I’m a serious white guy. English and German heritage. I grew up in white-bread towns (Westfield, NJ and Wilton, CT) and began life with white-bread tastes, attitudes and core beliefs. And yet now, looking at all those defensive-looking white people cheering on John McCain at his rallies, I feel pity and alienation. I shake my head and ask myself, “Who are these jerks?” To be an over-40 white middle-classer these days is, by the standard of the political polls I’ve been reading, to be a little bit sad and scared. Half of them, I mean, or a bit more than half. Culturally reactionary, behind-the-curve, hanging on to the past.

To go by this just-released trailer, The Reader, it would seem, is a reasonably strong acting-honors thing for Kate Winslet because she plays someone who sharply defines herself in terms of emotional need (i.e., an affair with a younger guy) and by being a good Nazi guard. Whereas in Revolutionary Road she’s playing a ’50s surburban wife beset by Cheeverish ennui and struggling with despair. It’s the difference between declaration and guilt vs. aspiration and lament.

I’ve been thinking off and on about Joaquin Phoenix‘s annnounced retirement from acting, the news of which broke three or so days ago. I don’t care what he says — this is a Frank Sinatra/Daniel Day Lewis retirement. Two to three years and then back in it. But when he returns, “Joaq” might want to be a few pounds thinner. He’s been looking a little chunky lately. A little bit of a Brian Dennehy thing going on.

I think his decision is mainly a reaction to his having acted in three critical and commercial duds in a row — We Own The Night, Reservation Road and Two Lovers. (I’ve seen Two Lovers and can foresee its box-office fate.) Plus the fact that everyone ignored Ladder 49.

On top of the apparent fact that Pheonix likes to appear in movies that are (a) emotionally straightforward and unambiguous, (b) blue-collar-ish (i.e., films about lugs who feel weighed down by family expectations and who haven’t had an elegant education) and (b) offbeat indie-ish. And the fact that audiences have been shrugging their shoulders at such films. He doesn’t see where he fits in, and so he’s getting out…for now.

Variety‘s Todd McCarthy is calling Gus Van Sant‘s Milk “a fluent return to the relative mainstream” and “an adroitly and tenderly observed account of the life of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man voted into significant U.S. public office. Smartly handled study of the San Francisco politician’s powerful effect on individuals and society accurately catches a moment in American political life three decades ago, but is most notable for the surprising and entirely winning performance by Sean Penn in the leading role.

“Made to more closely resemble Milk via an elongated nose, which also makes his face look narrower, the actor socks over his characterization of a man he’s made to seem, above all, a really sweet guy, but who crucially possessed the fearlessness and toughness to be a highly successful political motivator, agitator and, ultimately, figurehead of a movement.

“Penn’s Harvey is a man with a ready laugh, alive to the moment, open to life regardless of neuroses and past tragedies, and acutely aware of one’s limited time on Earth. The explosive anger and fury often summoned by Penn in his work is nowhere to be seen, replaced by a geniality that is as welcome as it is unexpected.

“Penn is also an ideal conduit for a characteristic shrewdly underlined in Black’s writing, that being Harvey’s talent for gently but firmly nudging people out of routine or complacent attitudes. Harvey knows how to tweak others with lightly provocative or stimulating comments that break the ice, and Penn lays on just the right amount of casual innuendo to make this crucial personality trait convincing.”

The trailer indicates that Keanu Reeves‘ alien space ship lands at night in The Day The Earth Stood Still (20th Century Fox, 12.12). That’s because night landings look cooler than day landings with those standard bullshit intense lights piercing through all the fog and smoke. But aren’t we getting sick of alien night landings (E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Invaders From Mars)?

I would have preferred one in broad daylight under blue skies, like the one from Klaatu in the original 1951 version. Because it would have been different. Because it would have created its own kind of cool. Because aliens don’t care if their landings look cool. They just want to land safely, and to do that you don’t want to load solely by instruments. You want to be able to see where you’re landing, and for that you need sunlight. Simple.

It’s probably a good idea to get out the wooden paddles, cricket bats and cat ‘o’ nine tails in case the Generation of Shame lives up to its reputation and doesn’t turn out in record numbers — i.e., votes at roughly the same levels they did in ’04. I’ve read two early-vote estimates that the under-25s have been turning out in much lower numbers than expected. So get ready. I’m hoping for the best like everyone else, but if these guys slack off the wrath of Daniel Plainview will have nothing on me.

I wince slightly every time I hear NPR reporter-commentator Michele Norris say her first name. She pronounces it MEE-shell, Paul McCartney-style. The correct way to say it is Meesh-ell with that French tongue-rolling sound on the second syllable. You can even say Mish-shell. If you’re going to go with the “mee” you need to tone it down and again, with the accent on the second syllable.

“Obama doesn’t transcend race. He isn’t post-race. He is the latest chapter in the ever-unfurling American racial saga. It is an astonishing chapter. For most Americans, it seems as if Obama first came to dinner only yesterday. Should he win the White House on Tuesday, many will cheer and more than a few will cry as history moves inexorably forward.

“But we are a people as practical as we are dreamy. We’ll soon remember that the country is in a deep ditch, and that we turned to the black guy not only because we hoped he would lift us up but because he looked like the strongest leader to dig us out.

“What we have learned definitively about him so far — and what may most account for his victory, should he achieve it — is that he had both the brains and the muscle to outsmart, outmaneuver and outlast some of the smartest people in the country, starting with the Clintons. We know that he ran a brilliant campaign that remained sane and kept to its initial plan even when his Republican opponent and his own allies were panicking all around him.

“[And] we know that that plan was based on the premise that Americans actually are sick of the divisive wedge issues that have defined the past couple of decades, of which race is the most divisive of all.” — from Frank Rich’s 11.2 column in the N.Y. Times.

“What are these zombies of the voting booth” — i.e., the still-undecideds — “really waiting for?,” Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker wrote on Friday. “Something they won’t find: the perfect choice. It doesn’t exist. The clear path is dappled with doubt. The telling clue is buried in the hearts of Col. Mustard, who worries about Iraq and taxes under Obama, and Miss Scarlet, who can’t get past McCain’s age and the winking wonderwoman of Wasilla.

“A friend’s late-night call cast light on the undecided’s milieu. She was filling out her ballot at home and had made every choice but one. The presidential ticket. ‘I just can’t quite bring myself to do it. I hate Sarah Palin. Help me out here.” And this woman is Parker’s friend? Why?

An Australia trailer added on 10.31 — two days ago!