Barack Obama‘s time-to-leave-Iraq stump speech is in Monday’s (7.14) N.Y. Times op-ed page, presumably to make the point that he hasn’t waffled or softened his basic position. Which he hasn’t by my sights. He knows that complications and surprise potholes are inevitable, of course, as does everyone else. Life is sometimes a poker game, and however clear your objective, you have to play what’s dealt.

Here, for now, is the definitive restoration-of-The Godfather story, written by L.A. Times contributor Bill Desowitz for the Monday, 7.14 edition.

“Fans who pick up the recently announced The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration,, due out from Paramount Home Entertainment on DVD and Blu-ray on Sept. 23, are likely to see things in the 1972 Mafia saga and its two sequels they’ve never noticed before,” Desowitz begins. “The differences could be subtle to the casual observer, but the improved color and clarity give new visual punch to some of the most cherished sequences in recent cinema history.
“‘We wanted the blacks to be truly black, and the first image of Bonasera [Salvatore Corsitto] was to appear out of that,’ said Francis Ford Coppola, speaking via e-mail about the opening scene of his landmark drama.
“The restoration was a sizable undertaking that required a team of technicians, several hundred thousand dollars and two years of effort, largely because the negative for The Godfather had been nearly destroyed by overprinting and mishandling.
“‘I believe that there were only five or six shots in the first 20 minutes that were still original,’ said restoration supervisor Robert Harris, who previously had worked to restore films including Vertigo and Lawrence of Arabia. ‘Virtually every splice was held together with Mylar tape. Tears went into image in hundreds of frames. Sections were totally without perforations.'”

Cinemascope‘s Yair Raveh reviews Kim Aubrey‘s 18-minute doc about the restoration of the first two Godfather films, and which will be included in the Godfather “Coppola Restoration” DVD and Blu-ray set that comes out in the fall. (The third Godfather film was also worked on, but who cares…am I right?)

In his brief New York magazine review of Mamma Mia!, David Edelstein says that Pierce Brosnan‘s singing “is the best imitation I’ve heard of a water buffalo.” As long as actors singing dreadfully is on the table, I should mention Frances Farmer‘s crooning of “Aura Lee” in Come and Get It! (’36). Her contralto sounds a cross between a seal and a loon. It may seem unkind to mention this, given Farmer’s tragic life and all, but I’ve had this thought in my head for ages.

Elvis Presley‘s “Love Me Tender,” of course, uses the exact same melody.

The Dark Knight “is noisy, jumbled, and sadistic,” writes New York‘s David Edelstein. “Even its most wondrous vision — Batman’s plunges from skyscrapers, bat-wings snapping open as he glides through the night like a human kite — can’t keep the movie airborne. There’s an anvil attached to that cape. [And] the lack of imagination, visual and otherwise, turns into a drag.
“The tumult is spectacularly incoherent. Nolan appears to have no clue how to stage or shoot action. He got away with the chopped-up fights in Batman Begins because his hero was a barely glimpsed ninja, coming at villains from all angles in stroboscopic flashes. There are more variables here, which means more opportunities to say ‘What the f— just happened?'”

For those who saw Meet Dave this weekend…

“The dinner cost at least two grand / She made a point to order wine / Later on she moved my hand / Well across her borderline / I boldly went where many, many / Many men have gone before / Dennis Rodman, Warren Beatty, Vanilla Ice, and dozens more / Dear diary, can sex be love? / She’s so responsive, so adoring / She called my hand a golden glove / And Cynthia is huge and boring.” — Song lyric from “A-Rod: The Musical,” composed by The New Yorker‘s Ben Greenman.

God’s natural law says that 70% to 80% of all films (or any creative work of any kind) will be irksome, problematic, mediocre or just crap. What, then, to make of a critic who’s given positive reviews to 19 out of 25 recent films? It’s an old saw and an old refrain, but Eric Childress‘s mission in life is to scold those critics given to excessive warmth and generosity.

Another mixed response to The Dark Knight, this time from Newsweek‘s David Ansen. Calling it an “impressive, and sometimes oppressive, epic,” he says “there’s not a touch of lightness in Christian Bale‘s taut, angst-ridden superhero, and as the two-and-a-half-hour movie enters its second half, the unvarying intensity and the sometimes confusing action sequences take a toll. You may emerge more exhausted than elated. Nolan wants to prove that a superhero movie needn’t be disposable, effects-ridden junk food, and you have to admire his ambition. But this is Batman, not ‘Hamlet.’ Call me shallow, but I wish it were a little more fun.”

The two new Jolie-Pitt kids — a boy, Knox Leon, weighing 5.03 pounds, and a girl, Vivienne Marcheline, weighing 5 pounds even — began their journey last night (i.e., Saturday) at Lenval Hospital (57, avenue de la Californie, northeast of the airport) in Nice. Obstetrician Michael Sussman delivered the twins. Brad and Angie now have six kids — the adopted Maddox, 6, Pax, 4, and Zahara, 3, plus the au natural Shiloh, 2, and the twins.

My interest is in Chateau Miraval, the $70 million dollar, 35-room estate near Aix en Provence which they’re reportedly intending to lease for three years. Who needs 35 rooms? Little kids always share bedrooms, Brad and Angie will share a room with the twins plus..what, a nanny and a couple of assistants? They could all probably make do with a ten-room mansion. Fifteen might be a wee bit extravagant. Twenty would be, like…whoa, take it easy. But thirty-five friggin’ rooms?
This isn’t my business but everyone is in everyone else’s face these days so why not? I’m talking about passing along decent values to your kids. I realize that Chateau Miraval is a working wine vineyard so you need facilities for the guys who work it, but it’s not a good thing to instruct your children through day-to-day experience that nouveau riche extravagance is the norm. Even if you pass along the best kind of emotional and spiritual upbringing by your words and deeds, an opulent lifestyle will always create a sense of swagger and entitlement and a nonstop litany of lusts and appetites.
The best thing you can do is give your kids to a natural, non-flamboyant, modestly-scaled life. They should have love and comfort and occasional perks, but mainly within the framework of a life based upon need and nutrition and not whimsical indulgence. Brad and Angie’s kids’ life should not be about what they’d like to taste or fuck around with or splash around in on a daily whim because their parents are loaded and “why not?” The Jolie-Pits are doing their kids no favors by bringing them up this way. 99% of the world lives in a world of limits and natural proportion.

The studio estimate I posted on Saturday morning for Hellboy II‘s opening weekend was $35 million and change. This estimate was made with a presumption that Saturday grosses for Guillermo del Toro‘s film would dip a bit on Saturday, as sequels tend to do. This is precisely what happened. After taking in $13.7 million on Friday, Hellboy II dropped to $11.7 million yesterday. GDT and Universal are savoring their first-place victory while it lasts, knowing that next weekend’s box-office heat will be almost entirely about The Dark Knight and Mamma Mia!.