One sure way to get hit by a shitstorm is to qualify that statement made last weekend on a Fox News political talk show by conservative pundit Bill Kristol, to wit: “Look, the only people for Hillary Clinton are the Democratic establishment and white women…it would be crazy for the Democratic party to follow the establishment that’s led them to defeat year after year…white women are a problem but, you know, we all live with that.”
The last part of this statement is obviously sloppy and offensive and misogynist, but (okay, bring it on) older white women are Clinton’s biggest supporters. More than any other Democratic voting bloc, they’re the ones standing in the way of the Obama wave because they feel so in league with Hillary and are so in love with the symbolism of a woman occupying the Oval Office, regardless of the massive Hillary negatives (unifying the right, voters not wanting to return to the psychodrama of the ’90s, etc.) and the polls showing she could very possibly lose to John McCain next November.
But you can’t say this without being accused of crude thinking or offending all these women voters and thereby deepening their Hillary support. The only truly safe and inoffensive thing to say about older white women voters supporting Hillary is….they don’t exist. Except they do. Kristol was wrong, yes, but not entirely so.

On January 8th, New York‘s “Vulture” page ran a short piece about how “I drink your milkshake” (the Daniel Day Lewis line in There Will be Blood) had become a sort-of goof-off phrase that people were kicking around in bars, parties and ticket-buying lines.

On January 9th I wrote two milkshake items, one of them urging Paramount Vantage marketers to use this as a marketing hook (“get on the milkshake train!”). Some were writing even then that the milkshake thing had jumped the shark, which I thought was ridiculous. A cultural catch phrase being dismissed by guys who sit in front of their computers all day in their underwear usually means it’s just begun to get traction with Average Joes.
Now, almost a full month later (an eon in terms of the “moving train”), USA Today‘s Scott Bowles and his slow-on-the-pickup editors are finally slurping it up. Bowles mentions that Kevin Kunze‘s Milkshake video (posted 1.13.08) has been watched 60,000 times, and the existence of IDrinkYourMilkshake.com. Old hat, all of it.
Except for Paul Thomas Anderson‘s telling Bowles that “he’s puzzled by the phenomenon — particularly because the lines came straight from a transcript he found of the 1924 congressional hearings over the Teapot Dome scandal, in which Sen. Albert Fall was convicted of accepting bribes for oil-drilling rights to public lands in Wyoming and California.
“Fall’s way of describing [oil drainage] was to say ‘Sir, if you have a milkshake and I have a milkshake and my straw reaches across the room, I’ll end up drinking your milkshake,’ ” Anderson says. “I just took this insane concept and used it.”

In a 2.3.08 N.Y. Times column about irrational Hillary haters, inspired by Jason Horowitz‘s GQ piece about same in the January issue, Stanley Fish notes two rational reasons for being against the New York Senator: (1) Believing that “her personality [is] unsuited to the tasks of inspiring and uniting the American people,” and (2) believing “that if this is truly a change election, she is not the one to bring about real change.”

Then he mentions “the next level” — i.e., “personal vituperation unconnected to, and often unconcerned with, the facts.” One permutation is the obsession among some with the “strangeness” of Clinton’s eyes. (Horowitz’s piece says that “analysis of [her] eyes is a favorite motif among her most rabid adversaries.”) I always stand by reasons #1and #2, but the deep-down truth is that her eyes bother me also. They bring back an almost primal reconnection with the eyes of a particular eighth-grade teacher who used to get on my case and give me detention and bring levels of misery into my 13 year-old life that I didn’t know existed.
It’s deeply unfair and hurtful, really, to bring up a facial feature as a sticking point, but it’s also fair to say that your basic attitude and spiritual essence starts to work its way into your features once you pass 40. Because it does.

That TV ad for Juno with Mott the Hoople‘s “All The Young Dudes” on the soundtrack is driving me insane. It’s playing over and over and over on the tube, and I’m hating the big Juno “sell” because it’s not selling the movie but a huggy-sensitive ad agency version of it. I may be the only person having this reaction, but the ad is exerting an almost Norbit-like effect. If I hear the words “the best thing you can do is to find a person who loves you for exactly who you are” one more time…

N.Y. Times media columnist David Carr has tapped out an interesting zeitgeist-snapshot piece about how and why the N.Y. Post decided to endorse Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton.
“Tabloids thrive on heat,” he states. “They love a running story, but they also get bored easily. Col Allan, the editor of the Post, is someone who lives and dies by understanding the moment. And it is his opinion, and that of [owner Rupert] Murdoch, that this moment does not belong to the Clintons.
“In its purest form, the Post functions as a kind of mood ring and mirrors the public√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s lack of enthusiasm for a package presidency that has Bill Clinton in campaign mode again. The Post has lost its appetite for Mrs. Clinton for the same reason that they lost interest in Paris Hilton: that wasn√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢t the story their readers wanted.”

By hiring Joe Johnston, a respected high-grade hack, to take over the direction of The Wolfman in the wake of Mark Romanek‘s sudden departure, producers Scott Stuber and Mary Parent have essentially announced to the industry and to fans that they’re playing it “safe” and that no one should expect anything more than a slick, proficient, hack-level popcorn movie. Perhaps on the level of Mike Nichols‘ Wolf (which I liked until the end), and perhaps not. But definitely in focus! And with great special effects!

The plus in this equation is star Benicio del Toro, who always upgrades. The downside is the script, which allegedly needs work but can’t be worked on until the WGA strike ends, which may be presently.
Johnston’s two best films — Jumanji and October Sky — came out in ’95 and ’99. The notion of Johnston being a hefty-paycheck, Spielberg-aspiring slick operator began to take over with his direction of Jurassic Park III (’01) and Hidalgo (’04). No one despises Johnston — he’s “fine” — but he brings a slight nod-off, good-enough factor to the project.
The truly ballsy move would have been for Stuber and Parent to hire John Landis (An American Werewolf in London, Schlock), the godfather of the modern ravenous biped genre.

A Michael Bay self-parody ad (Koala bears meet George Miller‘s The Road Warrior) made with the cooperation of Michael Bay) for the Australian Commonweath Bank. Except the ad doesn’t mention the word “Commonwealth” so…I don’t get it.

The piece begins with the Koala bear action ad and then cuts to an American ad agency’s creative team (with Bay in attendance) showing it to the Commonwealth guys. Bay used “a lot of his own money” to make the ad,” an agency guy explains. Bay, faintly beaming with pride, adds that “seven helicopters” were used. The client is unimpressed, doesn’t get it either. End of spot.

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N.Y. Post critic/columnist Lou Lumenick is reporting exclusively that the Tribeca Film Festival “is cutting prices for this year’s edition, running from April 23 to May 4, after complaints about a 50 percent price hike for most tickets in 2007.

“Most evening and weekend tickets will cost $15, down from $18 last year, and the festival is introducing six- and 10-ticket packages that bring the admission price down to $12.50 apiece,” he reports. “The charge for most weekday and midnight screenings is dropping from $14 to $8, with a 10-ticket package for $64. A few gala screenings and special events will continue to carry a $25 ticket price.”
In late March ’07 Lumenick, Indiewire‘s Eugene Hernandez and myself (among others) groaned about the ticket-price hikes.
“It’s clear Tribeca has seriously lost its focus and become the cinematic equivalent of a street bazaar,” Lumenick wrote at the time. “The festival’s decision to boost most ticket prices by a whopping 50 percent from last year — most evening screenings now cost $18, a few as much as $25 — indicates a leadership that is increasingly out of touch with New Yorkers.

On 3.30 I wrote that “the TFF, launched on the spirit of downtown recovery from 9.11.01, now has a new rep — the nation’s most avaricious and money-grubbing film festival.”

“The lure of Matthew McConaughey shirtless for extended stretches doubtless has some marketing value, but after that, Fool’s Gold offers small compensation — a listless romantic comedy that, almost out of desperation, turns a little more violent than necessary near the end, ” writes Variety‘s Brian Lowry in a 2.4 review.

“Treasure hunting has certainly worked for the National Treasure franchise, and an earlier McConaughey-Kate Hudson pairing enjoyed some success. Still, after however many doubloons can be hauled up from the utterly review-proof, it’s hard to envision Warner Bros. separating too many fools from their money.”

Cause for guarded optimism or more poll smoke? Sen. Barack Obama has apparently (a) nudged into a slight lead over Sen. Hillary Clinton in California in a Zogby-C-SPAN/ Reuters poll out today, and (b) is holding a one-point edge over Clinton in California in a 2.3 Rasmussen poll.

On top of which (c) the same Reuters poll is reporting a nationwide dead heat between the two Democratic candidates; (d) Gallup is saying the same thing; (e) ditto a CBS/N.Y. Times poll; (f) a Pew Research Center survey conducted from 1.30 to 2.2 states that 41% of registered voters have said they dislike the idea of Bill Clinton being back at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, if and when Sen. Hillary Clinton is elected president (with 34 percent of voters having affirmed the same view last October); and (g) Maria Shriver, the wife of California’s Republican governor, announced for Obama earlier today.

As I did on 1.27, L.A. Times contributor (and Christian Science Monitor critic) Peter Rainer saw Sylvester Stallone‘s Rambo with a mostly male paying audience, and detected an unusual current in the raucous whoops and yaw-haws that greeted every over-the-top killing.

“Could Rambo be the Tony Bennett of the new movie generation?,” Rainer asks. “His retro-ness has become his pedigree. Of course, in both his Rocky and Rambo incarnations, Stallone has always been blatantly retro. The Rocky movies draw heavily on Depression-era tropes; the Rambo narratives are positively primeval. (With his no-tech skills and half-Indian blood, Rambo is as elemental as Tarzan, if not as talkative.)
“Unlike other aging stars (such as Bruce Willis) attempting to revive their action franchises, Stallone, in Rambo, doesn’t try to tamp down the toll of the years. (He didn’t in Rocky Balboa either, which accounted for its sweetness and may have been the key to its commercial success.) Stallone is a bit like the latter-day John Wayne, who also put his gruff weariness on display.
“But Wayne, in films such as Rooster Cogburn, consciously cartoonized his own image, while Stallone in his Rambo mode is still playing it straight. And this squareness may be one reason why his audience still finds him authentic — a classic.”