Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the Iranian version of George W. Bush. Both have professed a devotion to religious fundamentalism but in fact owe(d) their power to secretive cabals fronted by cold-eyed men. They’ve both appealed to and depended upon the rube mentality as a base of popular support. Both have shown outward hostility to other nations. Both have been terrible for their economies. And both have constantly said stupid, embarrassing things.

The U.S. now has Barack Obama, and a large segment of Iran just decided they couldn’t stand the idea of another four years with their version of Bush.

Just as there is a long list of films that I can watch and over again, there are also those that I will never again submit myself to.

I’m not talking about films I don’t care for. I’m talking about films that I wouldn’t watch again if someone offered me a cash bribe. Would you sit through Star Wars: The Phantom Menace for $20 bills? Would you watch A.I. or Always again? The Cannonball Run II? Sylvester Stallone‘s Cobra? Practical Magic?

Robert DeNiro during first Russian Roulette scene in Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter

I was moved to write this when I learned of an upcoming British Bluray of Michael Cimino‘s The Deer Hunter. Oh, the memories. That idiotic Russian Roulette device. Those absurdly majestic Northwestern mountain peaks that happen to be in rural Pennsylvania. Those working-class townspeople singing a wedding song like practiced professionals in a Russian opera. The relentlessly cloying and obnoxious working-class camaraderie.

The Deer Hunter is one of the most full-of-shit films about the American proletariat ever made. The way it simultaneously used and ignored the Vietnam War was sickening.

In a piece called “When Francis Coppola Met Jim Jarmusch: The Rain People to Tetro,” Speedcine‘s Reid Rosefelt writes that Coppola’s The Rain People “isn’t even mentioned in [his] Wikipedia biography, and perhaps that’s understandable, as it hasn’t been seen by a lot of people and few would argue it’s one of his best films.” (Actually, Wikipedia does mention it; there’s just very little discussion.)

“Warner Brothers never released a DVD, and has only recently made it available as a special order from WBShop.com or as a download.

“The Rain People (’69) is a low-key road movie about an unhappy Long Island housewife (Shirley Knight) who flees her marriage when she finds out she’s pregnant. Driving cross-country with no set destination, she picks up a brain-damaged ex-football player (James Caan), who she gradually becomes responsible for, and has an encounter with a sexually aggressive highway patrolman (Robert Duvall).

“At the time the film was generally perceived as a bit arty, and as a gloomier mirror image of Easy Rider. Nowadays it’s seen as an imperfect but ambitious and important step in Coppola’s development. Dave Kehr wrote that The Rain People was the “first statement of Coppola’s perennial theme — crippling loneliness within a failed family.”

“What thrilled me about The Rain People way back when wasn’t the movie itself, but the way Coppola made it. He loaded a small production team into a handful of vans and cars and made the same trip that Shirley Knight’s character did through New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Nebraska.

“This all was very vivid for me at the time because his friend and American Zoetrope partner George Lucas documented the trip in Filmmaker: A Diary by George Lucas. I didn’t see Lucas’s film then, but there was an edited featurette that I saw many times. I have a very strong memory of Coppola Francis Coppolasaying in the featurette that he imagined a day when each town could have its very own film crew.

“As a teenager making my little Super-8 films, I found this incredibly inspiring. Here was this freewheeling traveling carnival, experimenting and improvising as they rambled from town to town. They were young and cool cinematic hippies challenging the ‘man’ (Hollywood). Coppola even had a beard — just like Jerry Rubin! I would have given anything to be riding in that caravan.

“If I had been able to see the whole Filmmaker I would have seen a very different portrait of Coppola. He was no hippie — he was a hot-head born to be pissed off. He fought with Shirley Knight, and raged against a DGA spokesman on the phone, escalating a demand for another AD to a world-level crisis and a potential end to all hope for the future of American cinema.”

Forbes reported last night that Viacom Inc’s Paramount Pictures “could merge with Sony Pictures, Universal Studios or another movie studio amid a wave of consolidation in the industry over the next few months.” The story was a summary of remarks from veteran investor Mario Gabelli in the latest issue of Barron’s.

Gabelli, the chief executive of Gamco Investors, Inc, which owns shares of Viacom, “said he expects dealmaking among movie studios as they seek to cut costs.

“Today there are seven or eight motion-picture studios,’ Gabelli said. “A round of consolidation will occur in the next six to 12 months because of the costs of financing, prints and advertising, the benefits of globalization and such. We hear talk of something going on.”

The anti-Ahmadinejad, anti-rigged election revolt in Iran just keeps getting fiercer, bloodier and more dramatic by the minute. A guy has been killed, others have been shot and a crowd ten times bigger than the exodus in Cecil B. Demille‘s The Ten Commandments filled the streets of Tehran earlier today. It feels as much like a movie as a news story. It’s Reds, Z and The Battle of Algiers rolled into one. It’s Ten Days That Shook The World on Twitter.

First, this morning’s stunning news that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has called for a inquiry into claims that the election was rigged in favor of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — obviously a rollback and a re-think. And 90 minutes ago came this Washington Post report that “gunfire from a pro-government militia killed one man and wounded several others after hundreds of thousands of chanting opponents of Ahmadinejad marched in central Tehran to support reformist leader Mir Hossein Mousavi. The parade was estimated to be five miles long.”

11 days and counting until the N.Y./L.A. platform break of Kathryn Bigelow‘s The Hurt Locker. No Metacritic reactions are posted but the current 89% positive Rotten Tomatoes rating is probably indicative of critical reaction to come. Will it matter? Will the no-Iraq-movies-under-any-circumstances crowd stick to their guns? Will the idea that it’s actually a suspense thriller by way of Aliens take hold? Tick, tick, tick, tick…

One of the best reviews so far was written by Time‘s Richard Corliss nine months ago, way back at the Venice Film Festival. It’s titled “A Near-Perfect War Film.” The last two graphs read as follows:

“On his first mission, Sgt. James (Jeremy Renner) releases a cloud of smoke, protecting him from sharpshooters but obliterating his comrades’ view of him. (There’s another company ready to cover him closer to the action.) A taxi has just edged toward the suspected device; he tells the driver to back out of the area. No movement. James walks closer, repeats the order; stillness. He puts his gun against the man’s head: ‘Wanna back up?’ The car slides into reverse. ‘Well, if he wasn’t an insurgent,’ somebody says, ‘he sure is now.’

“Finding a string nearly buried in the street dirt, James finds it attached to seven bombs and matter-of-factly snaps the wire for each. OK, that’s done. Piece of cake, seven slices.

“It’s a creepy marvel to watch James in action. He has the cool aplomb, analytical acumen and attention to detail of a great athlete, or a master psychopath, maybe both.

“A quote from former New York Times Iraq expert Christopher Hedges that opens the film says, ‘War is a drug.’ Movies often editorialize on this theme: the man who’s a misfit back home but an efficient, imaginative killing machine on the battlefield. Bigelow and producer/screenwriter Mark Boal aren’t after that. They’re saying that, in a hellish peace-keeping operation like the U.S. deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan (James’ previous assignment), the Army needs guys like James.”

The N.Y. Daily News is reporting that a right-wing South Carolina activist named Rusty DePass was busted last Friday for writing a charming remark about Michelle Obama on his Facebook page.

And a few proud U.S. citizens are planning to stage a “Fire David Letterman rally” Tuesday afternoon (i.e. tomorrow) at 4:30 pm in front of the Ed Sullivan theatre (i.e. where Letterman tapes the show). “Press contacts” for the event, listed on an apparently official site, include New York State Assemblyman Brian Kolb, attorney Gwendolyn Lindsay-Jackson, and rightwing radio talk-show host John Ziegler.

Here’s an intriguing account of reactions to Michael Moore’s just-released teaser for his upcoming financial meltdown doc, written by a guy who caught a showing last Friday night.

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?