25 minutes ago (or around 7:50 pm Pacific) ABC News guys Jake Tapper, Ann Compton, Matt Jaffe and Jay Shaylor reported that “the United States Secret Service has dispatched a protective detail to assume the immediate protection of Sen. Joseph Biden, a source tells ABC News, indicating in all likelihood that Biden has been officially notified that Sen. Barack Obama has selected him to be his running mate.”

Quick, no thinking, right off the top — name last year’s four Oscar winners in the acting categories. Not coming, is it? Okay, name the Best Actor winner. Uhmm…yeah, wait a minute…takes a few seconds, doesn’t it? Daniel Day-Lewis won for Best Actor in There Will Be Blood, Javier Bardem won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for No Country for Old Men, La Vie en Rose‘s Marion Cotillard won the Best Actress Oscar and…wait, oh yeah…Tilda Swinton won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Michael Clayton. Anyone who says they knew these four names cold without thinking or blinking is a liar.
The most easy-to-recall Oscar moment for me over the last two or three years was Alan Arkin‘s Best Supporting Actor win for Little Miss Sunshine, because it meant that the ogre Eddie Murphy had lost…yes!

As soon as I heard a certain actor say these four words, I knew he had a certain je ne sais quoi — presence, gravity, grit. I was right, it turned out. Identify the actor, the film and year of release. Bonus points if you can describe his final scene.

Contrary to what you may have heard or read, Andrew Fleming‘s Hamlet 2 isn’t funny. Unless, you know, you’re an easy lay as far as laughing at an ostensibly funny joke or bit is concerned. The crowd that reportedly whooped and cheered during screenings at last January’s Sundance Film Festival definitely qualifies on that score. I watched this thing totally stone-faced, checking my watch by the light of the screen every ten minutes or so.

A tale about a failed ex-actor and a generally pathetic drama teacher (Steve Coogan) staging an extremely bizarre musical based on Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” (but not really), it actually alternates between being flat, mildly embarassing and dreary. Then, after many obstacles and hardships, the show finally goes on and lo, it’s not bad. But there’s no way to believe that Coogan — an extremely mediocre depressive — and his high-school student cast could have thrown this B’way-level show together so it’s basically a wash and a wank.
There’s no other way to say it — Coogan is simply awful in this. Sloppy, dislikable, flailing, desperate. Fleming’s modus operandi seems to have been “whatever, Steve…anything you want to try is fine with me.” I came to this film more or less even-steven on Coogan — enjoyed him aplenty in 24 Hour Party People, Coffee and Cigarettes and Curb Your Enthusiasm, thought he was okay in Tropic Thunder, but felt irritated by his strangeness in Tristram Shandy and Around The World in 80 Days. Now I’m a confirmed non-fan.
The best and most grounded element by far is Elisabeth Shue playing more or less herself — pretending to have given up acting to be a Tucson nurse in the film, Shue has been sort of taking it easy lately so it half-fits in a “real” sense. I would love to see her again in anything. She has a great spirit and a lovely smile.

A few minutes ago MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann passed along an NBC report that Sen. Evan Bayh and Gov. Tim Kaine have been called and told they aren’t going to be picked as Obama’s vice-president. Sometimes there’s God so quickly. (What playwright said that? For what play?) This is turning into a real nail-biter.

I’ve been frowning and sputtering in silence about the awful Tamron Hall, and I just can’t stand it any longer. I turned on MSNBC 45 minutes ago to see if they were responding to the Bayh bumper-sticker thing, and there she was anchoring the Beijing Olympics coverage and doing her usual perky, chirpy, giggly routine. Her chipmunk voice and glib manner of speaking reminds me of…I don’t know, a checkout girl at Target. I watch her and I say to myself, “Jesus God, could MSNBC have hired someone more vapid?” She’s been getting on my nerves for months.

She’s a regular Us magazine reader, for one thing. And my gut tells me she may be a closet conservative to boot. People who laugh like Daffy Duck and strut around with colorful body language and…you know, go “whoo-hoo!” and put lampshades on their heads are, I believe, blowing off steam because they lead strict, buttoned-down lifestyles and perhaps — who knows? — have guarded, buttoned-down philosophies.
Righties are like that — golly-gee and lots of laughter and rib-poking on the outside and yet sort of dark and creepy underneath. Lefties are a little bit looser, cooler and more measured.

A couple of hours ago Michael Mahoney of KMBC reported that the Gill Company of Lenexa, Kansas, which specializes in political literature, has been printing Obama-Bayh material. A company rep would neither confirm nor deny information about the material. Mahoney added that at least three sources close to the plant’s operations reported the Obama-Bayh material was being produced. Bayh is blah — a moderately conservative guy who supported Hillary and mainly causes eyelids to droop. If it’s Bayh, it’s a big snore. Please, please — make it not be so.

Update: HE’s Austin correspondent Moises Chiullan has examined the font of the Obama Bayh stickers and isn’t convinced it’s consistent with past design efforts.

This two-day-old quote from Jennifer Love Hewitt is the single most interesting and amusing thing she’s ever said in her life, in all her years of being in the shallow spotlight: “I wish I had been nude from the time I was 12 until I was 28. I looked great! I want to tell all young girls to walk around in bikinis all summer…and enjoy it. I want to tell them to never, ever feel bad about anything, because there will be that one day in your 20s when you’ll eat a hamburger and actually see the hamburger on the side of your leg.”
I’m sorry but that’s funny, the side-of-your-leg thing. And JLH has been banal all her life, so this is a kind of small but significant breakthrough, even if she’s been over for years.
In a related topic, before today I had never heard much less conceived of an ass bra. I happened across this thing in Amy O’Dell‘s “The Cut” on the newyorkmag site. From this day forward, a fair-game term that anyone can use.

“In his entertaining book ‘Richistan,” Robert Frank of The Wall Street Journal declares that the rich aren’t just different from you and me — they live in a different, parallel country. But that country is divided into levels, and only the inhabitants of upper Richistan live like aristocrats. The inhabitants of middle Richistan lead ample but not gilded lives, and lower Richistanis live in McMansions, drive around in S.U.V.’s, and are likely to think of themselves as ‘affluent’ rather than rich.

“Even these arguably not-rich, however, live in a different financial universe from that inhabited by ordinary members of the middle class: they have lots of disposable income after paying for the essentials, and they don’t lose sleep over expenses, like insurance co-pays and tuition bills, that can seem daunting to many working American families.
“Which brings us to the dispute about tax policy.
“[John] McCain wants to preserve almost all the Bush tax cuts, and add to them by cutting taxes on corporations. Mr. Obama wants to roll back the high-end Bush tax cuts — the cuts in tax rates on the top two income brackets and the cuts in tax rates on income from dividends and capital gains — and use some of that money to reduce taxes lower down the scale.
“According to estimates prepared by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, those Obama tax increases would fall overwhelmingly on people with incomes of more than $200,000 a year. Are such people rich? Well, maybe not: some of those Barack Obama proposes taxing are only denizens of lower Richistan, although the really big tax increases would fall on upper Richistan.
“But one thing’s for sure: Mr. Obama isn’t planning to raise taxes on the middle class, by any reasonable definition — even that of the Bush administration.” — from Paul Krugman‘s 8.22 column in the N.Y. Times, called “Now That’s Rich.”

I sent a message to a friend who always goes to the Telluride Film Festival, which is starting six days from now but never announces its slate until the night before (or Thursday, 8.29). I actually wrote three…no, four guys about it, fishing around for anything.

“I’m hearing Mike Leigh‘s Happy Go Lucky,” I told friend #1. “I’ve never loved a Leigh film, although I’ve liked or at least respected each one. And I know about a special tribute presentation for a major director (which will include a short 10 or 12-minute reel from his latest film, which will open later this year), along the lines of a tribute TFF had last year for Paul Thomas Anderson that included a short There Will Be Blood reel.
“I’m also hearing that Guillermo Arriaga‘s The Burning Plain won’t be there. I’m hearing…okay, intuiting that Jonathan Demme‘s Rachel Getting Married may be included, but this is based on a long history of fall Sony Classics releases showing up there. What else?”

As today is probably the day when Barack Obama‘s actual vice-presidential pick will be text-messaged around, I am taking this opportunity to say (a) Joe Biden….please, and (b) if Obama had truly man-sized cojones (which means, in part, not caring if your friends and enemies think you have big ones or not) he would suck it in, allow his penis to revert down to the size of a cashew nut and persuade the demonic Hillary Clinton to join him.
Just like JFK sucked it in and got the slippery, conniving, wheeler-dealing Lyndon Johnson to be his vp.
Because then, at least, BHO would have a genuine shot at winning because those Hillary holdouts might finally say “okay, I’ll vote for him.” Clinton is a conniving diabolical fiend and a fang-toothed, baggy-eyed monster from hell, but she shares many of the same values and would probably be able to assist BHO in Congress, blah blah, and she’d kick ass on the campaign trail and so would Bill, even with his resentments and whatnot. Politics is about locality, practicality and cutting deals, and you don’t have to like someone to make a deal that will get you what you want.
CNN is reporting that BHO called some of the short-list guys and gals yesterday and told them he’s chosen someone else. I presume that group included Hillary. I presume — hope, pray, need to hear — it’s Biden. A part of all of us will die inside if he picks Texas Rep. Chet Edwards.

It’s a little bit of a deflater when you go to a film that’s been buzzed up, or which you’ve been buzzing up in your head, and then it turns out to be, like, less than that. I had two such experiences yesterday. What happens is that in order to work through your reactions you wind up calling everyone you know who’s seen them and bat it around. That eats up an hour or two, easy. Especially when you’ve got two films to discuss.
I’ve learned from experience to tap something out right away or you’ll forget where you put the fuel. One easy way to get rolling is to bounce of someone else’s reaction, and one thing I heard this morning is that a certain earlybird fellow suspects that one of the films I saw yesterday may be a “near masterpiece.” Yeegodz.