wired

David Poland writes in his Toronto Film Festival capsule review of P.S., the brand-new film from Roger Dodger helmer Dylan Kidd, that costar Laura Linney “[looks] so good in this film that I spent time trying to figure out whether she had gotten cosmetic surgery. (I am told that the answer is ‘no.’).” Next time a woman I know fairly well turns up at a party looking especially attractive, I’m going to go up to her and say, “Wow, you’ve never looked so good and…well, I don’t get it. I mean, I know how you usually look. Did you go under the knife or something?”

The Talmud says that the only sin God cannot forgive is despair, according to regular reader Joe Greenia. Even if the Talmud doesn’t proclaim this, these are words I should probably think about. Especially considering the latest Harris Interactive poll posted on the Wall Street Journal‘s website today (Thursday, 9.16), reporting that John Kerry has gotten 48 percent of the intended vote, compared with 47 percent for Bush. (Nader got 2%.) Great, but I’m still pissed at Team Kerry for all their fumbles and hesitations.

Johnny Ramone is dead at 55 and I’m sorry. A Republican, yes, but 55 is way too young to leave the planet. But don’t just hang your head — go see End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones this weekend and really put your body and your wallet into celebrating one of the 20th Century’s greatest rock bands. Johnny himself called it “a very dark movie…accurate…it left me disturbed.” And yet it’s a film about kicking out the jams until there’s nothing left to give, and if that isn’t a positive, life-affirming, never-say-die attitude, I don’t what would be.

Alexander Payne’s Sideways is fantastic in a lot of small little ways that add up to one big score. It’s not a rock-your-world, drop-your-socks, home-run type of thing, but at the same time it’s damn near perfect and it gets better and better the more you mull it over. People are grapes and vice versa, and shove that schnozz right into that wine glass, baby! David Poland may be right in calling it “the first true masterpiece of 2004.” Paul Giamatti (a master at conveying morose, cynical, self-loathing funkitude) is God, Virginia Madsen is a likely Best Supprting Actress nominee, Sandra Oh hits it on the head and Thomas Haden-Church is a total howl.

Can George Butler’s Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry make a difference? Answer: Probably not because it’s hitting theatres too late in the game. “Will audiences pay to see what amounts to a two-hour political tribute to a man spotlighted free on the news every night?,” asks Sharon Waxman in a 9.14 New York Times story. “Can a theatrically released feature film create last-minute momentum for a presidential candidate? Could the effort boomerang?” Bitter answer: Kerry is toast. It’s over. Butler’s doc, if you care, will open in 200 theaters on 10.1, less than five weeks before the election.

A Tuesday New York Post story says Harvey and Bob Weinstein are looking to stay with Disney now that Michael Eisner’s agreed to step down (and you can bet he’ll be gone well before ’06). The brothers are no longer considering splitting up, the Post story reported, and are looking for a way to stay within the fold. Miramax spokesman Matthew Hiltzik told the newspaper that the Weinsteins “remain dedicated to achieving an amicable resolution that will allow Miramax to perpetuate Eisner’s legacy, and their own.”

Val Kilmer will soon begin performing his singing role as Moses in The Ten Commandments, a “spectacular pop stage musical” that “tells the 3,3000 year-old story of Moses’ exodus from Egypt and his journey towards happiness, life and rebirth,” according to Broadway World.com. (It’s apparently based on the DreamWorks animated musical feature.) Moses was happy? The only time Charlton Heston’s Moses smiled was when he embraced Anne Baxter. This sounds like horseshit for the tourists. And Kilmer is doing this for…the money?

I’m feeling more and more enraged at John Kerry for emulating Michael Dukakis, blowing his lead and forcing his campaign into a last-ditch catch-up mode. There’s now a very real possibility that Bush-Cheney will be in for another four, and this is no one’s fault but Kerry’s. I’m so pissed at him I’m having to calm myself down with cups of Buddha Broth. Kerry is something like 6 to 10 percentage points behind Bush, largely, it seems, because he took the advice of campaign strategist Bob Shrum to not go overly negative against the Swift Boat and Vietnam atrocity sound-bite charges, in defiance of the general feeling that Shrum himself was a huge problem. My Presidential campaign feelings used to be focused on a basic anti-Bush posture. Now they’re half anti-Bush and half Kerry-is-an-indecisive-jerkwad.

You shoulda seen the 20-somethings congregated around Book Soup on the Sunset strip last night (Monday, 9.13) to catch a glimpse of Paris Hilton, who paid a visit to the book store around 7 pm to sign copies of “Confessions of an Heiress: A Tongue-in-Chic Peek Behind the Pose” (Fireside). Men and women were looking to catch a peek through the window on the sidewalk, and a bunch of grungy guys were hanging around with digital cameras in the rear parking lot. Paris Hilton is just a rich ditz; people oohing and aahing her is a disease that really needs to be cured.

“September is way too early to declare an Academy Award winner,” admits N.Y. Daily News critic-columnist Jack Matthews, “but the Oscar engraver would do well to remember the spelling of Taylor Hackford’s star in the biographical drama Ray — it’s Jamie Foxx, with two Xs.” Foxx, he says, was “the talk of the town over the first half of the [Toronto Film Festival]. He gives such a complete performance as the late Ray Charles that you almost immediately forget you’re watching a performance by anyone other than Charles himself.” And yet Mathews also said that one of his big festival faves has been DreamWorks’ Shark Tale, and I haven’t been hearing that at all from other Toronto troopers. I’ve been hearing flip, facile, so-what and Will Smith can go diddle himself with his own fish tail (or words to that effect).

Hollywood Elsewhere has a new chat room called “Poet’s Corner” — currently up and running. It’s on the navigation bar — please sign up (or don’t sign up… it’s your call) and let fly. I’ve also gone live with the first Dispatches column, which has been written by Shall We Dance? director Peter Chelsom. And come Friday Kim Morgan, former film critic for Willamette Week and The Oregonian and a radio talk-show host for four years, will be be joining the fray with a new column.

So the Bond producers have lowered their sights sufficiently to allow for the hiring of Dougray Scott to play 007? (Whatever the accuracy of this story, it recently acquired the legitimacy of a printed account in London’s Sunday Mirror.) Bond casting has always been about the “it” factor. It’s obvious to me that Scott (check him out in Enigma or Liliana Cavani’s Ripley’s Game) almost has it, but not quite. Clive Owen had it in those online BMW “drive” commercials, but “it” seemed to have deserted him when he turned up in King Arthur. And forget Eric Bana. The Scott hiring is said to be about Bond producer Barbara Broccoli wanting to return to a “brooding” Bond in the vein of Sean Connery. Sheer delirium. The Bond franchise needs to die, not reproduce itself. And it needs to die with dignity, which is a total impossibility with Broccoli and producing partner Michael G. Wilson at the wheel.