Rope of Silicon‘s Brad Brevet scratching his head over the M. Night Shymalan internet animus. In other words, not fanning the flames.

This is off-the-beat even for HE, but a story posted today by The Independent‘s Patrick Cockburn says that “a secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.”
This sounds like a fairly big deal…no?
“The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq,” the story goes on. “Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilize Iraq’s position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.
“But the accord also threatens to provoke a political crisis in the U.S. President Bush wants to push it through by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated. But by perpetuating the US presence in Iraq, the long-term settlement would undercut pledges by the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, to withdraw US troops if he is elected president in November.”

This is not a teaser poster or “sheet” (as Ain’t It Cool’s “Merrick” has written) for Oliver Stone‘s W. It’s just some print concept that was thrown together and handed out during last month’s Cannes Film Festival. It’s obviously not selling a movie.

The most inspiring thing about the culture right now is that for most under-20s, this Signe Wilkinson cartoon — which I like and am even touched by — is a bit of a meh. Because they really don’t see color the way Hillary Clinton‘s rube supporters do, or did during the primary campaign.

It’s no secret that the fall-holiday season will deliver two major political biopics — Oliver Stone‘s W. (Lionsgate) and Ron Howard‘s Frost/Nixon (Universal). Two portrayals of failed, bordering-on-tragic Republican presidents (the current George Bush, the late Richard Nixon) opening within seven weeks of each other means high expectations, lots of political baggage and possibly an Oscar competition of sorts.

They’ll inevitably be compared. They’re similar enough to be seen as a kind of two-headed hydra. The temptation to call them a pair of political IEDs being lobbed by Hollywood liberals at John McCain‘s campaign will be considerable. The best scenario for Stone’s film, obviously, is that is will have a strong impact in this regard. The Nixon tragedy is so specific and widely accepted that Howard’s film won’t be part of the election conversation as much as W., but the two films taken together will certainly remind audiences of the Republican potential for Oval Office screw-ups and arrogance.
It seems inevitable that the fates and fortunes of the two will be seen as somehow linked or bouncing off each other before long. (Will they be seen as a twofer or an either-or?) Expect sharp retorts from the conservative talk-show hosts and bloggers as soon as W begins screening.
Party chit-chatters will tell you that both feature lead performances — Josh Brolin‘s as Bush, Frank Langella‘s as Nixon — with strong shots in the awards derby. Having read the scripts for both and seen Langella’s performance in the Frost/Nixon stage play, I can say there’s most likely merit in these assumptions.
My personal can’t-wait-for-it, however, is Richard Dreyfuss as Dick Cheney in W. The longing to see Cheney eviscerated is so strong that my feelings about Dreyfuss’s performance probably aren’t to be trusted. I need to take a pill and calm down about this.
Frost/Nixon, opening on 12.5, has been finished for some time and has been screened here and there. (A friend caught it a week or so ago.) The plan is to “screen the shit out of it” for general media starting in August, even though it won’t open for another four months. W, which went before the cameras several months after Howard’s film did and is currently being edited, will be out on 10.17.
No matter how good Frost/Nixon turns out to be (and I’ve heard that it works), it would seem that Stone’s film is in a more opportune position, release-wise, but why speculate this early in the game?

Got up really early for some reason, worked a couple of hours and then went down to Norm’s on La Cienega for breakfast. A couple of good-natured beefy guys who work for a glass-installing outfit came in, and as they sat down they greeted the waitress — a 40ish black woman — and said, “So, [name]…excited? Good news, eh?”

Norms on La Cienega — Thursday, 6.5, 6:35 am.

They were talking about Obama’s triumph, of course. Now, it’s entirely possible that these guys knew the waitress well enough to have sussed out her political beliefs to some extent so let’s tread carefully. Nonetheless, I took their comment to mean, “Hey, one of your people won the nomination!” I mean, they didn’t look to me like guys who read Salon…okay?
The waitress gave them a quick glance as she said “yeah, I’m excited.” She said it in a somber tone that indicated (to me anyway) that she saw them as a couple of racist lunkheads who left good tips.
And just as this happened, I was reading this 6.3 Richard Cohen column in the N.Y. Daily News. I was right in the middle of reading the first three graphs, I mean. The combination of this and the two chowderheads at Norms (a) gave me the chills and (b) put me in a down-ish mood.
Media elites don’t really understand how deeply racist this country is. Among the lugs, I mean. They really don’t. They need to hang out more at Norms, at truck stops, in working-class neighborhood taverns. If Obama wins, it’s going to be a squeaker.

A riff on Adam Sandler‘s Republican-conservative thinking as manifested in his films, penned by Cinematical’s Eric Kohn. Are his core convictions all that evident in his films? The answer for the most part seems to be “yeah…but not so you’d notice.”

At least one previous Get Smart trailer was a little dryer than this new one, which is obviously heavier on the gags. Meaningless, of course. No matter what message the trailers put out, the box-office fate is fixed and immutable. The vibe and the aroma have been out there for weeks — months, really — and the Gods have made their call.

I’m presuming that McCain voters will come out in droves. I can see them sitting in the dark, their silver hair glowing in the reflected light of the screen and going “Heh-heh! Heh-heh-heh! That’s pretty funny….heh-heh!”
To paraphrase Melville’s Captain Ahab, “All visible objects are but as pasteboard masks. Some inscrutable yet reasoning thing puts forth the molding of their features. The Get Smart trailers task me; they heap me. Yet they are but a mask. ‘Tis the thing behind the mask I chiefly hate; the malignant thing that has plagued movie fans since time began; the thing that maws and mutilates our race, not killing us outright but letting us live on, with half a heart and half a lung.”

As MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann quipped today, when Hillary Clinton spoke today to legislators about her future plans and whether or not she should concede to Barack Obama, a majority said to her, “What are you doing?” Anyway, she’s agreed to finally be gracious, show a little class — the thought! — and concede on Friday.

Asked by Media Bistro’s David S. Hirschman how many print years the L.A. Times has left, the paper’s editor Russ Stanton answers as follows:
“One hundred twenty-six! [laughs] But, you know, somebody, somewhere soon is going to throw in the towel on print. For us, I think that for now, our core base of readers are the baby boomers, and I think that we’ve got at least another 35 year run in print. On the other hand, someone, somewhere is going to grow the revenue from online enough that it can support a newsroom of our size and talent. And when that happens, that’s when you can start, if you so choose, to pull the plug on the paper.
“If you have the revenue to pay for the journalism, you can eliminate the print. I mean, the people are only half of the cost — the stuff that costs so much are the paper and the presses you need to print the darn thing. But I don’t see that happening around here in my lifetime.”
I respectfully disagree. I think that newspapers printed on paper will be exctinct by….oh, 2020? 2025 at the latest? Fifteen years, give or take. Not 25 and certainly not 35.

Hollywood Interrupted‘s Mark Ebner is now the star of truTV’s Rich & Reckless,” which debuts on Friday, 6.6, at 10 pm. It’s being described as a “tabloid-style take on crime that focuses on the kind of rough stuff that got Ebner a reputation for being a bad boy reporter who will go where others fear to tread.” Here’s a clip and an endorsement.