I’ll be attending the first six days of the 2009 L.A. Film Festival this year — Thursday, 6.18 to Tuesday, 6.23. Which means I won’t be around for what could potentially be a fairly newsworthy event — i.e, a discussion with Jon Voight just prior to a “Behind The Scenes” screening of John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy on Thursday, 6.25, at 7:30 pm at the Billy Wilder theatre.

You know what I’m going to say now, right?

If I could attend I’d damn well ask Voight about the rightie rhetoric he’s been spewing about Barack Obama over the last year or so. And I’m suggesting here and now that in my absence that someone should man up, stand up and ask him to explain the facts and attitudes behind his views.

Voight obviously has a perfect Constitutional right to say whatever he wants and yes, he’s a fine actor who delivered a legendary performance in Midnight Cowboy (and in several other films including Coming Home, Runaway Train, Enemy of the State and Ali), but isn’t it fair in a q & a setting to respectfully question the guy about certain belligerent remarks he’s made?

Remarks that Obama is a “false prophet” and that his leadership is making us a “weak nation” and that his leadership will cause the “downfall” of the country,” I mean? And that stuff Voight said last summer in a Washington Times piece about Obama having “grown up with the teachings of [the] very angry [and] militant Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, William Ayers and Rev. Michael Pfleger” and that “we know too well that [he] will run this country in their mindset”?

Especially given the rightwing-nutter hate killings that have occured in recent weeks and how guys like Frank Rich and Paul Krugman are concerned about how intemperate and questionable remarks by rightwing demagogues may be enabling the haters and fanning the flames?

If no one brings up Voight’s Obama rants and Thursday’s q & a focuses entirely on a movie that was made 41 years ago…well, fine. It’s a film festival setting and why cause trouble, right? But if no one does there will be a huge elephant in the room. Don’t you just hate those discussion-session vibes when there’s something that everyone wants to ask about and get into but nobody brings it up because they don’t want to seem impolite or ungracious?

I obviously didn’t make it to Cinevegas this year but Indiewire reported this morning on the prizewinners. Kyle Patrick Alvarez‘s Easier With Practice, concerning a lonely-guy author who falls for a mysterious phone sex caller while on a road trip to promote his unpublished novel, won the feature competition Grand Jury Prize. (Who promotes unpublished novels?)

Writers Cory Knauf and Joseph McKelheer and director Robert Saitzyk won an Exceptional Artistic Achievement Award for Godspeed, a dramatic thriller “set in the lingering light of the Alaskan midnight sun,” per press notes. The doc award went to Douglas Tirola‘s em>All In: The Poker Movie.

Jessica Oreck‘s Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo won a Special Documentary Jury Prize for Artistic Vision. Destin Daniel‘s Short Term 12 won the CineVegas Short Film Jury Prize . Justin Nowell‘s Acting for the Camera won a special Grand Jury Prize in Directing.

No more beating around the Year One bush. It opens Friday and it’s time to deal with it. Harold Ramis‘s animal-skins comedy preems tonight in Manhattan; the local all-media showing is on Wednesday. I was told by a semi-trusted source a while back that it’s “staggering.” That could be an okay thing if that’s the case. You’re supposed to feel a bit giddy and off-balance after seeing a comedy.

The curious thing about the trailer is how Jack Black and Michael Cera seem to start out as cavemen and then time-travel a few thousand years into a kind of Romanesque Fellini Satyricon realm. How does that work, I wonder?

Twelve hours ago CNET News’ Daniel Terdiman reported that ‘as the Iranian election aftermath unfolded in Tehran — thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to express their anger at perceived electoral irregularities — an unexpected hashtag began to explode through the Twitterverse: ‘CNNFail.’

“Even as Twitter became the best source for rapid-fire news developments from the front lines of the riots in Tehran, a growing number of users of the microblogging service were incredulous at the near total lack of coverage of the story on CNN, a network that cut its teeth with on-the-spot reporting from the Middle East.

“For most of Saturday, CNN.com had no stories about the massive protests on behalf of Mir Hossein Mousavi, who was reported by the Iranian government to have lost to the sitting president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The widespread street clashes — nearly unheard of in the tightly controlled Iran — reflected popular belief that the election had been rigged, a sentiment that was even echoed, to some extent, by the U.S. government Saturday.

“‘The Obama administration is determined to press on with efforts to engage the Iranian government,’ the New York Times cited senior officials as having said Saturday, ‘despite misgivings about irregularities in the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.’

“Yet even as word of the urban strife, seemingly led by those posting to Twitter, spread next around the world on news networks like the BBC, NPR, and the Times, CNN remained mostly mute. Even when the network’s Internet site finally posted a story late Saturday, the network’s first ‘story highlight’ was, ‘Ahmadinejad plans rally after winning second presidential term.'”

“If you can’t shove some real reform down the [Republican’s] throats now, when? Obama needs to start putting it on the line and fight the banks, the energy companies and the health care industry. What he needs in his personality is a little George Bush. Obama needs that some of that smug insufferable swagger that says ‘suck on it, America.’ [He] needs more audacity.”

Criterion’s Bluray of Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal comes out Tuesday. “Love is the blackest of all plagues…if one could die of it, there would be some pleasure in love, but you don’t die of it.”

…with the sounds of chanting crowds and screaming women and the whup of billy clubs and the roar of burning buses. It’s where the action is, Anger Central, the flames of freedom flashing. And yet Americans, this afternoon, don’t seem to be paying all that much attention. Not as far as I can sense. I’m detecting more interest in the Yankee-Met game going on right now. It’s Sunday, bro…chill. The Hangover is #1 again. Zach Galifianakis!

Here‘s N.Y. Times reporter Roger Cohen discussing the suspicious aspects of Iran’s contested election.

In a review of Sony Home Video’s “The Jack Lemmon Collection,” a DVD package of five Columbia-produced films, N.Y. Times columnist Dave Kehr summarizes the “recurring predicament” of Lemmon’s screen characters as “that of the desperate conformist who ultimately discovers that conformity comes at too high a price.”

Very nice. Exactly. Kehr’s description is so clean that I’m envious. I’ve also begun to wonder how many other name-brand actors have experienced the same recurring predicament time and again? Actors and actresses who are so well known for a particular personality and character-type that screenwriters have adapted and wound up writing the same kind of story for this actor/actress, over and over?

How, for example, would one describe the recurring predicament of the classic Clint Eastwood character? “That of a low-key, steely-mannered nonconformist who tries to just get along, is challenged by ne’er do wells, and is always pushed into settling his scores by violent means.”

Jim Carrey? “That of an anxious but free-spirited eccentric who finds that expressing a heretofore suppressed side to his personality or experimenting with alternate values is fun for a while but ultimately makes things worse.”

Julia Roberts in the ’90s? “That of a spirited, independent-minded single gal who initially tries to breeze or arm’s-length her way through a relationship (or an adventure of some kind involving an attractive guy), only to eventually fall in love and put her serious emotional cards on the table.”

Seth Rogen? “That of an extremely bright but immature slacker-stoner who’s constantly being challenged by life’s complications to crawl out of his pot-smoking, lay-around conch shell and become an active, reality-facing, decision-making adult.”

Jeffrey Wells? “That of an enterprising and impassioned movie columnist whose daily opinions and musings are constantly challenged and sometimes belittled by internet trolls, this forcing a daily metaphorical shoot-out on Main Street with one or more of these hecklers.”

Shia LeBouf? “That of a plucky and somewhat irresponsible young guy trying to have fun and chase girls, only to be thrust into super-threatening situations involving supernatural life forms that force him to put away young-guy things and stand up and be a man.”

All interesting characters are defined by the three Ds — desire, deception and discovery.

“Security officials and riot police engaged in violent clashes with demonstrators in Tehran today in what one reporter called an ‘unprecedented scene’ in Iran in recent years,” reports a HuffPost account. “NBC producer Ali Arouzi described the events on Saturday: ‘What started off as a small rally outside a pro-reformist newspaper swelled into a massive crowd of people chanting, ‘Death to the dictator, death to Ahmadinejad!’

Many or most pre-election polls favored pro-reform candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, President Ahmadinejad‘s opponent who leads a powerful youth-driven movement, to win the election by a healthy margin. The general worldwide belief in every corner of the universe is that Ahmadinejad flat-out stole the election.

“A small amount of police pushing the crowd back turned into huge riot police in armored gear and motor bikes beating all the young students here with batons, knocking them back. The students responded by throwing stones, which the police then threw back. Now the police are coming off all the heart streets and main streets to try and disperse the crowd.”

Several injuries were reported after police officers hit protesters with batons. Witnesses said some demonstrators appeared to have been arrested. Black-clad police also gathered around key government buildings and mobile phone text messaging was blocked in an apparent attempt to stifle one of the main communication tools by Mousavi’s movement.

Mousavi “urged his supporters to resist a “governance of lie and dictatorship.’

“Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Saturday that the United States hopes the outcome of Iran’s election reflects the “genuine will and desire” of its people, and that she will continue to monitor events as they unfold.Ahmadinejad has the apparent backing of the ruling theocracy, which holds near-total power and would have the ability to put the election results into a temporary limbo.

Mousavi “had not made a public address or issued messages since declaring himself the true victor moments after polls closed and accusing authorities of ‘manipulating’ the vote.

“‘I’m warning that I won’t surrender to this manipulation,” Mousavi said through on the web today. “The outcome of what we’ve seen from the performance of officials…is nothing but shaking the pillars of the Islamic Republic of Iran sacred system and governance of lie and dictatorship.'”

DVD Beaver frame capture from Universal Home Video’s Field of Dreams Blu-ray, which apparently is somewhere between okay and so-so looking. “More grain is visible and the hi-def visuals definitely export a texture that is not present in the DVD releases,” writes Gary Tooze. But I love the ebbing twilight atmosphere in this still. So few films have been willing to run with poetic concepts.