wired

The Bullitt car chase on Google maps, the most specific and photo-rich Bullitt location rundown I’ve ever read (including specifics about the car chase), and the YouTube clip that I posted and few weeks ago. (Note: I first saw the link the Google maps thing on Movie City News, which means that David Poland has worldwide territorial rights as far as all things Bullitt are concerned, not just now but from here to eternity.)

I’m so frazzled about what I’m afraid may be dispiriting numbers in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island that I’m having trouble paying attention to movie stuff, much less banging stuff out. Things will start to happen at 7 pm eastern, when Vermont polls close, and then the 7:30 poll closings in Ohio.

Focus Features and Working Title will give a wide release to the Coen brothers’ Burn After Reading on Sept. 12 because of it’s funny (I’ve read the script) and has two big names (George Clooney, Brad Pitt) along with John Malkovich, Frances McDormand and Tilda Swinton. But how wide? Somewhere between 1500 and 2000 theatres? More? Pamela McClintock‘s Variety story doesn’t mention a Cannes opening, but the IMDB has it down as a Cannes selection (with a date even — 5.14).

Yesterday a Huffington Poststory posted paparazzi bikini shots of Kate Hudson in Miami last weekend, the story being about her possibly being pregnant. So what, right? There was a click-through to other photos, and so I did that and this happened. That’s all.

One of those insufficiently educated over-40 guys, interviewed by Steve Croft two days ago on 60 Minutes. When Croft tells him that Barack Obama-is-a-Muslim rumor isn’t true and asks if he realizes that, the guy kind of half-smiles and more or less holds his ground. Charming. America the beautiful.

“No matter how you cut it, Obama will almost certainly end the primaries with a pledged-delegate lead, courtesy of all those landslides in February,” writes Newsweek‘s Jonathan Alter in a piece that went up this morning.
“Hillary would then have to convince the uncommitted superdelegates to reverse the will of the people. Even coming off a big Hillary winning streak, few if any superdelegates will be inclined to do so. For politicians to upend what the voters have decided might be a tad, well, suicidal.
“For all of those who have been trashing me for saying this thing is over, please feel free to do your own math. Give Hillary 75 percent in Kentucky and Indiana. Give her a blowout in Oregon. You will still have a hard time getting her through the process with a pledged-delegate lead [for Hillary].”
So why is Hillary reportedly determined to stay in the race after tonight? She’s waiting for Something Horrible to happen to Obama. She’s waiting for a Big Stink of some kind to overtake his candidacy that will repel everyone and send them rallying to her side. And you and I know that if there’s any way the Hillary Team can help to make this happen, they will. What an admirable human being she is. What a wonderful way to play the game.

Hollywood Elsewhere has been re-designed and will go “live” with the new look sometime this weekend. The architect is the brilliant Brian Walker, who’s been with HE since the August ’04 launch. A few things are being modified, tweaked. I’m going to add a feature in the archive drop-down menu called “Yellowing with Antiquity” that will feature scans of print articles I wrote for the L.A. Times, Entertainment Weekly and other outlets in the early to mid ’90s.

The delegate situation is very good for Barack Obama, but today’s electoral drama feels dicey to me. As HAL 9000 said to Dave Bowman some forty years ago, “I can feel it…I can feel it.”

Security moms have bought the “3 in the morning” TV ad bullshit, I fear, and the other anti-Obama hits — the Muslim Manchuran Candidate myth, Hillary’s “as far as I know,” NAFTA/Canada confusion, Somali garb in ’06, Reszko mist — have sunk in among closet racists looking for an excuse to vote against him, and, as always, among the insufficiently educated over-40s, who are regrettably abundant in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island.
The beauty of Democracy just falls apart when professional liars and pot-stirrers like Mark Penn and Howard Wolfson can intimidate and give pause to none-too-bright fence-sitters.

How can this new DVD release of Sidney Lumet‘s 12 Angry Men (out tomorrow) be called a “50th Anniversary Edition” when its U.S. theatrical debut was 4.13.57? Just don’t consult the information on the Amazon page, which doesn’t mention the voiceover and the two featurettes. This a new high-def transfer that looks a tiny bit better than the previous versions with slightly more visual information in the frame. If you’re a freak about this film (as I am), it’s probably worth getting.

U.S. News political analyst Michael Barone “took a Washington Post-ABC Poll showing Hillary Clinton with a seven-point lead in Ohio and tried to figure out what that would mean in terms of the delegate breakdown,” reports the Cincinatti Enquirer‘s Howard Wilkinson.
“He concluded that if Clinton won Ohio by seven percentage points, she’d probably end up with only nine more delegates here than Barack Obama — not enough to cut significantly into Obama’s lead in the delegate count.”
And yet John C. Green, a political scientist at the University of Akron, said that “while a Clinton win by a small margin might not do her much good in the race for delegates, it could make it possible for her to carry on her struggling campaign. ‘She gets a psychological boost, but it wouldn√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢t make much difference in the overall delegate count,’ said Green. ‘You’d really have to blow the other candidate out of the water to get a delegate advantage in Ohio.'”

I was on a night flight touching down at Dulles airport a few years ago, and I could tell as we got close to the runway that we were settling into extremely thick fog. Too foggy for the pilot, it turned out. Before we hit the tarmac he gunned it and soared back into the blackness above. Good man. May have saved my life.

I was also on a small jet in ’98 that was going faster and faster down the runway at Aspen airport, almost at liftoff speed, when the pilot suddenly cut the power and taxied back to the gate, having felt or seen something that wasn’t quite right. My kind of pilot.

The more boutique-y and quality-oriented the Oscars become (“quality” being in some cases synonymous with being less emotionally engaging or accessible), the less popular they will be with the “just looking to be entertained” serf class. That’s where it’s all heading so can we please, please stop with the analysis pieces sounding the dark gong about how much less the Oscars mean these days in terms of generating box-office punch?
“The Oscar bounce has all but disappeared,” N.Y. Times media guy David Carr wrote in a 3.3 column. “In part because the awards have been moved up in the year and the window in which a nomination could be used to attract to a wider audience has become shorter.
“In his book ‘Picures at a Revolution,’ Mark Harris recounts how The Graduate, one of the nominees he wrote about, had a two-year run, including before and after the Oscars. Nowadays, perfectly wonderful films like Sidney Lumet‘s Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead and Sean Penn’s Into the Wild are pushed out of theaters (and out of competition) within a few weeks to make room for other bets.”
Stop right there. If you have a taste for well-sculpted, wonderfully acted melodrama by way of Greek tragedy, Lumet’s film is wonderful. But if you just want something spunky, brisk and thrilling, I can imagine people who aren’t that bright or sensitive calling it a chore and a downer. Same with Into The Wild. If you don’t have a high regard for the film’s naturalist theme or a deep respect for Jon Krakauer‘s novel or an admiration for Emile Hirsch‘s acting or Sean Penn‘s directing chops, it’s not necessarily a “wonderful” film at all.
“As a result, the so-called Oscar movie is a very precise business exercise,” says Carr. “It must be reviewed ecstatically, be seen by loads of adults and receive love at the warm-up awards shows before the Oscars. These kind of films have no toy revenues, no prequels or sequels, and little penetration with youth audiences (give or take the occasional Juno). With that kind of math, it’s a little like playing nickel slots with half-dollar coins.”