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.

Whenever I have a mild problem with a Kevin Spacey performance (like in 21, say), I replay clips like this and all, temporarily, is forgiven.

Yesterday Blogger Interrupted‘s Tim Russo posted a video composed of several McCain-Palin supporters sharing their fascinating views before Wednesday afternoon’s McCain-Palin rally in Strongsville, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland.

“My camera was rolling for literally seconds before people happily said to me, on camera, that Barack Obama is a terrorist,” Russo writes. “If I hadn’t spent most of my time at the event inside, waiting for the candidates to show up, I could have gotten dozens of these people on tape.”

I don’t know if this is any kind of approved one-sheet from Summit Entertainment, but it’s a strong, simple conveyance of the tension vibe that permeates Kathryn Bigelow‘s film through. A marketing friend told me he doesn’t think it’ll make much money. “Whaddaya mean?,” I said. “It’s a high-anxiety thriller…it’s Aliens.” It doesn’t matter, he said — people still won’t go to an Iraq movie. The same reason Body of Lies is going to commercially disappoint, he added. I got pissed at that point. “But…but…but…but.”

Freddie Jones‘ famous line from Juggernaut, fans will recall, is “cut the blue wire.” He says this to Richard Harris, waits, and then says it again. But Harris smells a rat and cuts the red wire instead. It’s the right choice. Whew.

I’m told that the deal is sealed for Josh Brolin to star in Jonah Hex, based on the graphic novel and directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor (Crank, Game) and to be funded and released by Warner Bros. Brolin’s rep is not only denying this but claiming Brolin is “not attached,” but a voice is telling me to consider the word of a friend who tells me the deal was locked down last night.

Josh Brolin; Jonah Hex

Jonah Hex is a western comic book anti-hero created by writer John Albano and artist Tony DeZuniga and published by DC Comics. DC Comics is producing along with Mad Chance.
The movie, I’m told, is going to be some kind of sci-fi western with CG up the wazoo. There’s nothing sci-fi-ish about the Hex comic book that’s explained on the Wikipedia.page, but there’s always the creative option. Hex is a middle-aged bounty hunter and gunslinger (born in 1838, dies in 1904) with a heavily scarred face whose quest in the film is tracking down a voodoo practitioner and…I don’t know anything more. But it sounds like another stab at launching another Warner Bros. franchise, and most definitely a fat paycheck gig for Brolin.

Cedric B. Glover, Mayor of Shreveport, Louisiana, has responded to Josh Brolin‘s account of the famous altercation that happened at the Stray Cat bar in Shrevesport last July.
I ran Brolin’s statement yesterday in a piece that came out of an interview at the W. junket. Glover read it and sent his response by e-mail to Shrevesport Times reporter Alexandyr Kent. Here it is:
“There is an interesting presumption of privilege in Mr. Brolin’s comments. He appears to be blurring the line between reality and his on-screen persona. As Southerners we inherently go out of our way to make our guests and visitors feel welcome and at home. However, the expectation that legitimate charges would be summarily dismissed by me, the Chief of Police or the City Attorney is not in line with the way this administration is leading the city of Shreveport.
“At every level, from City Hall, to our faith community, to our neighborhoods, we are working diligently to make all of Shreveport safer and better. Crucial to that effort is the equal and consistent application of the law.
“But make no mistake, we treasure and value all that the film industry has brought to our community. We will continue to pursue every opportunity available to bring this industry to our region. And we will continue to make all those who come feel wanted, appreciated and welcomed.” — Cedric B. Glover, Mayor of Shreveport.”

The heat is obviously on for W. right now with the big junket last weekend, the ads everywhere and Lionsgate opening it on something close to 2000 screens on 10.17. But Portland critics aren’t feeling it because Lionsgate won’t be screening the Oliver Stone biopic for them. In Seattle, yes, but not Portland. And Oregonian critic Shawn Levy , understandably put off, is declaring that he won’t run a wire-service review and neither will Portland’s two alternative weeklies, Willamette Week and the Portland Mercury.
Lionsgate “blew off three lead stories [in these papers] by not screening it here,” Levy says. So we’re talking a real Mexican standoff with little W. in the middle. Will the Portland box-office suffer from local critics giving it the Big Chill? Or will TV and print ads suffice as far as Lionsgate’s interests are concerned?
The W. Portland-critic blowoff is about numbers and hardball strategy, of course. Portland’s market ranking is somewhere beyond 20th place — not a minor market but not a huge one either. And yet I’ve always thought of Portland as one of the five major Pacific coast towns that matter culturally. (Along with Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles.) Levy argues that Portland is a liberal-minded burgh that supports movies it likes with a passion, and that an Oliver Stone film that reveals the tragedy of George W. Bush is right up its political alley. He also points out that Lionsgate recently screened Religulous, which plays to more or less the same market, for Portland critics.
Sidenote: W. was screened for Portland exhibitors two days ago (Tuesday) at the Fox Tower 10 cinemas. “It’s not unusual for exhibitors to get screenings and then press be denied but the lack of W. in Portland press for it’s release is quite perplexing,” a local projectionist writes. “Shawn Levy’s description of the city is quite apt. The film would have an audience in our city. George Bush Sr. even referred to our fine town as Little Beirut in response to protesters.”

The New York “Vulture” guys were right, of course, in reporting yesterday that the first reactions to Oliver Stone‘s W. — the reviews by Variety‘s Todd McCarthy and the Hollywood Reporter‘s Kirk Honeycutt — weren’t so hot. But the reaction among junket journalists I spoke to yesterday was mostly approving. Really.
They weren’t exactly Redbull-ed by it, but then neither was I. My reaction was one of intrigue, engagement and finally sadness, having been moved by the tragic aura around this poor dope. The film is brisk and mordantly funny as it rushes along, but it’s finally a sad story about an unhappy man. It’s not a firecracker madball thing as much as a smartly designed, souped-up Corvette with a purring engine that you almost need to see twice get the full boost. I saw it again yesterday morning and there was no diminishment. I felt just as stimulated, tickled and satisfied as I did the first time, and just as affected by the ending.