Are the low-information types who can’t be bothered with absorbing the particular, easy-to-research facts about Obama or McCain the same ones who didn’t go to The Insider because they didn’t want to see a movie that was about how smoking gives you cancer? That’s how Al Pacino explained the apparent lack of interest in this 1999 film during a press conference that I attended.

The fact that corporations and their sociopathic agendas are taking over everything is as dramatically “real” and punchy as the Capone gang taking over Chicago in the 1920s. Michael Mann‘s movie showed exactly how this malignancy affected CBS News and 60 Minutes back in the mid ’90s, and yet millions of good citizens of the USA didn’t go because they didn’t want to see a smoking-is-bad-for-you movie. Brilliant.
One of the best corporate thrillers ever made and certainly one of the finest films of the ’90s, The Insider made only $29 million domestically. This was partly because Disney screwed up on the marketing, granted, but also because the tele-tubbies couldn’t be bothered to bone up or read reviews.

Here’s an mp3 of my interview with Alex Holdridge, director-writer of In Search of a Midnight Kiss, and his stars, Scoot McNairy and Sara Simmonds, at Le Pain Quotidien on Wednesday, 8.20. It runs 45 minutes. Some of it is fine; some of it is hard to make out. You can’t individually mike four people, and there’s no such thing as a truly quiet restaurant. The clatter of plates and silverware, oppressive mood music, and the wallah-wallah of other customers always intrude.

Midnight Kiss star Sara Simmonds

At one point, having made my admiration for Midnight Kiss extremely clear (particularly the snappy dialogue, the unforced acting, the black-and-white photography), I brought up some of my issues with it. If you haven’t seen the film, skip the rest of this article to avoid spoilers and confusion. In any event and in no particular order, here are my beefs:
(a) What’s so godawful terrible about a guy admitting to a woman he’s just getting to know (and vice versa) that he’s jerked off to a photo of his roommate’s girlfriend? Simmonds’ character goes ballistic when McNairy tells her this, which seemed excessive to me. I wouldn’t find this information very appealing, but I wouldn’t go into an angry rage about it either. Particularly, as McNairy confides, if the roommate’s girlfriend wasn’t offended and was actually mildly charmed by this act of worship.
(b) One thing that turns me off big-time about a woman I’m just getting to know is finding out that her ex-boyfriend is a bullying, emotionally belligerent asshole with a country-boy accent. It shows that she has lousy judgment and probably has something wrong with her to have found this guy attractive in the first place. This is exactly the case with Simmonds and her ex-boyfriend in the film, who’s played by the film’s dp Robert Murphy. If I were in McNairy’s character’s shoes I would have said “outta here!” as soon as Murphy’s personality and behavior became clear.
(c) I didn’t agree with Simmonds’ character telling McNairy’s at the very end that seeing each other isn’t going to work or fit. Even if she’s pregnant. They’ve gone through so much, seem so compatible, have such excellent chemistry. She says at the beginning that she’s looking for “the love of my life,” she finds someone who just might fill the bill, and she blows him off?
(d) McNairy’s rooommate is played by Brian McGuire, a lanky beanpole with a flabby stomach who seems to be at least 6′ 6″ if not taller. His beautiful, beloved girlfriend is played by Kathleen Luong, who appears to be 5’1″ or 5’0″, if that. It’s not unheard of for super-tall guys to hook up with tiny women, but the gulf between these two is so extreme that it veers on the bizarre. Tall guys tend to hook up with tall or mid-size women, shortish guys date shortish women, etc. Basic birds-of-a-feather logic.
(e) Why have Luong twice express a romantic interest in McNairy without showing where it leads? We see that she’s hot for him, and that’s the end of it — nothing carnal happens, nobody’s feelings are hurt, no meltdown with McGuire. So what’s the point?

Jed Lewison‘s Golden Mansion, posted this evening at 9:20 pm.

Most people listening to this mostly forgotten Mothers of Invention song would, depending on their orientation and sensitivity levels, find it fairly offensive. (A Jenny McCarthy movie with the same title was also judged offensive by most critics.) I vaguely recall four or five sexist and anti-cop rap songs that offended many folks seven or eight or nine years ago, but the art of pissing people off en masse with a vulgar song (like, for example, the 42 year-old They’re Coming To Take Me Away) is mostly a thing of the past.

For my money, the greatest motivational locker room speech in movie history, and one of Oliver Stone‘s best-written passages bar none.

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.