“Why are MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow so biased?,” HuffPost columnist Eric Burns asked last Friday. “Because the Republicans are providing them with so much material that their bias is, at its core, a form of objectivity. They are not partisan so much as perceptive.
“I do not reveal my own choice for president when I state that, several days ago, John McCain made the most eye-popping comment I have ever heard uttered by a candidate for the White House.
“The topic was the economy. ‘My friends,’ he said to a gathering in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on 9.19, ‘this is the problem with Washington. People like Senator Obama have been too busy gaming the system and haven’t ever done a thing to actually challenge the system.
“We’ve heard a lot of words from Senator Obama over the course of this campaign. But maybe just this once he could spare us the lectures, and admit to his own poor judgment in contributing to these problems. The crisis on Wall Street started in the Washington culture of lobbying and influence peddling, and he was square in the middle of it.”
“Uh…yes he was, Senator McCain. Senator Obama was square in the middle of it for less than three years! But you have been square in the middle of it for 22 years! If Senator Obama is too inexperienced to be President, as your campaign has many times suggested, how could he possibly have made such a powerful contribution to the plundering of the American marketplace?
“Nobody in McCain’s audience laughed when the candidate charged Obama with being an economy-wrecking Washington insider. Nobody snickered when the Washington insider accused the relative outsider of maliciousness beyond his years. Or his ability. Or his record.
“I take it back. Somebody snickered. Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow were among them. So was I.
“And so now I ask myself, how hard is it these days for news programs be objective when the material on which they report sounds as if it were produced by writers for Saturday Night Live, and then rejected on the grounds of its being too preposterous to be funny?”

This TV trailer of Oliver Stone‘s W. (Lionsgate, 10.17) is the wildest yet. Brolin’s performance as our current sitting president, it would appear, treads the line between realism and satire like a mountain goat. You can’t tell from short cuts, but it’s feeling more and more to me like a dry-but-extreme Peter Sellers performance in Lolita and Dr. Strangelove.

Josh Brolin in W.; Francis Bacon’s “Pope“

It’s been eight years and 9 days since the 9.13.00 opening of Cameron Crowe‘s Almost Famous, and the launching of the career of Kate Hudson, then 21 years old. Hudson’s touching, vulnerable, sexy-sunny performance as Stillwater groupie Penny Lane — not a “supporting role” but something close to that — sealed the deal and led to a string of starring roles in lesser vehicles. And as a result of all the stinkers she’s been in since — 11 awful awfuls — Hudson has just about killed the aura.

I think it’s fair to say that the hope-trust factor that every movie star needs has been eliminated in Hudson’s case, as in totally. Is there another actress out there whose name on a movie poster is a more reliable assurance you’re going to have a dispiriting or lousy time in a theatre (or in your living room)? Okay, one — Ana Faris.
When was the last time you saw a trailer for a Hudson movie and said to yourself, “Hey, wow…that one looks good.” I’ve been saying the exact opposite for about five years now. Since the time, to be precise, of Le Divorce, Alex and Emma and How To Lose a Guy in Ten Days. Then came The Skeleton Key, which was shit, and then You, Me and Dupree, which was strained and silly and sloppy. And then the dreadful Fool’s Gold with Matthew McConaughey, and now My Best Friend’s Girl, which is said to be unwatchable. (Although I’ve yet to see it personally.)
It’s obvious she has no taste in scripts — she’ll make anything. It can be deduced that she isn’t terribly perceptive. It can be assumed she’s not Albert Einstein. And it’s just a shame. Everyone thought she was a huge find and a natural-born charmer when Almost Famous was fresh in the mind, and now look at her — she’s done. Her name is synonymous with mediocrity and ditziness. What are the odds of a director of serious calibre ever offering Hudson a role as good as Penny Lane again? Next to nil at this point.

Finally, a stand-alone trailer for Sam Mendes‘ Revolutionary Road (Paramount Vantage, 12.26). The Entertainment Tonight exclusive below, in which Mary Hart revoltingly compares the Kate-Leo pairing to Titanic, had been the only decent footage I could find previously. But even with ET mucking up the vibe, you could smell greatness in it, particularly from DiCaprio’s performance.

On last Friday’s Real Time with Bill Maher, Andrew Sullivan offered perhaps the most perceptive thought I’ve yet heard about the racial fears shared by the 55-and-over crowd about Barack Obama. I can’t find a transcript, but he basically said that it’s not Obama’s latte-ness per se that turns them off, as much as the fact that he represents a shifting racial-cultural paradigm in this country.
Where almost all under-40 GenXers are completely accustomed to and cool with the day-to-day realities of a multi-cultural society and work force, Obama’s ascendancy is being interpreted by the 55-and-overs as a symbolic confirmation that the largely white-bread country they grew up in as kids and teenagers — the Brady Bunch ’50s and ’60s culture in which WASPs pretty much ruled socially, economically and in the media, and in which racial minorities primarily lived and worked on the sidelines — is gone, and this is making them feel insecure and threatened.
To this out-of-it group (i.e., the aging Mickey Mouse Club crowd), the prospect of Obama in the White House is an unmistakable sign that their “world”, in short, is coming to an end, and they’re afraid of being left out in the economic cold as a result.
The reptiles running the McCain campaign, being no fools, are naturally doing what they can to exploit this. As this Brent Staples N.Y. Times “editorial observer” piece, dated 9.21 and titled “John McCain, Barack Obama and the Politics of Race,” points out.
“In the Old South, black men and women who were competent, confident speakers on matters of importance were termed ‘disrespectful,’ the implication being that all good Negroes bowed, scraped, grinned and deferred to their white betters.
“In what is probably a harbinger of things to come, John McCain‘s campaign has already run a commercial that carries a similar intimation, accusing Barack Obama of being ‘disrespectful’ to Sarah Palin. The argument is muted, but its racial antecedents are very clear.
“The throwback references that have surfaced in the campaign suggest that Republicans are fighting on racial grounds, even when express references to race are not evident. In a replay of elections past, the G.O.P. will try to leverage racial ghosts and fears without getting its hands visibly dirty. The Democrats try to parry in customary ways.
“Mr. Obama seems to understand that he is always an utterance away from a statement — or a phrase — that could transform him in a campaign ad from the affable, rational and racially ambiguous candidate into the archetypical angry black man who scares off the white vote. His caution is evident from the way he sifts and searches the language as he speaks, stepping around words that might push him into the danger zone.
“These maneuvers are often painful to watch. The troubling part is that they are necessary.”

“I don’t know how long the new Ben-and-Ben version of At The Movies will last,” eFilmCritic’s Eric Childress wrote three days ago. “Maybe it’s still a work-in-progress that will get smoother each week, but I highly doubt it. Missing Roger and Gene and even what Roeper and Phillips and guest hosts like A.O. Scott brought to the table is only part of it. A large part, but still only part. Those shows, even up to the very end of their run, provoked discussion, encouraged banter and unforced witticism.
“Are we really going to count on Ben & Ben to introduce us to the next One False Move or Hoop Dreams? Are we ever going to see such passion and excitement again on classics like GoodFellas, Schindler’s List and Fargo? How about the serious and challenging disagreements offered on Blue Velvet, Barfly or The Silence of the Lambs? Reevaluations of director’s cuts like The Abyss and Blade Runner?
“If Gene Siskel could guarantee he wouldn’t see better films than Crumb and Fargo so early in the year, then I feel safe in guaranteeing that not one conversation between the Bens will be as interesting as Siskel & Ebert off camera — a variation if you will on Gene’s ‘Is the movie that I am watching as interesting as a documentary of the same actors having lunch together?'”

The first thing wrong with this 40th anniversary screening and celebration of Stanley Kubrick‘s 2001: A Space Odyssey on October 12th in downtown L.A. is that it’s about six months too late. The classic stoner-mystic sci-fier opened in early April 1968, and so staging a 40th anni tribute three weeks from today is like…whatever, staging one in November 2007, or six months too early. You have to be serious about dates when you’re raising a glass — you can’t fuck around.

The second thing wrong is having At The Movies co-host Ben Mankiewicz co-host it. He might be an okay guy on his own terms, but that new show is a gross defiling — ask anyone — and Mankiewicz has made himself into a philistine of the first order. Herman and Joseph are twitching in their graves.
The third thing wrong is that the print shown at the Edison will apparently just be a run-of-the-mill 35mm anamorphic, as the invitation obviously makes no mention of a 70 mm version, much less the Edison’s capability to show such a print. The only way to have seen 2001 in years past was in 70 mm, which has happened, I’m told, at the Arclight twice this year.
And isn’t it time for an IMAX print to be made? I strongly agree with rgmax99 that “if Warners had some brains and/or respect, they would have prepped a 2001 IMAX print and opened it nationwide.” Although my guess (and I could be 180 degrees wrong) is that Ned Price and George Feltenstein did consider making an IMAX version and decided against it out of fear that the under-30s wouldn’t attend.

Update: This page scan is from Seattle’s The Stranger, a local weekly. Original Sunday night post: I don’t know where this page scan came from, and I strongly doubt that Heart’s Anne and Nancy Wilson co-wrote this letter to John McCain — the line about McCain “chomping away at [Cindy’s] breasts with little yellow teeth” is the giveaway — but they should have written it. For the five or six seconds that I thought it might be real, I was falling in love with these women like I never did in the ’70s.

Dan Fierman‘s q & a with W. director Oliver Stone in the current GQ is really quite good. Here‘s the online link, but I’ve passed most of the transcript:

Fierman: What the hell happened with the script leak last fall? I mean, I got a copy of that script, Oliver. It took one e-mail.
Stone: That wasn’t a media strategy. That was an outrageous leak by a company called Participant. One of their assistants was trying to make a few bucks, and he sold it, and then it was everywhere. There were articles everywhere destroying it, historians trashing what we’d done. We didn’t want that. All because of an assistant. Christ.
Fierman: Doesn’t that kind of thing just come along with the words “Oliver Stone, Bush Movie”?
Stone: “An Oliver Stone movie” has been a cross to bear for years. I don’t know why, because my form always fits the function of every movie. Alexander is as different as World Trade Center as this is from those two. This is a different man; he’s not as dark or deep as someone like Nixon. The style is a time trip through three different eras, to give you a sense of young, middle, and old. It’s light.
Fierman: Wait, are you saying this movie is a comedy?
Stone: Well, it has to be done with an ebullience and a certain fun, because the guy is goofy. He’s a goofball! And I think he endeared himself to people because he couldn’t get anything right. Kubrick was an idol of mine. I grew up on Strangelove and movies like Network, and they made a big impact on me. So yeah, W. is a satire.
Fierman: What was it like shooting in Shreveport, in the middle of one of the reddest of red states?
Stone: I enjoyed it. But Shreveport at night? No fun. They all got arrested the last night there, you know.
Fierman: Yeah, I was getting to that. How the hell do you end up with Brolin and Wright in jail?
Stone: Oh, we were all having champagne on the set to say good-bye–it was nine thirty at night–and then we all went off to get loaded. The cops came to this bar. They arrested Jeffrey Wright because the bartender had a hair up his ass about this uppity black man from the North. And contrary to reports, he was not drunk. I was there. He was arrested because he had words with the cops. As for Brolin? It was the first night he had had a couple of drinks the whole time we were shooting. He had been sober for five months for the role, so he let loose a little bit and they got him, too.
Fierman: How do you market this movie? I know that’s not your problem, but it’s gotta be a concern.
Stone: It doesn’t seem to be a problem! You’re here! [laughs] It’s taking care of itself.
Fierman: The controversy doesn’t hurt either.
Stone: I don’t need controversy. If anything, I’ve had too much. It simplifies me. It trivializes me, frankly. Do you like Oliver Stone? Do you hate Oliver Stone? Worst movie ever. Best movie ever. It’s all opinion. At the end of the day, you know every movie I made, I made for my reasons, and I never compromised, ever. [pause] Except maybe on Alexander.
Fierman: It seems to me that between this and World Trade Center, you seem to be grappling with the idea of 9/11 as a historical aberration that allowed domestic horror to happen.
Fierman: That’s exactly right. That’s it — 9/11 is the flame. When 9/11 happened, I knew it was an overreaction. I knew it. We went fucking nuts.
Fierman: Are you guys going to finish in time?
Stone: Honestly, I don’t know. We’re going to try like hell. I have to finish and lock by September 17, and we just wrapped. So it’s a real push. If we miss it, it’s not the end of the world: We’d miss the election, but he’d still be in office. But honestly, I feel like I did on Alexander. I got rushed. Warner Bros. had Troy ready to strike in May, and they thought we’ll just follow up with Alexander in November. And I had to make that date for marketing reasons.
And if I was smart, I would have just given them what they wanted, because they wanted a sexless Alexander with not much violence. They wanted Troy II. If I had the guts, I would have done the Sergio Leone three-hour cut for Europe and butchered it for Warner Bros. And I would have taken out the homosexuality, which is what Warners really objected to.
Fierman: Yeah. I heard that you guys aren’t exactly on good terms about that.
Stone: Did I ever tell you the story of the ten-page commentary I got with about ten days to deliver from the editor? It was all these suggestions. It was unbelievable. It’s a classic. One day when I finally donate my papers, the world will see it. But I should have done what they wanted. It would have been a smarter move. It really would. That would have been the Peckinpah move, but I didn’t have that foresight. There are heroes out there, the Terry Gilliams of the world, who take on the studio system. But it’s hard to do. Warners has banned me, you know.
Fierman: You’re not serious. Is that explicit?
Stone: Oh yes. They have told my people that they don’t want to work with me again. I should have just said, “Okay, guys, go for it. Just make your cut.” And it would have been a much shorter, truncated film, and who knows, it might have made more than $32 million. It might have made fifty-two. Eighty-two. Who knows? You don’t have any idea how big an issue the homosexuality was. Especially when it comes to a military movie.
Fierman: Is the My Lai massacre movie you were making before W. dead?
Stone: Pinkville? It can probably only come back if UA would give us the movie without paying them the money they’ve already spent. We started to make the movie. I mean, we built a whole village in Thailand! We have tons of stuff sitting in crates! There’s $6 million against the movie. And I don’t have that kind of money. They didn’t even pay all the bills. They stuck us with a bunch of them.
Fierman: Is your sense that they got cold feet on the project and used the writers’ strike as the excuse?
Stone: Yes, of course that’s what happened. First they kept cutting our budget. We had our locations, we had our actors, we had everything picked out, and it was a very reasonable plan. Then Bruce Willis walked, and they were thrilled, because that gave them the final excuse to call it, even though we got Nicholas Cage. That was three weeks before shooting and right before Christmas. Let me remind you, that’s 120 Americans and 500 Thais put out of work right before Christmas. It was a cruel, heartless decision, and it was probably made because [UA’s] Lions for Lambs was perceived as a mess, a failure, and we were linked to these Iraq movies that weren’t working.
The irony, of course, is that Pinkville is only about Iraq in a Holy Ghost-type way. It’s about the roots of Iraq, without being too close to it. It’s not a war movie. It’s JFK meets Platoon. It was about an investigation into the past and how the nature or man covers up evil. And I have UA going on and on about “Do the bad guys have to be Americans?”
Fierman: In a movie about the My Lai massacre?
Stone: I mean, GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK! American soldiers, I mean, American soldiers are sacred? Come on! I’m saying this as a veteran. I’ve been to war. There are a lot of bad guys in the army.
Fierman: What do you think about what’s happening at the box office right now?
Stone: It’s all about the muscularization of film. Comics changed everything. It’s movies on steroids. I mean, look at Transformers. That made a fortune, but it’s incomprehensible! Maybe I’m too old for it.
Fierman: Oliver, I grew up on Transformers. It’s not just incomprehensible, it’s incoherent.
Stone: Oh, okay! It’s not just me! [laughs] And I’m sure this sequel will be huge, and it will be a franchise. So where do I fit? Thank God for people like the Coen brothers. Those movies get made occasionally, but they’re still hard to get made. No Country was turned down [domestically] by Paramount Vantage. They didn’t want it! I heard this story a long time ago, that John Lesher [president of Paramount Film Group] wanted to get rid of it. And that’s a good movie. Why would you want to get rid of it?
Now think about W. The first reaction across the board was “Who cares about this guy? Everybody hates him, and he’s finished anyway. What’s the relevance of this project?” And my answer is that it’s one of the most fascinating stories of recent times. Whatever you think of him, he’s a great story, and secondly his impact is enormous, because his policies are not over in ’08. It’s going to go on and on.
Fierman: Oh no. The damage this guy has done is generational in its scope.
Stone: Well, call it consequences. The consequences of his actions are enormous. We’re never going to go back to 2000. That’s a different country. We’re into another thing, and we have to deal with where we are now.

Newsweek‘s Keith Naughton and Hilary Shenfeld have reported that along with their eight or nine residences, John and Cindy McCain own 13 vehicles. Oh, and that Barack and Michelle Obama own one.