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Frontunners is a smart, engaging, tightly cut doc about four Stuyvesant High School candidates running for the ceremonial title of president and vice-president of the Student Union in this elite Manhattan school, in 2006. I liked it for the same reasons everyone else is standing by it. Because it’s brisk, well-shaped, thoughtful, catchy and echo-y in a sense that the campaign issues and tactics are somewhat similar to some of the ones that are now playing out on the national stage.

Here‘s the trailer.
I did an 18-minute phoner yesterday with Frontrunners producer Erika Frankel, who was on a train to Boston at the time along with the director, Caroline Suh. (Whom I didn’t have time to speak with — sorry.) My Time Warner land line stopped working yesterday so I recorded off the iPhone.
I especially responded to the full believable-ness of Frontunners. I bought every frame of it, in part because there’s no hint or trace of American Teen-style showbiz slickery. I also warmed to it, I suppose, because the candidates are all the age of my younger son Dylan, who was born in ’89.
Following its 10.15 debut at Manhattan’s Film Forum, Frontunners opened in a few new cities yesterday — Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco, etc.

In her recently televised interview with NBC’s Brian Williams, Sarah Palin pronounced the embattled country where over 4,000 American troops have died as “Eye-rack.” It’s Ehrahq, you moron. And if you want to ape the way the locals say it, it’s Uhrahq. (Or at least, that’s what an Italian director told me a couple of years ago.) I have no tolerance for people who say Eyetalian either. Saying eye-anything is like having a tattoo across your forehead that says “yokel.”

For what it’s worth, this columnist feels very badly for the traumatic loss suffered by poor Jennifer Hudson. A hug, a pat on the back, I’m sorry, life can be brutal and savage, hang in there.

Here, also, is a three-day-old Las Vegas Sun high-def video of enraged McCain supporters (older, grayer, thicker, Supercut hair) shouting down Obama supporters. Except it takes way too long to load. The situation indicated by the just-out Newsweek poll — 53 Obama to 40 McCain among registered, 53 percent to 41 among likely voters — is surely goading the angry McCainers.

…from a former McCain operative (posted on Politico) that I didn’t get around to posting two days ago (i.e., Thursday): “The cake is baked. We’re entering the finger-pointing and positioning-for-history part of the campaign. It’s every man for himself now.”

The jacket art for the Criterion Collection’s new Missing DVD (out 10.21) is classy, nicely done. The helicopter shot, of course, is from a scene when Thomas Horman (John Shea) steps outside his hotel room in Vina del Mar and sees what he sees, which tells him (and us) that a military coup against Chile’s Salvador Allende government has begun. If I’d designed the cover I would have used the shot of the white horse being chased by soldiers in a jeep down a deserted Santiago street.

Two days ago the Times Online Paris correspondent Charles Remner reported that Woody Allen‘s Vicky Cristina Barcelona has led the French box-office tallies for the past two weeks. The film hasn’t done badly in the U.S. since opening limited in mid-August (it ranks as 81st among all ’08 attractions) but neither has it been burning up domestic records.

The reason for the French success is that Allen is “adored in France,” Bremner writes. “Annie Hall, Manhattan and the other masterpieces of his oeuvre were a cult in the 1970s but his name is barely known to younger Americans. He has gone on turning out his essays on love and mortality but U.S. filmgoers turned their backs on his more recent efforts. That has been Europe’s gain, with three European-financed films set in London and now his brilliant Spanish outing.
“Allen, now 72, is revered here as un grand auteur. His charm, neurosis and sense of humour touch a Gallic (yes) nerve. The reviewers have mainly raved over Allen’s Spanish opera, calling it dazzling, clever and sublimely melancholic. How is it that an American movie is regarded as a minor art film in its own country but manages to beat out all the native comedies and US blockbusters at the French box-office?”

“The water cooler has frozen over. Twittering on the interweb has dimmed to faint chirps. A scan of the horizon reveals no bat signal on any building. I’m referring, of course, to the debate over whether The Dark Knight will beat Titanic‘s $601 million (U.S.) record take at the North American box office.

“TDK is just past $527 million, still in release and still in the Top 20 for current pictures. It has just $75 million to go to sink the ship, which should just be chump change for Hollywood. Yet I spy no cheerleaders garbed in sexy bat leather. Am I the last guy on the planet who still cares about this?” — from a 10.24 article by the Toronto Star‘s Peter Howell.

To go by Henry Blodgett‘s analysis on Silicon Valley Insider, the N.Y. Times is in serious financial trouble. We’ve all been reading about the dropping ad revenues, newsroom layoffs and whatnot, but this looks bad. “How The N.Y. Times Can Save Itself?” Yeesh. I am, needless to say, very emotionally invested in this newspaper. It’s been with me all my life.