“Seventy percent of the country is against the Iraq War now,” Young Turks co-host Cenk Uygyur has wrote today. “A great majority of American believe it was a mistake to go into Iraq in the first place. With a country that is this united against the war, are we really going to have two presidential candidates that voted for the Iraq War?
“If Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic primary, both of the major party candidates will have been wrong on the war. Why? Why on God’s green earth would we do that?”

So far, the scheduled Oscar show presenters are Alan Arkin, Jennifer Hudson, Helen Mirren, Forest Whitaker, Amy Adams, Jessica Alba, Cate Blanchett, Josh Brolin, Steve Carell, George Clooney, Penelope Cruz, Miley Cyrus, Patrick Dempsey, Cameron Diaz, Colin Farrell, Harrison Ford, Jennifer Garner, Tom Hanks, Anne Hathaway, Katherine Heigl, Jonah Hill, Dwayne Johnson, Nicole Kidman, James McAvoy, Queen Latifah, Seth Rogen, Martin Scorsese, Hilary Swank, John Travolta, Denzel Washington and Renee Zellweger.

Definitely Maybe has been tracking decently among women. The general numbers are 64, 32 and 11, but the first choice number is in the teens among women. (Keep in mind there’s an extra President’s Day holiday day on Monday.)
Doug Liman‘s allegedly painful Jumper — almost certainly a one-weekend phenomenon — is still the #1 attraction. The Spiderwick Chronicles is running at 75, 24 and 5. Step Up 2 The Streets is a 16 first choice. All four films are going to do at least decently….no wipeouts.
Vantage Point will do decent business when it opens on 2.22. The most popular March 7th release will be Roland Emmerich‘s 10,000 B.C., which is running at 57, 35 and 6…heavily male. The Bank Job is running at 20, 16 and 1…nothing. College Road Trip is tallying at 58, 25 and 2.

I received a reply this morning from director Gavin O’Connor regarding an item I wrote eight days ago (on 11.5) about Pride and Glory, an Ed Norton-Colin Farrell cop drama that’s been done since last November but has been bumped by New Line into an ’09 release.

I wrote that “you can tell from the trailer that Pride and Glory is a little boiler-platey, perhaps a little too emphatic and histrionic.” I also said that “my general motto is that any New Line film that costars Noah Emmerich (brother of production chief Tobey Emmerich) is a potential problem” but that “there doesn’t seem to be anything to fear from O’Connor, who did a first-rate job with ’04’s Miracle.”
O’Connor said he was writing “to introduce myself and thank you for the kind words about Miracle and set the record straight about Noah Emmerich and your insight into the film’s trailer. For the record, I had to fight tooth and nail to get Noah in my film. Tobey Emmerich wanted me to cast a star, someone who brought overseas name value to the project, and in no way wanted Noah in the movie, and was completely immovable on the subject for a long time.
“I cast Noah in my first film, Tumbleweeds, and also Miracle — he played the assistant coach. He’s a great actor, truly underrated, and one of my favorites. After a long, hard fought battle with Tobey, he finally relented, realizing that I wasn’t going to take no for an answer. When you see Noah’s work I believe you’ll understand why I pressed so hard to cast him in the film. His portrayal of the character is riveting and the complexity and unflinching honesty he brought to the role speaks for itself.
“I had a conversation with Todd Field about his experience working at New Line, and we shared a similar war story regarding Noah. I’m sure you know, Todd cast Noah in Little Children, and he too had to battle Tobey to get him in the film. Todd is a huge fan of Noah’s and expressed that to Tobey. Once again, Tobey resisted, wanting a bigger name in the film, someone with more overseas value, etc. Todd dug in his heels and Tobey finally relented.
“I offer you this information because it’s unfair to presume that Noah gets cast in New Line films because he’s Tobey’s brother. If anything, it works against him, requiring filmmakers to duke it out with the studio on his behalf. And we do that because of the high regard we have for Noah as an actor.
“If anything, its a coincidence that Todd and I, both big fans of Noah’s work, happened to be making our films at New Line. We would have cast him at whatever studio was financing our films.
“It seems to me also unfair to judge my film before you’ve seen it. You’re summarizing the entirety of the film based on a two-minute trailer. I invite you to experience the film in its full breadth and depth, and if after that you still feel that it’s boiler-platey and histrionic, I’ll welcome that critique, and respect your opinion. But until then, in fairness to me as the creator of the film, it would be very much appreciated if you would reserve judgment.
“I’ve been trying to realize this movie for over seven years, and though an amazing experience making the film at New Line, it has now become heartbreaking, watching it get caught up in corporate maneuvering, where bookkeeping seems to take precedent over filmmaking. My film is living in some form of studio purgatory, so it hurts to read negative comments about it before its ever been released.
“I write this letter to you from my heart. With no malice intended. Grounded in humility and sincerity. I hope its received in the same manner. With respect and a handshake, Gavin O’Connor.”
Wells reply: Thanks and point taken. I’m well aware that trailers sometime do a disservice to the film they’re supposed to be selling in a positive way. I’d love to have a chance to see Pride and Glory sometime before ’09. Thanks for writing and again, great job on Miracle.

The New Hampshire and California primary numbers were so ridiculously off that pollsters are generally thought to be operating out of bounds these days with a gravely flawed methodology, to put it faintly. This notion seems to be reenforced by two strongly divergent polls that came out today.
A Quinnipiac poll that has Hillary Clinton at 55 to Barack Obama‘s 34 in Ohio, and Clinton ahead of Obama in Pennsylvania by 52 to 36. How the hell does that square with those good Virginians giving Obama such an overwhelming majority two days ago with Obama dramatically cutting into Hillary’s core support base? How can there be more than a 45-point difference between these Ohio/Pennsylvania numbers and the final Virginia tallies? Has Virginia been invaded by aliens from the planet Trafalmadore, or have they landed their space ships in Pennsylvania and Ohio?
There’s also a just-released Rasmussen Reports daily poll showing Obama with a national double-digit lead over Clinton with 49% of likely Democratic primary voters and only 37% standing by Hillary. The “most stunning” aspect of the Obama surge is that “he now leads 46% to 41% among women. Clinton retains a lead among the narrower subset of white women, but her lead in that vital demographic is down to just three percentage points.”
Either the pollsters are drunk or on drugs, the people they’ve spoken to are drunk or on drugs or crazy, or these polls simply weren’t conducted on the same planet. There’s no fourth explanation.

Speaking of the plot and high-octane action scenes in 20th Century Fox and Gavin Hood‘s Wolverine flick, which will open 14 and 1/2 months from now (on 5.1.09), star-producer Hugh Jackman has told USA Today‘s Scott Bowles that “with all the success of the X-Men [films], you feel the pressure to keep pushing it further.”

And that, ladies and gents, is a scary omen. It’s the action movie that has the confidence and balls to hold back and make every shot count that wins. (“Shot” referring to any high-impact thrill moment.) An action movie with anxious-asshole production executives goading the director with exclamations like “you’ve gotta out-blast the last X-Men movie…this is a race, a competition…it’s gotta be more-more-more!” is a movie that has the word MEDIOCRE tattooed on its forehead.

Will Michelle Obama please shut up about “there will be no second run for the presidency” if things run against Barack, blah blah? Due respect and all, but it’s a deeply unattractive thing to say.
Nobody respects a one-shot-and-we’re-gone attitude. You have to hunker down and be a stayer. Harvey Milk lost election bids for a San Francisco city supervisor post three times before he finally won after running a fourth time. Inspiration, vision and natural charm are well and good, but nothing happens without brass and tenacity. (The exception is pitching woo. If you haven’t gotten the green-light signal within the first five or ten minutes of the first meeting, forget it. You can’t campaign your way into anyone’s bed.)

Chuckw286 wrote this morning to say he’s “no fan of Hillary by any stretch, but how would you feel about a deal where she steps down now and becomes Obama’s Secy of State?” To which I said “yeah, that would work.” Doubtful but yeah…maybe. Of course, Clinton probably doesn’t have the character or the elegance to give it up graciously after March 4th (given the way the voting is likely to go), which makes any such notion way premature.
My sensings are telling me that Hillary and her campaign team are going to scrap and claw and take everyone down to hell before this is over, dirty pool (Florida, Michigan) and harridan screechings, finagling and biting to the last breath over the last super delegate, fangs and venom and python squeezings until everyone is red-faced and screaming and crying out “enough already!”

The Diablo Cody pile-ons are coming fast and furious. There are two, actually. A 23/6 parody piece in which Cody weighs in on the current violence in Kenya, and a “leaked” Diablo Cody screenplay on Something Awful, written and doodled by the brilliant Bob “BobServo” Mackey.

I’m such a travel whore that the mere fact of this magic-hour still from Jumper (with Hayden Christensen and Rachel Bilson) having been shot on the Tiber in Rome makes me almost want to see it. Next May on DVD, I mean. Okay, maybe I’ll sneak into it at the Grove and catch five minutes’ worth this weekend.

I’m not interested in sitting through the whole thing because it’s been described as if it’s another Doug Liman jizz-spray sell-out film, the first being Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Liman was a hip prince when he made Swingers, Go and The Bourne Identity. Why oh why did he suddenly turn into this other guy? It’s like some Body Snatcher pod was placed next to his bed at 3 ayem and took over.
“It’s impossible for outsiders to know who deserves most of the blame for this dud,” writes N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis. “Its director, Doug Liman, its three screenwriters, its multiple producers or the various studio executives who might have done far too much meddling or not nearly enough.
“Whatever the case, Jumper –a barely coherent genre mishmash about a guy who transports himself across the globe at will — is of interest only because it revisits a theme that Mr. Liman has explored in films like The Bourne Identity and, if reports about his troubled productions are true, speaks to his own reputation as an escape artist: the character who wiggles out of trouble.”

Okay, okay…no more mentions of Uncle Festus. The first-anywhere teaser for Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Crystal Skull is a kind of comic-flamboyant Festus refutation. Too old and tired to play Indy again? Too much of a graybeard Hillary Clinton supporter to direct an Indy film as well as they were directed 21 to 27 years ago? Eat our dust, Festus naysayers!

After the reviewing-the-last-three-Indy films intro (which consists of 40% of the teaser’s length) and an homage to the iconic Indy fedora, it starts off with a clip of a cockney-accented Ray Winstone saying, “This ain’t gonna be easy” and Harrison Ford, standing next to him, saying, “Not as easy as it used to be.”
Then comes the heavy artillery: a series of Harold Lloyd-like CG action sequences that show the past-retirement-age Ford doing stunts that are much wilder and more acrobatic than anything he’s ever done before in these films. Got it.
Then comes the “sell” footage that assures that Crystal Skull is just as much of a popcorn wow as the others. There’s a glimpse of a scene in a warehouse with thousands of wooden crates (the same one in which the Ark of the Covenant was stored at the end of Raiders?), six or seven clips of the South American action scenes with sexy Russian baddie Cate Blanchett barking orders, spear-carrying natives in loincloths, four ancient stone pillars coming together to form a single column….lots and lots of CG that looks like CG. This in itself clearly sets this latest Indy against all the others, which used visual effects, of course, but none this lavish or show-offy.
No aliens, of course. Depicted, I mean. The closest it gets is a very brief clip of a box with the words “Roswell, New Mexico, 1947.”
It looks great, lots of fun and thrills, a barrel of monkeys, I’m there, etc.
He protected the power of the divine. He saved the cradle of civilization. He triumphed over the armies of evil. He smoked a lot of pot and fell asleep in the back of a car once next to a soundstage, but he ate healthily and watched his weight and worked out like a demon before shooting started.

Reminder: The heavily-hyped debut trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will play tomorrow morning — Thursday, 2.14 — at 6:00 am on http://movies.yahoo.com/. Wait…Eastern or Pacific?