If nothing else Bill Maher‘s latest Christine O’Donnell clip fortifies David Robb‘s 9.22 Hollywood Reporter piece that said, without being so bold as to mention Teabaggers, Sarah Palin and/or Christine O’Donnell, that yahoo sentiments voiced in Inherit The Wind are alive and well in 2010 America. Extra: O’Donnell’s greatest hits.

My second viewing of The Social Network kicked up the impact by 25% or 30%, and the swanky after-party at the Harvard Club (44th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues) was the absolute epicenter of the New York entertainment world between 11:30 pm and 1:30 am. Everyone was there (including Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach). Except I didn’t try hard enough to snap decent photos. I spoke with Justin Timberlake for three minutes (an achievement!) and never got a decent shot of him; ditto Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield.

Greenberg director-cowriter Noah Baumbach, Fantastic Mr. Fox director Wes Anderson at Social Network after-party at Harvard Club — Saturday, 9.25, 1:10 am.

Social Network producer Scott Rudin — Friday, 9.25, 11:50 pm.

One of the two main ballrooms at the Harvard Club.

I’m running this shot of the back of Justin Timberlake’s head as an after-the-fact criticism of my lack of aggressive paparazzi skills during the Social Network after-party.

Eight months ago I saw and reviewed Rodrigo Cortes‘ Buried out of Sundance 2010. It opens today via Lionsgate. I may as well re-run it, but know once again that a kind of SPOILER is contained within.

“I’m giving this Ryan Reynolds-trapped-in-a-large-coffin movie an A for execution and a C-minus for story because I’m a nice guy. It really deserves an F because it jerks you around on a nail-bitten popcorn level (escape from a tight spot) with no intention of paying off on that level. Great filmmaking, shitty payoff = overall C grade, at best.

“All the critics having kittens over this film are praising Cortes’ Hitchcock-like ingenuity in making an engrossing feature that takes place entirely in a small enclosed space. And they’re correct about this. Cortes is as inventive a filmmaker as Hitchcock was in making Lifeboat, if not more so. But these praising critics are deliberately ignoring how unsatisfying Buried is in terms of denying Joe Popcorn’s natural wishes while watching such a tale.

“Knowing the basic premise, you may assume going in that Buried will be a harrowing mental ingenuity/physical feat/engineering movie about a guy managing to free himself from a large coffin-sized crate that’s been buried two or three feet underground. (There’s enough room in the crate for Reynolds to wriggle around and lean on his side and shift around, etc.) But what it is, really, is a darkly humorous socio-cultural message flick about selfishness and distraction — i.e., how everyone is too caught up in their own agenda to give a shit about a person who really needs help.

“Reynolds’ character — a truck-driver contractor working in Iraq — manages to speak to several people on a cell phone that he’s found inside the crate. The prolonged joke is that each and every person he turns to for help (with the exception of his wife) tells him that they need him to address or answer their needs first before they”ll give him any assistance.

“Boiled down, the movie is kind of a metaphor for dealing with tech support or any corporate or bureaucratic employee who specializes in driving complaining customers crazy. Everyone Reynolds speaks to patronizes him, tells him to calm down and speak slowly, asks stupid questions and in one way or another blows him off or fails to really engage and provide serious assistance.

“Buried is going to be a bust with audiences once they see what it is. I felt aroused and stimulated here and there in a film-dweeb sense, but I felt pissed off and fucked with at the finish. Cortes has excellent chops and a great sense of style (the opening credits sequence is the best thing about Buried) and Reynolds may have delivered the most impressive performance of his career, but…well, I’ve said it.”

I got so caught up in posting photos and videos from this morning’s Social Network press conference and writing my “Zuckerberg vs. King George” piece that I didn’t jot down any quotes from the Social Network team. So here’s a pretty good summary from Movieline‘s Stu Van Airsdale.

You can’t lament the ridiculous right-wing persecution of President Bill Clinton for an Oval Office blowjob and then turn around and say you can’t wait for an alleged N.Y. Times story about an alleged affair between House Republican Minority Leader John Boehner and a lobbyist named Lisbeth Lyons. The only politicans who deserve to be outed are gay ones who’ve voted against gay-rights issues. Otherwise they should be left alone. Even wretched rightwing obstructionists like Boehner.

Scott Feinberg‘s recent “Citizen Zuck” piece points out several similarities between The Social Network and Citizen Kane. A stretch in a couple of ways, cosmetic in others, in other ways interesting. But a piece that no one on The Social Network team would want to be taken seriously. They’re slapping their foreheads right now and muttering to themselves, “Please, Scott — you’re hurting us!

But I thought of Citizen Kane as I read David Poland‘s Social Network review, a mostly positive response that nonetheless says “where’s the metaphor?” It struck me that a critic could have said some of the same things about Kane in 1941.

“Okay, a richly photographed and very entertaining film about a brilliant headstrong visionary who builds a powerful empire and hurts some people along the way (including a couple of women) and fucks over a friend and who doesn’t seem to be an emotionally healthy human being at the end of the day…..and? That’s it? He ends up in a silly extravagant castle called Xanadu and dies and then workmen toss the sled into the furnace….and that’s all? Audacious directing by the young Orson Welles and fine acting and great cinematography by Gregg Toland and all, but I don’t get the undercurrent. I mean, I’m not there is one, to be honest.”

There are admirable, top-of-their-class movies that tell you what they’re about. Movies that tip their hand and convey in a dozen or fifty or a hundred different ways what they’re saying deep down. Movies that let you know the chefs who created the food you’re eating did so with the idea that you’d be eating a lot more than just food. Movies that state their intentions, pay off emotionally, wear their hearts on their sleeves and/or sell a certain kind of emotional seepage (understated or grandiose or in-between).

These are the films (please don’t ask for examples) that most people recognize as being full of meaning and metaphor. The ones that tend to inspire extra-long applause and win extra-passionate praise because they’re obviously about something — metaphors, parables, sum-uppers. Movies through which rivers run and choruses are sung that “this movie is about us.”

And then there are admirable, top-of-their-class movies that just are. They don’t choose to “say” what they’re about — no nudging, no speeches, no summing-ups, no heart moments — because the director feels what he/she has done adds up to a certain kind of precision and completeness that make dramatic flourishes (metaphor, thematically-expressive dialogue, touchy-feelyness) unnecessary or beside the point. These films have all kinds of echoes and interior currents and are beautifully made, but in a way that doesn’t necessarily invite every last movie pundit out there to say, “Wow, this is exceptional…it really adds up to something!” They are what they are. Either you get them or you don’t.

For me, United 93 was such a film. Zodiac was such a film. And The Social Network is such a film. All of them are procedurals of a kind, and in a sense are all about tactical somethings that happen, have happened or are about to happen. Films that are dry and succinct and smart as a whip, and none with a whole lot to share emotionally. And yet all three, I contend, will play like gangbusters 50 or 100 years from now.

A smart older critic and a younger columnist both told me within the last couple of days that as good as The Social Network is, it’s not really Academy material. It doesn’t make you want to hug your son or your father or your wife or your dog. Bite your tongue, I said to both.

If The King’s Speech takes the Best Picture Oscar instead of The Social Network there will be so great a cry throughout the land that Pharoah will surely let my people go. No…what I mean is that Black Swan beating out The Social Network would be okay. I would have no problem with a film as good as Darren Aronofsky‘s winning. But to give it to The King’s Speech would, no offense to Harvey Weinstein and Tom Hooper, constitute a huge backslide and a cultural capitulation to middle-of-the-road cinematic values. It would be a vote for a backrub over art. It would be like voting for Ordinary People over Raging Bull, or Dances With Wolves over Goodfellas.

I truly admire The King’s Speech — it’s a very fine film for what it is, and is superbly performed by Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter — but a King’s Speech Best Picture win would be the wrong thing to see happen in 2010. The King’s Speech is the new Best Picture of 1993, and there’s nothing wrong with that. No, I don’t mean that. A King’s triumph would be cause for not just mourning but weeping in the streets. That’s what I mean.

The Social Network is now and The King’s Speech is then. It’s not a matter of one being better than the other, but I do feel that those who vote for the traditional strategies and emotional bromides in the The King’s Speech over the crackerjack pacing, procedural neutralism and 21st Century instant-mythology of The Social Network will have written their social-industry epitaph. I don’t mean to sound like a hard-ass, but either you get with The Social Network program (or the agenda of another film that’s as strong and distinct) or you risk being seen as out of it — there’s no third way. This is pretty much a generational dividing-line issue. A “no” vote for The Social Network doesn’t mean you’re clueless or moribund or lacking in taste, hardly — but it does sorta kinda mean that the 21st Century way of seeing and processing life hasn’t exactly gotten through to you and yours, and that you’re basically looking more to the past than to the future to fill your plate.

At yesterday afternoon’s Apple Soho q & a, Social Network director David Fincher was asked about accusations that his film had altered or misrepresented certain aspects of Mark Zuckberg‘s life and personality. His response struck me as honest, reasonable, fair-minded.

The death of Eddie Fisher, whom no one cared very much about or paid attention to except as an object of derision for the last 47 years, was reported last night. He was 82.

Fisher had a ten-year run in the big-time, first as a popular crooner from the early to late ’50s and then as a tabloid/gossip-column joke from the late ’50s to early ’60s after he dumped wife Debbie Reynolds for Elizabeth Taylor, only to be himself dumped by Taylor for Richard Burton in 1962.

The man lived for nearly 50 years after that with the word “over” tattooed on his forehead. He was branded as a guy with no class or discipline who’d basically been led around by Mr. Happy. After the release of his 1999 autobiography, Been There, Done That, daughter Carrie Fisher reportedly declared, “That’s it — I’m having my DNA fumigated.”

Ten days old but well cut, well acted, amusing. Missed it until today,.