“I want to know what qualifies Hillary Clinton to be president? Is it because she was married to the president? If that were true, then Robin Givens would be heavyweight champion of the world. If Hillary’s last name wasn’t ‘Clinton,’ you know…she’d just be some crazy white woman with too much money and not enough lovin’. That’s where I come in. I know women like that. You don’t want them answering the phone at 3:00 in the morning.
“This, in conclusion. Three weeks ago, my friend Tina Fey, she came on the show and she declared that bitch was the new black, right? You know I love you, Tina Fey….you know you my girl. I have something to say. Bitch may be the new black, but black is the new president, bitch!” — from Tracy Morgan‘s SNL “Weekend Update” routine last night. (Here’s another location with the video embedded. The YouTube version has been removed for some reason.)

“We all have our own private hells. I hope his private hell is hotter than anybody else’s.” — Home Depot founder and former New York Stock Exchange director Ken Langone speaking a few days ago about former Gov. Eliot Spitzer.
People will be making cracks behind Spitzer’s back for the rest of his life because he’s an almost comical case of an unexamined life. A man brought down by a refusal to honestly examine himself and adjust his personal and political relationships accordingly. A man who was adamant about prosecuting and punishing a flawed world for the usual corruptions and lack of morality, not in spite of but precisely because he’d failed to come to terms with his own nature.
In the space of eight days the man has devolved into the status of a clown. If I were Spitzer I would agree to a divorce, move to Europe and and live alone in a small, sparely furnished apartment in a small town in Tuscany or Umbria, like Jeremy Irons‘ disgraced character does at the end of Damage.
Henry Miller addressed this very same trait or tendency in “romantic revolutionary” John Reed in Warren Beatty‘s Reds. Here’s the mp3.

Tim Murphy‘s New York magazine interview with Tony Kushner, who’s been working on the script of Steven Spielberg‘s Lincoln movie, which is based on Doris Kearns Goodwin‘s “Team of Rivals,” has inspired a thought.

Steven Spielberg, Tony Kushner, Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama

Given Kushner’s observations about the parallels between Lincoln and Barack Obama (which, by the sights of certain wise HE talkbackers, automatically makes Kushner a rank sentimentalist who’s clearly lacking in seasoned judgment) and what Goodwin said about this topic to Tim Russert on TV this morning, doing a Lincoln movie would obviously be perceived on some level as a kind of Obama back-pat gesture. Which conceivably could be giving Spielberg, a Hillary Clinton supporter, a certain pause.
The Obama-Lincoln links are real, says Kushner. Two Illinois politicians. One a former president, one an aspiring one. Both skilled at reducing discord and inspiring people to find common ground. Asked what two books he would take with him in the Oval Office, Obama has named (according to Russert) the Bible and Team of Rivals. Is it that much of a stretch to wonder if Spielberg’s Clinton support may have affected his thinking about the Lincoln movie? Could he be saying to himself (and perhaps to others), “Well, let’s see what happens with the election and then we’ll pull the trigger…or not”?
Spielberg is just enough of dilettante on political matters (having to be prodded by Mia Farrow before bailing out of the Beijing Olympic Games, hemming and hawing about Aaron Sorkin‘s Chicago 7 script) and just enough of a flabby- minded side-stepper to respond this way to the Lincoln project. Why doesn’t he just walk away and wash his hands? Everything I know about him says he’s the wrong guy to make this film. He’s shown questionable aesthetic judgment when it comes his historical/political subjects (excepting movies about World War II and fighting the evil Nazis), and he has no real balls. Wouldn’t it be better all around let it go and bring in someone who’s up to the task to direct it?
If it’s not the Obama echoes, I would love it if Kushner or someone close to the project would help me to understand what Spielberg’s avoidance issues are with this thing. What is the man’s problem?
I spoke twice to Liam Neeson about this movie almost three years ago (summer of ’05), and Neeson was very, very excited. It would happen soon, he believed. Within the year or by early next, he said. But of course, Amistad and Spielberg’s (temporary) bailing out of the Chicago 7 movie taught us Spielberg is not to be trusted with historical/political films. One way or another, Spielberg’s uncontrollable sentimentality engulfs or compromises or leaves a stain. On top of which the odds are he’ll smother and artificially stylize the 1860s with that awful milky-white Janusz Kaminski light.
Note to HE trashtalkers: Yes, I just got into this topic a day or two ago but Kushner’s New York interview got me going again. If you don’t like it, tough. It’s Sunday, a catch-up day, and I’m just banging away on this and that.

“Jann Wenner isn’t the only one who finds Barack Obama ‘Lincolnesque in his own origins, his sobriety and what history now demands,'” writes New York‘s Tim Murphy. Kushner, now working on a screenplay about Abraham Lincoln for the indecisive Steven Spielberg [see above], notes that Lincoln “could bring together people of wildly disparate ideological bents and remind them of the moral core of their visions.” And he believes that Lincoln would endorse Obama. “They’re both from Illinois,” Kusher says. “You can really trace a line from the politics of Lincoln through American pragmatism to the politics of Barack Obama.”

My 19 year-old son, a Syracuse sophomore, doesn’t converse in Valley-speak, but my younger son, who’s much smarter than me, does somewhat. In a dry, white-ebonics sort of way. He’s an exception. Most Val-speakers do it mall-style. The fact is that tens of millions of under-30s talk in this profoundly irritating dialect — unashamedly, kind of flamboyantly — as if they’re all from the same genetically-afflicted sub-species.
Valley-speak is about conveying sincerity and a lack of pretense, and vocalized with the exact same tonalities no matter what part of the country the speaker lives in. It involves the usual Jeff Spiccoli vocabulary along with a trait that drives me insane, which is an absolute insistence on speaking every word group, phrase and sentence as if it’s a question. (Judge: “Uhm, okay…dude? Dude? This court, like, finds you guilty? And, like, sentences you to a minimum term of, well, pretty much ten years?”)
I’m not doing an old-crank routine by complaining about this. Nobody but nobody uses Valley-speak in the business world, and certainly not among jourmalists. The second I hear it, I assume that the speaker is under-educated, a slacker pothead or mentally challenged in some way. (Sales girls at Urban Outfitters use it.) A Valley-speaker is essentially conveying to the listener, in short, that he/she is, like, totally not in the game? And that you should, like, not even think about hiring them when they come looking for a job because the chances are they’re ditzoids?
What I’m wondering is, when a Valley-speaker decides to try out a more adult dialect, how do they go about this? Do they just turn off the attitude and mindset like a faucet, or do they take a language class or find a private Henry Higgins-like tutor or what?

Because I disliked his tweedly-deedly performance as the Lord of the Rings “Gollum,” and because he seemed so closely allied with the grand designs of Peter Jackson, I had a kind of negative-reflex thing going with Andy Serkis. That changed when I saw his quietly menacing portrayal of British psychopath and child-killer Ian Brady in the ’06 HBO drama Longford. I was totally on the team from then on.
In any event, I read in an Indie London interview piece this morning that Serkis is about to start on work Tintin, an animated feature about the Belgian comic-strip character “and his faithful dog Snowy.” (Good God.) Bagging paychecks as co-directors are Steven Spielberg and Jackson. (Spielberg is “directing the first one, Jackson the second…the bulk of the shoot starts in September but things got a little bit moved around after the writers√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢ strike.”)
Spielberg, I decided after reading this, has become a kind of delaying sadist regarding the Abraham Lincoln film with Liam Neeson. Chicago 7 this, Tintin that…and we never hear diddly about the Lincoln project. It’s a classic avoidance syndrome thing (a kid avoiding a homework assignment, a guy who keeps putting off doing his taxes). If a benevolent God took any kind of interest in human affairs, Spielberg would (a) officially abandon the Lincoln film and (b) arrange for another esteemed director to step in so it can finally move forward.
Spielberg would just screw it up anyway. He wouldn’t do a Schindler’s List to the story of the nation’s 16th president from 1861 to ’65 — he’d probably Amistad it. I’ll never forget the way John Williams‘ musical score almost overwhelmed the voice of Anthony Hopkins during his big courtroom oratory scene. I remember watching this in a screening room some 11 years ago and saying to myself, “Yep…Spielberg is at the controls, all right.”

I’m presuming HE readers understand that the ’08 Oscar Balloon has its own page now with a feedback/comments option. Should I double up by pasting it at the bottom of the page, where it’s been for three and a hlaf years, or will people adapt to the new click-through deal?

HE’s weekend projection for Horton Hears a Who, the animated Dr. Seuss film from 20th Century Fox, is $45,878,000. Roland Emmerich‘s 10,000 B.C. (Warner Bros) will be off 57% from last weekend’s debut for a Sunday-night tally of $15,720,000. Never Back Down (Summit) will wind up with $9,386,000. The repulsively low-grade College Road Trip (Disney) will rake in $8,946,000 for a fourth-place finish. Vantage Point will come in fifth with a $5,592,000 weekend total.
The weekend’s best hold will come from Roger Donaldson‘s The Bank Job, off a mere 21% for a weekend total of $4,679,000 and a $9.600,000 cume. (People obviously like it, arre telling their friends, etc.) Michael Haneke‘s Funny Games (Warner Independent) has opened disastrously with a projected weekend haul of $516,000 at $1700 a print. One might surmise that all those split-decision reviews — a thoughtful first-rate exercise that also ranks as one of the most agonizing films to sit through in human history — had something to do with this, but people don’t read reviews so maybe not.

Agence France Press published an article two days ago about the rumors surrounding the ’08 Cannes Film Festival line-up. The confirmed Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and the rumored Sex and The City were mentioned, of course. Both would show out-of-competition like Ocean’s 13 andU2-3D were last year.
The usual Cannes suspects and their new movies were mentioned: Steven Soderbergh‘s The Argentine, Abel Ferrara‘s Chelsea on the Rocks, James Gray‘s Two Lovers, Woody Allen‘s Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Barbet Schroeder‘s Inju.
Also mentioned were some French films — Agnes Jaoui‘s Parlez-Moi de la Pluie, Arnaud Desplechin‘s Un Conte de Noel, Michel Houellebecq‘s La Possibilite d’une ile, Laurent Cantet‘s Entre les Murs and Marina de Van‘s Ne Te Retourne Pas.
The Dardenne Brothers, who won the Palme d’Or twice, might be offering their new film, Le Silence de Lorna, in competition.
Either one of the two legendary Brazilian filmmakers Walter Salles (Linha de Passe) and Fernando Meirelles (Blindness) could have their film in competition. AFP also expects a movie from the one or more of the new generation of Argentinian directors: Lucrecia Martel (La Nna Santa), Pablo Trapero (Leonera) and/or Lisandro Alonso (Liverpool).

An interesting Geoffrey Macnab piece in the Independent (dated 3.14) about the best Irish “troubles” films currently viewable on DVD. It includes a chat with Paul Greengrass, who directed one of the very best, Bloody Sunday (’02), which I could never fully understand until the DVD came out with English subtitles.
My favorite Irish conflict fims, in this order: Bloody Sunday, The Informer, The Wind That Shakes the Barley, The Boxer, Michael Collins, Cal, Odd Man Out, The Outsider, A Casualty of War. Two TV movies dealing with this subject/background that I’d very much like to see are Alan Clarke‘s Contact and Elephant.

I’m trying to think of a thoughtful, non-prurient reason for running this Alexandra Dupre photo and this link to 20 photos that went up earlier today on the New York Post website, and I can’t think of one. I can’t even think of a comment. Okay, her nose looks a bit smaller.

All I can add is that I’m contributing in a small way to helping AD cash in on her notoriety, and this, in a sense, is a very American, get-along, go-along thing to do. Which may, in the view of this site’s conservative readers, seem to balance out the previous post on a certain capitalistic level.

Necessarily and none too soon, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright‘s inflammatory statements have been repudiated by Sen. Barack Obama. But I can’t help but shake my head about the most assaultive sermon Wright ever gave — the one that’s gotten loads of airplay today — about how U.S. foreign policy essentially invited the 9.11 attacks. Because what he said was pretty close to the truth.
If you ask me the most alarming thing about this six-and-a-half year old videotape is Wright’s delivery. He says that God waved the attacks on, and seems to be almost relishing the fact that this country suffered what he considered an unsurprising retaliation for various foreign-policy provocations over the last few decades.
But tone down the emotion and the rhetoric and the words aren’t that different than those written by Gore Vidal (“Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got To Be So Hated“), Noam Chomsky (“9-11“) and Chalmers Johnson (“Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire“). These three guys and many others have said the same thing, which is that our government has been behind aggressive rogue policies directed against many nationalistic movements over many decades, and that it’s not a surprise that this (along with U.S. economic hegemony) resulted in a stateside attack
The conservative talkbackers who regularly respond to stories on this site will probably claim that Vidal, Chomsky and Johnson are unreliable kooks. Well, they’re not. Anyone with a comprehensive understanding of this country’s history of rogue or covert attacks upon nationalistic movements that have been construed to be in opposition to U.S. allies or economic interests is well known.
Of course, this view has never been tolerated in the mainstream media. If you’re unwise enough to say it you’ll get shouted down or shunned. Maggie Gyllenhaal got into trouble in ’05 for saying the U.S. was responsible in some way for the 9.11 attacks. Bill Maher lost his late-night talk show for simply saying the 9.11 attackers, however despicable their acts, weren’t cowards.
There’s one view of 9.11 that is tolerated in this country, and that’s that the devil himself rose up from hell and murdered almost 3,000 people for no reason other than to perpetuate pure evil. There’s no debating it. Either you buy into the party line, or you don’t and you suffer. But sooner or later people in this country are going to have to pull their heads out of the sand.