As I understand it, today’s appalling Dow tumble of more than 600 points is primarily in response to Standard & Poors dropping U.S. credit rating from AAA to AA+ along with the shaky European economy plus the bad unemployment figures. But the real cause, of course, was the volatile climate brought about by rightwing terrorism over the debt-ceiling and budget-deficit standoff. Sen. Mitchell and Speaker Boehner are partly to blame for this, but Cantor, Walsh, Bachmann and the other 60-odd right-wing loonies in the House bear particular responsibility. Damn them to hell.

Here‘s N.Y. Times columnist Paul Krugman on the laughable non-credibility of Standard & Poors.

One of the best ideas to come out of yesterday’s Oscar Poker discussion (i.e., # 43) was a suggestion by Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone that SAG members could organize an open debate about the performance-capture issue triggered by the righteous talk about Andy Serkis deserving a nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Face the issue and battle it out, guys, and let journalists take notes. It’s the future, after all. More and more exciting performance-capture tour de forces are going to happen in years to come. Can’t live with your heads in the sand.

Here’s a non-iTunes, stand-alone link.

A pair of conservative bloggers are freaking over a just-out Newsweek cover photo of Rep. Michelle Bachmann, claiming in effect that Tina Brown‘s publication is doing to the radical-right Congressperson what Life magazine did to Charles Manson in 1969. Except Bachmann does project what Chris Matthews once described as a “moronic stare” — ditzoid, glassy-eyed. It’s not Photoshop. That’s how she looks.

An appalled Noel Sheppard of newsbusters.org wrote, “Exactly what were the editors thinking putting this kind of a picture of a sitting Congresswoman and presidential candidate on their cover?”

An unidentified editor at Freedom’s Lighthouse has asked, “Can anyone really say with a straight face that the mainstream media is not totally biased against conservatives?”

I’m presuming that other conversatives will chime in on this issue today. I’d like a friend-of-Bachmann to make a case that her eyes don’t have that dopey-alien-from Trafalmadore expression all on their own, without Tina Brown’s help. Because they clearly do.

Here’s an excellent, keenly observant profile (dated 8.15) of Bachmann by The New Yorker‘s Ryan Lizza.

Two months after it became available through Walmart online and Amazon.com, DVD Beaver has finally posted a review of MGM’s The Big Country Bluray, which I reviewed on 6.11. Gary W. Tooze writes that he “had a dickens of a time trying to get it.” Is there some reason why he couldn’t order it online like I did? What he means, I suspect, is that he had a dickens of a time getting his mitts on a freebie.

So I won’t be attending the Telluride or Venice film festivals (as usual) but I’ll be doing Toronto and New York. The latter will be mostly about catching Roman Polanski‘s Carnage, possibly Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, that 2.76 to 1 Ben-Hur screening at Alice Tully Hall, My Week With Marilyn and possibly Martin Scorsese‘s George Harrison: Living in the Material World. Wait…did I read something about Clint Eastwood‘s J. Edgar possibly preeming there?

And now it’s time to prune down the 2011 Toronto offerings to a manageable slate of 20 or 25, which is all I ever manage to see when I’m there. I’ve listed them in order of the most exciting and essential and on down. I’m ignoring a lot of well-made films, I’m sure. Please advise if I’ve tossed anything truly substantial:

1. The Descendants (d: Alexander Payne)

2. The Ides of March (d: George Clooney)

3. A Dangerous Method (d: David Cronenberg)

4. Moneyball (d: Bennett Miller)

5. Albert Nobbs (d: Rodrigo Garcia)

6. Shame (d: Steve McQueen)

7. Butter (d: Jim Field Smith)

8. The Oranges (d: Julian Farino)

9. Pearl Jam Twenty (d: Cameron Crowe);

10. Take this Waltz (d: Sarah Polley)

11. 50/50 (d: Jonathan Levine)

12. 360 (d: Fernando Meirelles)

13. Anonymous (d: Roland Emmerich)

14. Friends With Kids (d: Jennifer Westfeldt)

15. Machine Gun Preacher (d: Marc Forster);

16. Rampart (d: Oren Moverman)

17. Peace, Love & Misunderstanding (d: Bruce Beresford)

18. W.E. (d: Madonna)

19. The Hunter (d: Daniel Nettheim)

20. Jeff, Who Lives at Home (d: Jay & Mark Duplass)

21. Killer Joe (d: William Friedkin)

22. Trishna (d: Michael Winterbottom)

23. Woman in the Fifth (d: Pawel Pawlikowski)

24. Hick (d: Derick Martini)

25. Coriolanus (d: Ralph Fiennes)

26. Dark Horse (d: Todd Solondz)

Oh, God, I forgot the documentaries. Okay, here’s a list of preferences:

1. Wim Wenders‘ Pina

2. Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb‘s This Is Not A Film

3. Morgan Spurlock‘s Comic-Con: Episode IV — A Fan’s Hope

4. Rithy Panh‘s Duch, Master of the Forges of Hell

5. Jonathan Demme‘s I’m Carolyn Parker: The Good, the Mad, and the Beautiful.

6. Werner Herzog‘s Into The Abyss

7. Stephen Kessler‘s Paul Williams Still Alive

8. Nick Broomfield and Joan Churchill‘s Sarah Palin — You Betcha

9. Dan Lindsay and TJ Martin‘s Undefeated.

The subject was broached on Real Time with Bill Maher the night before last. Maher lamented that “the magic is gone” and asked if lefties were starting to have “buyer’s remorse” about President Obama. Liberals still like Obama, Maher said, but things have deteriorated to that point “after a giant fight” in a bad marriage in which “you’ve said so many nasty things that you know you’re never really going to get it back together.”

Yes, Obama and liberals will ultimately stay together because “who are you gonna date, Mitt Romney?,” he said. But Maher also believes that caving to the Republicans in the budget crisis has been a tipping point in Obama’s presidency, and he lost more liberal support by not fighting hard enough against the loonies. Then he asked whether Hillary Clinton would have made a better president than Obama because she’s tougher and scrappier than mild-mannered Barry. Maher quipped that Hillary has had experience “with difficult men,” etc.

I believe that Hillary probably would have played and occasionally won with the same cards that Obama has put on the table, but also that she would have stood up to the irrational right in a snarlier, less accommodating, eyeball-to-eyeball fashion. Yeah, that’s what I’m saying — I’d vote for her if I had it to do over again. I didn’t know then what I know now.

Many times I’ve riffed on a dark, delicious fantasy about rounding up Tea Bagger types and sentencing them to green re-education camps for minimum one-year terms. Not to punish per se but to expose these contemptible morons to facts, to truth, to the way things really are and how they’re being played by the rich, and the fact that Boomers have taken almost everything and that diminished lifestyles and economic security are being bequeathed to Genx and GenY for decades to come, and that the best is definitely over. The infra-structure that once provided decent, fair-minded quality of life to middle-class people in this country is disintegrating. The game is rigged. This is the fall of the Roman Empire.

All largely because of impediments to logical, intelligent governing put up by the knee-jerk, mule-like, corporate-kowtowing mentality of Tea-Bagger types and their 60 or so looney-tunes Congresspersons now in office. We’ve truly become a South American society of rightist oligarchs, angry lefties, disillusioned wage-earners, retirement-age fuddies and struggling, debt-smothered have-nots, and the rightist boobs will never understand that they’re primarily the problem. The deficit-reduction deal will almost certainly hurt growth and kill jobs, most analysts are saying. And the radical right will own this when it happens. This level of ideological denial is no longer appalling — it’s become lethal. Ignoramuses can no longer be tolerated. The right is killing this country, things have gotten really crazy, and Obama will never stand up to them.

A second Civil War would be an incredibly destructive thing, but it would feel so good.

This doesn’t naturally follow from the last three graphs, but it applies….

“The Boston Globe ran a chart last Sunday that I’d buy billboard space to reproduce in every decent-size city in America, if I were running the Democratic National Committee,” TheWrap‘s Michael Tomasky wrote on 8.5.

“The premise of it was very simple: It showed how many trillions each president since Ronald Reagan has added to the nation’s debt. The debt was about $1 trillion when Reagan took office, and then: Reagan, $1.9 trillion; George H.W. Bush, $1.5 trillion (in just four years); Bill Clinton, $1.4 trillion; Obama, $2.4 trillion.

“Oh, wait. I skipped someone. George W. Bush ran up $6.4 trillion. That’s nearly half — 44.7 percent — of the $14.3 trillion total. We all know what did it — two massive tax cuts geared toward the rich (along with other similar measures, like slashing the capital gains and inheritance taxes), the off-the-books wars, the unfunded Medicare expansion, and so on.

“But the number is staggering and worth dwelling on. In a history covering 30 years, nearly half the debt was run up in eight. Even the allegedly socialist Obama at his most allegedly wanton doesn’t compare to Dubya; and Obama’s debt numbers, if he’s reelected, will surely not double or even come close as we gambol down Austerity Lane.”

The estimated $54 million that Rise of the Planet of the Apes will earn by this evening obviously betters yesterday morning’s projection that Rupert Wyatt‘s film “might actually hit $50 million,” which itself was significantly higher than the $30 million projected by 20th Century Fox three or four days ago.

You might logically presume that the film enjoyed a Friday-to-Saturday uptick, and yet Boxoffice.com‘s Phil Contrino reports that Apes “did $19.7 on Friday and then went very slightly down on Saturday $19.4 on Saturday…which is pretty good nonetheless. It indicates a steady positive word-of-mouth. And it got an A-minus from CinemaScore, and that’s solid I could see this being a three-multiplier and hitting $150 million. August is always less competitive and this is going to propel right along.”

You also might presume that the CG-abundant Apes would skew towards a younger audience, but not entirely. “The weird thing that we’re finding is that 56% of the audience was 25 and up…so a nostalgia factor [among those who’d seen the 1968 original and/or the lower-budgeted sequels] kicked in.”

A portion of last night’s visit to North Hollywood — NoHo — involved a pleasant chat with the co-owner of Phil’s Diner. She suggested that I check out Boomermania, a musical that’s just opened at the Noho Arts Center. Unless the designers of the ads are hiding their cards, it’s clearly a nostalgia show. I half-smiled and shrugged my shoulders and told her that it’s an odd time in our country’s history for someone to put on a bouncy, good-time show that celebrates the most reviled generation in American history.

Boomers started out as ’60s rebels ands spiritual pathfinders (or the best of them did, at least) but they evolved into the most selfish and spoiled and economically destructive generation of all. We all know that America is on a downswirl, and that boomers have led the way. The economic meltdown of ’08 was mainly boomer-driven. Boomers will be the last generation to lead hugely swanky and abundantly materialistic lives in this country’s history, because from here on the levels of comfort and abundance and opportunity and assurance are on the wane, and everyone knows this. It’s a crushing realization for each and every American out there. Boomers have ruined it for GenXers and GenYers. They are absolutely the reigning Bad Guys of the 21st Century.

A lot of boomers are okay and many are good or admirable or even great in their visions, actions, creations, passions. Making an argument with too broad a brush always sounds silly. But this is real and everyone knows it. The boomer go-alongers (the ones who weren’t in the vanguard of social change as kids, and even some of those who were but got corrupted and corroded) have a reputation for selfishness and self-absorption that is gold-plated and will live in infamy. They really screwed things up for a lot of people. Any GenXer or GenYer who hates them has my sympathy.

There are several thousand things more interesting to talk about than feet, but there’s something about their appearance that triggers odd primal reactions in people, particularly (or should I say naturally?) when they belong to actors. In movies every aspect of every actor’s anatomy is theoretically fair game, although all directors and cinematographers understand that feet need to be avoided for the most part. There’s the ick factor, of course, but also the other side. Just ask LexG. Or for that matter Katharine Hepburn.

Unfortunate insert from the abominable Casino Royale (1967).

If I recall correctly one of Kate’s most heartfelt remarks about her Rooster Cogburn costar John Wayne was that his feet were much smaller than you’d figure for a big tall guy. She was delighted to discover this. I’ve also never forgotten a line by Pete Hamill in an early ’80s profile of Nastassja Kinski that she had “bad toes.” I remember reading that and going “what the hell does that mean?,” and at the same time having an inkling.

I’ve long felt that there’s something problematic if not alienating about feet that don’t “look right.” In real life or in a painting or a TV series or a film, bad feet are bad news. I don’t think there’s any question this is why directors and cinematographers rarely if ever let the camera linger on or even glance at this part of an actor’s anatomy. Not that there would or could be the slightest point in doing so. Right now I’m trying to think of something worse than a close-up ofZach Galifianakis‘s feet. Or Alec Baldwin‘s for that matter. One of the few times in my life when I didn’t flinch at a shot of bare male feet was a closeup of Jeffrey Hunter ‘s in King of Kings. This is also probably one of the few times that a mainstream movie has ever used such a shot. It’s weird, I know.

Why am I even writing about this? Because last night I was stupid enough to watch a Bluray of the old Casino Royale (1967), one of the worst pieces of glossy spy-spoof garbage ever released. William Holden, Deborah Kerr, Peter Sellers and John Huston all are dead, and it’s still embarassing to watch them slum their way through this thing. But the big stopper for me was when I caught two shots of David Niven‘s stockinged feet. I’m sorry but they seemed misshapen and oddly jammed together with long creepy toes. All my life I’ve never had the slightest thing against Niven, and now I do, oddly. I’m sorry I brought this up.

Screen capture from Nicholas Ray’s King of Kings.

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes might actually hit $50 million by Sunday night. Nobody wants to think about The Smurfs, but Cowboys & Aliens has taken a 64% revenue nosedive compared to last weekend’s receipts. And The Change-Up is an El Floppo, probably (or at least partly) because the word is out among 20something women that it’s not for them. Any Apes reactions?