Politico‘s Jeff Ressner is reporting about a right-wing Obama hit doc called “Hype: The Obama Effect.” Made by conservative “provocateur and well-known Clinton antagonist” David Bossie, pic will be presented in Denver on the Sunday before the Democratic National Convention, and then come out on DVD on 9.1.
I really do think there’s something genetically different about hardcore right-wingers — something that unleashes the belligerent, territorial, selfishly guarded aspects of our nature. Like they have a genetic inheritance that hasn’t been passed along to others. Remember Lukas Haas‘s conservative-minded character in Woody Allen‘s Everybody Says I Love You (’96)? Whose political attitudes are traced at the end of the film to a small tumor in his brain that caused him to think and feel this way?
I was watching right-wing talk show guy Glenn Beck guest-host the Larry King Show last night. My God! The man is so relentlessly contentious (and in some cases willfully ignorant) about Obama-related issues and histories that he’s like some kind of animal.

The decision by ABC/Disney honchos to hire E! Entertainment critic Ben Lyons and Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz as the new Ebert & Roeper on a revamped At the Movies is one of those basic no-brainer moves that 50-something executives do when they don’t know what the hell else to do. A syndicated movie-review show starring two older guys (Roeper and Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips) isn’t attracting the under-35 demo? Solution: Replace them with two young bucks with TV experience, engaging personalities and the royal genes of an entertainment-establishment family.

Ben Mankiewicz (l.), Ben Lyons (r.)

Lyons is the congenial, golf-playing, to-the-manor-born son of notorious easy-lay film critic Jeffrey Lyons, and the grandson of N.Y. Post columnist Leonard Lyons; Mankiewicz is the grandson of Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz and the great-nephew of the legendary Joseph Mankiewicz, director-writer of All About Eve and A Letter to Three Wives.
If I watch the show, Mankiewicz is the guy I’ll have an easier time with. He seems low-key, thoughtful, sardonic. I would prefer if, actually, if the show featured Mankiewicz and his Young Turks partner Cenk Uygur. I love that guy — blowhardy, smart, take-it-or-leave-it.
I don’t like Lyons because you can tell right off the bat that he’s too much of a glider and a gladhander. Plus he went to school with Ivanka Trump. Plus he once called Nikki Blonsky his good buddy. Plus there’s something inauthentic about a supposed film maven who plays golf. Golf has its own spiritual kwan and undercurrent, of course, but 90% of the people who play it do so because they want to schmooze their way into power. Golf courses and clubhouses are havens for conservative-minded ex-fraternity guys who love wearing those awful pink and salmon-colored Tommy Hilfiger polo shirts and trading insider info with their pallies over mixed drinks after the game. You can’t serve golf and movies any more than you can serve God and Rome. They represent entirely different theologies.
I also wonder if the era of sitting passively in front of a TV screen and listening to a couple of guys trade opinions about movies has the same vitality that it had when Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel started Sneak Previews on PBS in 1977. It was a whole different world 31 years ago. Audiences these days like to talk back and argue and engage interactively. I’m not sure that a show that basically says “we’re the cool-ass GenY film critics with the famous dads and granddads, and you guys get to listen” is going to connect all that well.

Hardball‘s Chris Matthews speaking last night on Jay Leno about his “thrill up my leg” comment about Obama….well said, from the heart, draws applause.

There are at least three circumstantial points to consider regarding Christian Bale‘s mystifying arrest in London today over allegedly assaulting his mother and sister. I mean, on top of the basic head-scratching reaction that is probably manifesting worldwide right now.

The three things are (1) the incident happened at the Dorchester Hotel last Sunday night, or the night before The Dark Knight‘s Euro premiere, (2) the two women made the allegation at a local police station “in Southern England” (where…Brighton? Dover?) and that the information was then passed on to London’s Metropolitan Police in London, and (3) London’s Sun tabloid has allegedly reported that the cops “didn’t question the actor Monday because they didn’t want to interfere with the premiere of the movie.”
I’m basically observing that there didn’t appear to be a huge sense of urgency or ticking-clock concern about this matter on anyone’s part. An alleged assault on Sunday followed by an arrest two days later because the police didn’t want to muck up the premiere? Mom and sis left London to some town in the south and then they reported the incident? Why not go to the local London police? And who assaults their own mother and sister, for God’s sake? Sounds more like a scuffle about something that escalated. A very, very weird story.

HE reader Evan Boucher has “more evidence that The Dark Knight may continue to do phenomenal box office this weekend,” he wrote this morning. “Your feeling of being exhausted at the end of it is understandable. It is a relentless assault on your senses at least in a physical standpoint. However, multiple people that I have spoken to have indicated that they loved the movie (‘awesome!’) but that in order to fully understand everything they’ll need to see it again — and soon.
“That’s a very unusual phenomenon. Let’s be honest and state that if you had to take a leak during this movie, you could go online in 3 minutes after the movie and find out what you may have missed through a streaming bootleg. If you didn’t understand why someone did something that they did (understandable given the complexity and the constant exploration of character motivations) you could find out by googling a plot synopsis. But those options won’t be good enough in this instance.
“I want to see The Dark Knight again in the theater, preferably in IMAX. And I’m almost betting that it will be better the second time, because I won’t be so worried that I will miss something. It was sooo good I don’t want to wait for the DVD (a Blu-ray release in early December, coupled with a price drop on Blu-ray players, will push the entire platform over the edge….just a prediction). It looked so good that online or bootleg copies couldn’t possibly replicate it.
“I want to see the truck flip over in IMAX, I want to see the pencil thing in IMAX, I want to see Ledger walk away from that hospital again in IMAX. I have a thousand productive things in my life I could be doing, but I am just trying to figure out a way to squeeze in three hours to see it again as soon as possible.”
“I am exaggerating probably, but I can’t remember the last movie I paid to see twice. I’m betting I’m not alone in that regard. If thats the case, between word of mouth from people who don’t trust critics and repeat action we could be seeing something exceptional as far as second-weekend TDK business is concerned.”

This Spencer Ackerman piece in yesterday’s Washington Independent is definitely worth reading because it asks a fascinating question — is Batman’s become-my-enemy response to the Joker’s aggressive anarchy in The Dark Knight analagous to Vice-President Dick Cheney‘s approach to dealing with Islamic terrorism? In other words, is Chris Nolan‘s film some kind of stealth right-wing statement?

“The thought of Vice President Dick Cheney in a form-fitting bat costume might be too much for most people to bear. But the concepts of security and danger presented in Christopher Nolan‘s new Batman epic, The Dark Knight, align so perfectly with those of the Office of the Vice President that David Addington, Cheney’s chief of staff and former legal counsel, might be an uncredited script doctor.
“Insofar as it’s possible to view an action movie that had the biggest three-day-opening in cinematic history as a comment on the current national-security debate, The Dark Knight weighs in strongly on the side of the Bush administration. Confronting the Joker, a nihilistic enemy whose motives are both unexplained and beside the point, the Batman faces his biggest dilemma yet: whether to abuse his power in order to save Gotham City.
“Again and again in the movie, the Batman’s moral hand-wringing results in the deaths of innocents. Only by becoming like the monster he must vanquish can Batman secure a victory that even he understands is Pyrrhic.”

I’m going to briefly pretend I’m a low-information boob and just say that this photo of Barack Obama and Gen. David Petreus, which accompanies a 7.22 N.Y. Times story by Richard A. Oppel, Jr. and Jeff Zeleny about Obama’s visit to Iraq, is very visually appealing. Vittorio Storaro-level lighting. Cool-ass Top Gun shades, headphones, mouth mikes. No white flare-out from the window — you can see the topography and the colors very clearly.

Yesterday the New York Observer‘s John Koblin cited evidence that 2008 may be the worst year in modern newspaper history. Okay, he asked if this was the case. But who’s disputing? “On Wednesday morning at 11 a.m., Arthur Sulzberger and Janet Robinson will be managing a conference call that, from the looks of it, won’t be much fun,” he writes. “They’ll be reporting The New York Times Company’s second-quarter earnings.”

“If you’re really cynical you might even say that X Files: I Want to Believe illustrates why the show was cancelled in the first place: because it ran out of fresh ideas.” — from an anonymously-written review (not even a nom de plume?) the Sci-fi Movie Page. The review seems authentic, plus an industry professional whom I know and trust passed it along.

Obsessed With Film‘s Ray DeRousse argues strenuously against a “mumbling backlash” that has attacked Heath Ledger‘s Joker performance, or at least the Oscar talk that has greeted it. These contrarians are saying, he says, that Oscar talk wouldn’t he happening if Ledger were alive. Anonymous chatrooms where? On how many sites?

I sat down today with the American Teen quintet — Hannah Bailey, Colin Clemens, Megan Krizmanich, Mitch Reinholt, Jake Tusing — at Jerry’s Deli (i.e., the one on Beverly near San Vicente). I couldn’t separately mike them plus myself so I just relied on the Olympus digicorder to do its best. As I feared, there was too much clatter and ambient noise inside Jerry’s so the whole thing came to naught. On top of which we didn’t get that far in the chat due to the lunch ending sooner than expected. A nice bunch, though. Bright, polite, candid, friendly.

American Teen star Colin Clemens, Jake Tusing — Monday, 7.21.08, 1:55 pm.

The conversation took a turn at the very end, however, that I’d like to briefly discuss in a calm manner. It was just me, Colin and Jake (everyone else was outside) when I asked, “So where is everyone politically? Is anyone…you know, a Ron Paul fan? Or Nader? Anything out of the ordinary? Or are you all for Obama or…?”
Nobody, they both said. Nada, zip, no interest. Jake said he hasn’t paid any attention at all to the candidates or the election. I asked if he might want to think it over sometime between now and election day in November so he could vote for somebody — Obama, the Libertarian guy, McCain, whomever. “No,” he said. Doesn’t pay attention, doesn’t want to know, TV off.
Colin said the same thing. I didn’t record him or take notes, but he basically said that “politics and politicians are a game…it never changes…it’s not something I care about…maybe when I get older but…I don’t know, but not now.”
Not now? These guys are about to start their junior year in college. They’re adults with a responsibility to think and do beyond themselves. The world is going to hell in a global-warming handbasket, we’re at a fork in the road, the stakes couldn’t be higher, the world needs to change like it never has before, and the youth vote has been estimated to be bigger this year than ever before. But I sucked it in and just said to them, “Well, other people your age feel differently.” They said yeah, we get that.
That happened six or seven hours ago, and I’ve been thinking about it since and I have to say that I don’t get where they’re coming from or, frankly, respect them at all for choosing to be uninformed and inactive with a major election going on and the future of the planet at stake. They’re nice guys with good hearts and nice smiles, but this attitude and posture doesn’t cut it.
I told a journalist friend about what they’d said and he replied, “Well, they’re from Indiana.” What’s that supposed to mean? “Kids from that part of the country are…they have their own world. They take their cues from their parents, and obviously their parents are apolitical. That’s the Midwest for you. The politically active kids are all from the cities and the city suburbs. It’s who they are. I would just let it go.”
Let it go? Well, okay, sure…it’s not that big a deal. But on the other hand, know-nothingism and selfishness and tunnel-vision are a social cancer, I told him. I thought kids were supposed to be coming out of their shells this year and getting into Obama or Ron Paul or whomever, I said, and these guys shocked me.
I asked the friend what he would do if, hypothetically, he was interviewing these guys and they said they were white supremacists. “I would run with that because it’s a good story,” he answered. But apathy, which delivers more harmful consequences to society than white supremacy because it’s more widespread and allows political evil to run rampant, is not?

For me, Nanette Burstein‘s American Teen is too much of a hybrid to be called a “documentary.” It’s remarkably tight and clean and well-shaped. Almost too much so, it seems at times. Some of the dramatic “scenes” unfold so concisely and with such emotional clarity that it almost feels scripted. As if every so often Burstein had told the kids, “Cut! That was good…but once more with feeling.” That never happened, everyone says. Teen was just heavily covered and edited. 1,200 hours of footage were cut into a 100-minute film. But still…

Teen is about five teenage seniors from Warsaw, Indiana — a basketball jock (Colin Clemens), a rich blond bitch (Megan Krizmanich), a plucky-sensitive X-factor musician girl (Hannah Bailey), a geek-nerd with serious acne who wears a 1965 Beatle haircut (Jake Tusing) and a hunky, nice-guy jock with a sensitive side (Mitch Reinholt). It follows them through their final school year — relationships, crises, family dramas, college plans. And it also takes us on a rewind tour of our own.
Sounds cliche-ish, right? Except American Teen breaks through all that by immersing us in all the essentials — conflicts, hidden goblins, insecurities — churning inside. And so you gradually forget about the slickness and start paying attention to the deep-down stuff.
I was kicked out of an American Teen screening during Sundance last January when I couldn’t find a seat. But I had seen the first ten minutes’ worth and didn’t like it much. Too glitzy, too familiar, same old stuff. So I didn’t feel too badly about having to leave. The trick is to get past those first ten minutes, because the movie does get better and deeper and more layered after that.

All high schools are composed of brutal societies with rigid caste systems. The result is that things are almost always awkward, difficult or at least unpleasant for anyone who marches to a slightly different drum. Only the jocks, the student-council dweebs and the pretty blondes seem to find any satisfaction or serenity. I was 85% miserable in my high school. I love it that many of the “stars” of my class are now kind of average, pudgy, diminished from what they seemed to be in their youth, pot-bellied, not up to very much. Hah!
Colin is the nice lanky basketball star with a John Kerry jawline who needs a scholarship to get into college. Hannah is an arty, free-spirited musician who wants to go to film school in one of the big cities. Megan is the dishy blonde with the haughty attitude who’s called “the biggest bitch” in school by Hannah. Jake is an acne-plagued geek who has no girlfirend, doesn’t run with a crowd and seems to have esteem issues. Mitch is a jocky fair-haired hunk with a sensitive side and a nice sense of humor.
They all go through tough times. Colin feels he has to be a superstar on the court in order to land that scholarship, which leads to the wrong on-court attitude and lots of inward perspiration. Dealing with a terrible family trauma and under much paternal pressure to get accepted by Notre Dame, Megan is shown to have inner anger issues, which are manifested early on in a stupid vandalism crime. Worried that she might inherit her mother’s manic-depressive chemistry, Hannah loses it after a longtime boyfriend dumps her, and then she gets dumped again after hooking up with nice-guy Mitch. And poor self-denying Jake gets dumped by his first girlfriend, although his luck turns down the road.

Nanette Burstein

It’s all good dramatic stuff and definitely absorbing, although, as mentioned, there’s something about American Teen that just feels too polished. Despite assurances to the contrary, a suspicion lurks that portions of it may have been vaguely rigged on some level. Variety‘s Dennis Harvey mentioned a moment when “the camera catches two future sweethearts making eyes at each other in a crowded room, before they’ve even met.” And why isn’t anyone getting high? Everybody turns on in high school, right?
I liked, however, the animated sequences that dramatize the kids’ innermost fears and desires. This is a pretty good way of conveying how high-school kids really feel about their personal dramas. The sense of drama is very acute at that age. Teen is definitely worth catching this weekend. It’s worth catching, period. It’s a full-meal movie.
The student crowd I saw it with at USC last week were chuckling and “ah-hah”-ing from time to time. A couple of girls sitting near me gasped in shock when Hannah’s mother, who comes off as easily the least nurturing parent in the film, says to her “you’re not special” and does everything she can to talk her out of going to San Francisco in order to follow her dream. Hannah knows who she is and hates the idea of living a life of caution and limits in Indiana, and yet her mom can only talk about the risks and the pitfalls of the big scary world out there. All parents of creative people say this to their kids. Be practical, play it safe, have a back-up plan in case you fail. My parents said this to me. This is why I related to Hannah the most.