigate the possibility of collusion between the Republican Party and the Justice Department. This could clear away all of the claims of voter fraud that might result in gumming things up with unnecessary investigation.
“If this Obama brings this off, we will have witnessed an exceptionally shrewd part of a grand strategic vision.”

It’s been written about before, but over the last couple of days industry people here began receiving Entertainment Weekly‘s “Recall The Gold” ballots via snail mail. They’re being asked if they’ve changed their minds about the Oscars handed out in ’03, ’98, ’93, ’88 and ’83. I have to cut out for a few hours, but if anyone wants to put up some suggestions for reevaluation, fire away. Don’t tell me — Titanic, right? But it deserved the Best Picture Oscar because of those last 20 minutes.

“The creative process for me is a process of elimination and distilling something to an essence that can be expressed in one or two notes, but those one or two notes have been infused with the meaning of everything else that surrounded it for most of the creative process. In the end you have to just strip it away and the last step is to just get rid of everything. That’s the key.” — Ballast director-writer Lance Hammer speaking to Vanity Fair.com’s Julian Sancton.

“Wondering if you’re really a Democrat?,” writes Tucker Carlson on the Daily Beast. “Here’s a quick way to find out: Given everything the Democratic party has going for it this year — the overwhelming financial advantage, the legions of new voters, George W. Bush — do you believe the Obama campaign could still somehow, in the final moments, find a way to blow it and lose this election?
“If you answered yes, you’re a Democrat.
“Two weeks out, only the Democrats in Washington think Obama might not win. That’s not the result of a scientific study, but instead the conclusion I’ve reached after many lunches, dinners and elevator rides with DC Democrats. Against all evidence, a good number of them have convinced themselves that John McCain is going to be the next president.
“Republicans have no master plan for victory, no October Surprise. [But] you’ll never convince most Democrats of that.
“Partly this is superstition, like throwing salt over your shoulder when you spill the shaker: predictions are bad luck. But it’s also the voice of experience.
“‘We’re the Cincinnati Bengals,’ says Jay Rouse, a longtime Democratic political consultant. ‘Democrats are used to losing, not winning.’

I decided for the nowhere hell of it to upload this clip of a bed-and-breakfast in Tuscany that Jett and I stayed in after the ’07 Cannes Film Festival. It’s in the small village of San Donato, some 25 or 30 kilometers south of Florence.

Untitled from Hollywood Elsewhere on Vimeo.

We’ve all read about the similarities (or at least the comparisons) between David Fincher‘s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Robert Zemeckis‘ Forrest Gump. The lifespan story of an oddball guy with an unusual but charmed condition, following him from childhood to maturity and all around the mulberry bush. And both films written, of course, by Eric Roth.

Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump; Brad Bitt as Benjamin Button.

But I’d prefer not to go there because of my still-lingering resentment of the Zemeckis film, which I and many others disliked from the get-go for the way it kept saying “keep your head down,” for its celebration of clueless serendipity and simpleton-ism, and particularly for the propagandistic way it portrayed ’60s-era counter-culture types and in fact that whole convulsive period.

Every secondary hippie or protestor character in that film was a selfish loutish asshole and every man and woman in the military was modest, decent and considerate. These and other aspects convinced me that the film was basically reactionary Republican horseshit, and led me to write an L.A. Times Syndicate piece called “Gump vs. Grumps,” about the Forrest Gump backlash. So I’d rather not consider it alongside whatever Benjamin Button may or may not be offering. No offense to Roth, who’s a good fellow and a brilliant writer.

“You know what hurts a movie like Max Payne is the success of the Batman franchise. That obviously is about story and character so they think for all films of the genre it’s gotta be about story and character and this whole backstory of him losing his wife. I don’t care about that. I wanna see Max Payne shoot people. That’s all I want from a movie like this.” — a quote attributed to “At The Moves” co-host Ben Lyons by Criticwatch’s Erik Childress.

David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Paramount, 12.25), which currently has default front-runner status whether it wants it or not (especially with so many presumed award-level films recently dropping out or getting vaguely trash-talked over the phone) will start to peek out sometime during the second week of November. The press event (i.e., not a “junket”) will happen in Los Angeles — New York journos will have to travel or they’ll be up shit creek. “The same precision and exactitude that Fincher invested in Zodiac, he uses here [but] in a warm and emotional vein,” says a guy who’s seen it.

Just when I think I’m finally done with Armond White, he writes something that pulls me back in. Yesterday morning I read his review of Lance Hammer‘s Ballast following the announcement of the Gotham Independent Film Awards nominations, four of which went to Ballast. No one, I had to admit, had come closer to echoing my own thoughts (although my initial reaction last January was to cut Hammer’s film a little more slack).

“Director-writer Lance Hammer shows a black Mississippi family torn apart by a double suicide attempt, drugs and alienation,” he writes. “But you have to see through these ludicrous black phantoms to the actual white middle-class fantasies at the film’s core.
“Hammer’s style reveals the relationships and backgrounds piecemeal. Each character is overly taciturn: Mournful adult Lawrence (Michael J. Smith Sr.) routinely says, ‘I don’t care.’ Mother Marlee (Tara Riggs) routinely sighs, ‘Maybe we can figure it out.’ And the unreachable, TV-addicted drug dealer kid (JimMyron Ross) aims a gun to bluff courage.
“If not for Hammer’s neo-realist gimmick, Ballast is conventional storytelling but without the pleasures and richness of conventional storytelling as seen in David Lean or Chen Kaige‘s Together.
“Problem is, Ballast’s totally humorless family saga won’t appeal to the Hollywoodized black audience — they want drama! It’s simply another calling-card movie establishing the director’s credentials.
“This shit has been going on since Reagan (Straight Out of Brooklyn) and Clinton (Fresh). African-American life is imprisoned by the art fallacies of Indie filmmaking, controlled by white liberal condescension. Even Barack Obama would be sick of it.”
Hammer is “a rich kid,” a producer friend told me yesterday. It all fits. Today is the final day to see Ballast at Manhattan’s Film Forum.

A new trailer for Kelly Reichardt‘s Wendy and Lucy (Oscilloscope, 12.10 limited), a.k.a., “A Poor Girl and Her Dog.” Wearing short, dark mousey hair and bargain-basement clothes, Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain) looks and acts vulnerable-tough in this quiet little character piece. Good work; her first stand-alone lead role. Pic opens nationally in January ’09.