I was watching an MSNBC panel of undecided voters respond to the second debate a few days ago, and at one point Chris Matthews asked the four women on the panel (three of whom were leaning toward Romney, they said) if they had any reaction to Romney not being in favor of equal pay for equal work, and they all basically said “what of it?” — they were giving him a pass because they believed he was the conqueror and they wanted to kneel before him. They didn’t want to know any details.

In a 10.19 London Times piece, Kevin Maher has written that “come February 24 next year, there’s a very real possibility that Elle Fanning…will be among the nominees for Best Actress, thanks to her role in the drama Ginger & Rosa — a win would make her the youngest recipient of the award.”

Ginger & Rosa star Elle Fanning.

I don’t think so. Fanning is sufficient but not great in Ginger & Rosa, and, as I said in a brief Telluride Film Festival review, the film is only so-so. Will Fanning be nominated for a Best Actress Oscar within the next five or six or seven years? Probably. She’s got it, all right. It’s just a matter of her lucking into the right role, the right film and the right director at the right moment.

It wasn’t Ginger & Rosa that convinced me of this, but a brief moment in JJ Abrams‘ Super 8. Here’s how I put it on 5.27.11:

“There’s a moment when Fanning, who was good but mostly passive and nonverbal in Sofia Coppola‘s Somewhere, begins performing some dialogue for a zombie movie that her friends (one of whom is played by newcomer Joel Courtney, who’s also quite good) are shooting. And something just clicks when she lets go with that special vibe or deep-well charisma or whatever it is that some actors just have. The instant she begins saying the lines…pocket drop. A feeling of being anchored and practiced and on a certain level older than her years, and the camera knowing this. I said to myself, ‘Wow, she’s getting there fast.'”

Note to Maher: Should Fanning receive a Best Actress nomination for Ginger & Rosa, it would first be known on January 10th, 2013.

Two days ago Business Insider‘s Joe Weisenthal posted a series of charts related to consumers and households, and showing we’re in a full-on economic comeback — not a boom phase, but a definite upswing. New housing starts shooting up. Retail sales re-accelerating. Unemployment below 8% and collapsing. New car sales up. Evolving consumer credit back to growth. Consumer discretionary stocks surging.

And Romney voters (i.e., those not simply motivated by wanting the black guy out of the White House) are saying, “Things are bad…we need to revert to the Bush-era policies that got us into trouble in the first place.”

“Long is the way, and hard, that out of darkness leads up to light.” — John Milton.

Tom Hanks dropping an f-bomb is nothing. What struck me is how much he sounds like film journalist James Rocchi starting at the 48 second mark. Hanks adopts a kind of sardonic, mock-narrator tone as he says “and the next time on the show there will be a seven-second delay.” Hanks is older than Rocchi and ditto the patter, but my first reaction was “wait, I know that tone of voice!”

“I’m just saying that I think it’s bullshit. I think it’s total, utter bullshit, and I don’t want to be a part of it. I don’t believe in it. It’s a carrot, but it’s the worst-tasting carrot I’ve ever tasted in my whole life. I don’t want this carrot. It’s totally subjective. Pitting people against each other …it’s the stupidest thing in the whole world.” — Joaquin Phoenix speaking to Elvis Mitchell in a just-released discussion in Interview magazine.

“The ceremonies are a two-hour meat parade, a public display with contrived suspense for economic reasons…[they’re] offensive, barbarous and innately corrupt.” — George C. Scott speaking in early 1971 after he was nominated for Best Actor for his performance in Patton.

It can be safely assumed (I hope) that David Fincher won’t ask Brad Pitt to pick up a guitar and sing in a possible Disney-produced remake of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea…please. Variety‘s Jeff Sneider is reporting that Disney is homing in on Fincher “as it decides whether to move forward with the project, which Se7en scribe Andrew Kevin Walker rewrote in November 2011.” Pic “has not yet received a greenlight,” but Fincher allegedly wants Pitt to play the brawny and rambunctious Ned Land, the Kirk Douglas role in the 1954 original.

Poor Sylvia Kristel has passed on, done in by esophageal and lung cancer. I spoke with her a little bit during the making of a minor, very dull 1988 Cannon film called The Arrogant, which I wrote the press notes for. She was 35 or 36 when it was filmed, and even then she was past her Emmanuelle aura by a decade or so. Emmanuelle was the Fifty Shades of Grey of the early to mid ’70s.

What does an international object of erotic fixation do when he/she gets older? Hang on, keep smiling, play it classy, stay in shape. I’m thinking of all these Rolling Stones song titles that apply to her life — “It’s Not Easy,” “I Am Waiting,” “She Was Hot,” etc. Condolences to friends, fans, family.

I haven’t seen Ben Lewin‘s The Sessions since Sundance ’12 or about nine months ago, so I’m catching it again this evening. It felt genuinely touching the first time, and I can’t imagine it not paying off in the same way. This is a spirited, carefully measured, honestly acted film about touching, needing, being open and the finding of fulfillment. I predicted last January that John Hawkes and Helen Hunt would attract some award-season heat, and that seems to be happening as we speak.

I also described The Sessions (called The Surrogate at the time) as an emotionally erotic variation on the themes in My Left Foot, The Sea Inside and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly with a little dash of Who’s Life Is It Anyway? thrown in.

“The only thing the film (i.e., Lewin) lacks is a strong visual imagination,” I wrote. “Any film about a paralyzed protagonist needs to somehow free itself from that immobility. It can’t just be a series of static interiors or the viewer will start to be hemmed in to some degree.” I didn’t add but I would say now that Lewin’s plain, unstudied medium-shot approach doesn’t diminish his film, exactly, but it doesn’t exactly enhance it either. Otherwise, The Sessions is a nice, liberal, enlightened package of feel-good filmmaking, honed and polished and tied with a red bow. Nothing wrong with that.

The Sessions is current running at 95% positive on Rotten Tomatoes.

I missed showings of Travis Fine‘s Any Day Now (Music Box Films, 12.14) at last spring’s Tribeca Film Festival (where it won the Heineken Award for Narrative Film) and the recent Hamptons Film Festival, but the word has been excellent all along. I don’t know why I never paid attention. This morning Marshall Fine declared that Alan Cumming‘s performance as “a cross-dressing crooner-cum-caregiver” (in the words of Variety‘s Boyd Von Hoeij) is a must-see and a breakout.

Here are raves from Variety‘s Von Hoeij, from Screen Daily and from two or three Rotten Tomatoes stragglers. I’m waiting for Marina Bailey to start showing it in Los Angeles.

Leo’s Calvin Candie sells itself, but my first glance at Samuel L. Jackson‘s Stephen was a timeflash. I forgot about Quentin Tarantino‘s film (Weinstein Co., 12.25) and went back to Woody Strode‘s old Pompey from the opening portion of John Ford‘s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, dressed in a Naval officer’s uniform as he gives testimony at the Caine Mutiny court martial.

An invitation to the AFIFest’s 11.1 opening-night gala premiere of Sacha Gervasi‘s certain-to-amuse Hitchcock arrived a half-hour ago. It offers an excuse to compare the poster art to the original 1960 Psycho one-sheet.

Could there be a tenuous connection between (a) Chuck Norris‘s four-month-old accusation that President Obama and Boy Scouts of America board member James Turley are conspiring to make the BSA more gay-friendly and (b) today’s release of the BSA’s “perversion files,” detailing sex abuse allegations against scout leaders over the last 20 years. It appears as if the BSA has been pedophile-friendly all along (second only to the Catholic church), and that Obama and Turley are latecomers, at best. That or Norris is an asshat.