“After sitting through American Sniper twice, I’m more convinced than ever that there’s a level of sardonic commentary at work that is sometimes subtle and sometimes pretty damn obvious. Pay attention to Cooper’s increasingly congested body language, the posture of a man stricken with unmanageable psychic distress. Pay attention to the use of the phrase ‘mission accomplished’ late in the film, or the stateside scene in which Kyle runs into a Marine whose life he saved in Fallujah and can’t even make eye contact with the guy. This is a portrait of an American who thought he knew what he stood for and what his country stood for and never believed he needed to ask questions about that. He drove himself to kill and kill and kill based on that misguided ideological certainty — that brainwashing, though I’m sure Clint Eastwood would never use that word — and then paid the price for it. So did we all, and the reception of this film suggests that the payments keep on coming due.” — from “American Sniper and the culture wars: Why the movie’s not what you think it is” — Andrew O’Hehir, Salon, 1.20.

I still say the only decent thing Bill Cosby can do at this point is to cough up $10 or $15 million and dispense it to the 30-plus victims in some kind of indirect, half-assedly benevolent way, which would be a form of atonement without actually admitting anything. History will at least record that Cosby half-acknowledged his fiendishness and offered a little restitution as an oblique way of saying “I can’t say I’m sorry because I can’t say I’m guilty but…well, you know.”

“Last night, Obama had the punchy, self-assured air of a President on a roll, freed of old encumbrances (a narrow, nervous Democratic majority in the Senate) and buoyed by both a big jump in his approval ratings and, most important, a growing economy. ‘We have risen from recession freer to write our own future than any other nation on Earth,’ he said. ‘We’ve seen the fastest economic growth in over a decade, our deficits cut by two-thirds, a stock market that has doubled, and health-care inflation at its lowest rate in fifty years.’ Here he paused, savored these statistics, then ad-libbed: ‘This is good news, people.’ A wink, a smile, a sideways glance. A man pleased with himself.” — from a SOTU review by The New Yorker‘s Jeff Sheshol.

Why would I shell out for a Criterion Bluray of Peter Yates‘ The Friends of Eddie Coyle (’73) when I already have the 2009 DVD, which looks totally delectable on my 60-inch Samsung plasma? Coyle isn’t meant to be a splendorific visual experience. It’s just a modest ’70s noir with some wonderfully authentic performances and great George V. Higgins dialogue. Honestly? I’m tempted to buy the Bluray anyway but that’s because I have a neurotic weakness for improved resolution. But if I buy the damn thing and I don’t get my Bluray “bump”, trouble will follow.

“Maybe that’s the trick to it — it was very character-based and very simple when you looked at it. People like Billy Wilder and Frank Capra would really work on structuring things to where everything made sense. But I felt like Preston Sturges knew these people. They were real people; they lived in him somehow and he would just go, ‘Well, here’s what they would do.’ And maybe they’re dictating the movie. All of the characters are just dictating what happened. It really feels like he doesn’t have any control over them. So, maybe he knew they were twins from the beginning and he’s a genius and I’m an idiot. I don’t know.” — Bill Hader on Preston Sturges and The Palm Beach Story (the Criterion Bluray pops on 1.20) with Vulture.com’s Bilge Ebiri.

From a 5.4.14 review by wegotthiscovered.com‘s Adam A. Donaldson: “Mad As Hell (2.6 in NY/LA/VOD) is a rare opportunity to use the life story of Cenk Uygur to say something about the modern media culture, but instead, it’s kind of about the awesomeness of Uygur, how he put together his Ocean’s 11 like team of media upstarts and rocked the so-called squares in their ivory tower, despite the fact that the man leading the revolution longed to have a corner office in one of those very same towers. The documentary does have great energy though, and if you’re unfamiliar with The Young Turks, this is probably a good introduction to the outlet. And hey, if you scroll over to YouTube and click ‘subscribe’ on the Young Turks channel, then I guess it’s mission accomplished.

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I for one partly agree with Scott Foundas‘s assessment of American Sniper, which posted on 12.17: “The somewhat jingoistic, flag-waving memoir of ace Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle has become, in the hands of director Clint Eastwood, a melancholic rumination on a number of his career-spanning themes: the iconography of the solitary man of action; the high toll on all sides in the war zone; and the uncomfortable realities nibbling away at the edges of America’s self-glorifying myths.” But mature perceptions of this sort have been falling by the wayside since last weekend when Eastwood’s film (a) became a Godzilla-sized hit and (b) ignited a Hollywood vs. hinterland, lefties vs. conservatives combat scenario, providing reasons for the cultures to lob grenades at each other.

(l.) The late Chris Kyle, portrayed by Bradley Cooper in Clint Eastwood‘s American Sniper; (r.) Sarah Palin.

But now Sarah Palin has jumped into the arena with a Facebook posting, and I’m thinking she’s probably poisoned the well as far as Sniper‘s Best Picture chances are concerned. What self-respecting Academy member will want to vote for anything Palin supports? If I was a Warner Bros. Oscar strategist I’d be on a plane up to Alaska right now to beg Palin to kill the Facebook post, shut the hell up and stay the fuck out of it.

“Hollywood leftists: while caressing shiny plastic trophies you exchange among one another while spitting on the graves of freedom fighters who allow you to do what you do, just realize the rest of America knows you’re not fit to shine Chris Kyle’s combat boots,” she wrote yesterday.

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It has presumably occurred to Dennis Rodman that his 2013 romp-around with Kim Jong-Un in North Korea was the inspiration for James Franco‘s “Dave Skylark” character in The Interview. I’m presuming this isn’t discussed in Colin Offland and Matt Baker‘s Dennis Rodman’s Big Bang In Pyongyang, which will play at Slamdance on Sunday, 1.25. It’s abundantly clear from this trailer that Rodman, who reportedly will not be traveling to Park City to promote the doc, isn’t dealing from a full deck. Somewhat like Skylark, Rodman has claimed he didn’t know that the North Korean dictator had ordered certain atrocities, and has said fairly recently that he intends to return to North Korea and do some more hanging’ with his homie. “I’m not Martin Luther King…if someone wanted to shoot me, please, do it today.” Now, at least, there’s something I want to see at Slamdance.

Sometime in the recent past Mark Harris posted the 12.29 tweet from American Sniper screenwriter Jason Hall that explained why Clint Eastwood used the robot baby in that bizarre hospital room scene between Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller. I would have posted this yesterday but Hall deleted the original tweet, which gave me pause. The last time I’ve seen a baby this fake-looking was in Larry Cohen‘s It’s Alive (’74).

It figures that this graffiti was painted on a billboard at the corner of Wilshire and Bundy, right in the heart of squishy, touch-feely Liberalville. The idea that someone actually believes that Chris Kyle‘s sniper kills constituted murder…the mind does cartwheels. Very few are this naive, I’m telling myself, but perhaps not? It makes this West Hollywood lefty who prays at the church of Real Time With Bill Maher feel embarassed for all West L.A. lefties and the general cause of liberalism. Clint, I apologize. They just need to breathe a little air.

It was announced this evening that Joel and Ethan Coen will be co-presidents of the 68th Cannes Film Festival jury. They’ll each have their own vote, of course, but given their affinity and close creative collaborations over the decades, it makes you wonder if it’s possible that Joel and Ethan might disagree on a favorite for the Palme d’Or. The strong likelihood, I would imagine, is that they’ll be on the same page because they don’t know how to think any other way. But what if Ethan decides he likes Film A and Joel is more of a fan of Film B? Brother against brother, Cain vs. Abel, etc. The Cannes Film Festival runs from Wednesday, May 13th through Sunday, May 24th.

The final hours of Martin Luther King Day plus all the hand-wringing about Ava DuVernay‘s Selma having gotten short shrift from the Academy reminds me what a tragedy it is that Scott Rudin and Paul Greengrass‘s Memphis project, which allegedly had a brilliant script, stalled in mid-2013 and has since gone south. Memphis, I suspect, is the King project that the Academy would have really gotten hot and bothered about. And not, Sasha Stone, because of the gender or ancestry of the director, but because it might have been really damn good. I can only repeat what Greengrass told me at a Captain Phillips after-party at the Academy in early October 2013. Greengrass had cast an Atlanta-based preacher — apparently an eloquent speech-giver and sermonizer — to play King in Memphis, but the poor guy passed away during the summer of ’13. Greengrass was dispirited by this loss (he didn’t want to go into it during our chat but it was clearly a sore subject for him) and apparently lost his directorial mojo as a result. I’m also reminded of a paragraph that Deadline‘s Michael Fleming posted as part of an article about the Memphis project in November 2012: “I read the script when Greengrass tried to make the movie last time around [in April 2011], and felt it was Oscar-calibre stuff that was a powerful testament to King’s struggle and his sacrifice, even if he was portrayed as an imperfect human being. I must say it’s as good as any script I’ve read in years.”