Forget any concerns about director Mike Nichols having shot some nudie footage of Natalie Portman in Closer (Columbia, 12.3) only to cut some of it out. It’s all stupid hormonal stuff and not worth talking about. What’s been kept in — a sequence between Portman, playing a stripper and wearing a kinky tassled bikini outfit, and Clive Owen in a private strip-club room — is very hot stuff, and I can’t imagine any complaints from anyone about anything. Enough said.

That was a very interesting decision by the Hollywood Foreign Press to classify Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ as a foreign-language film because it’s acted entirely in ancient Aramaic and ancient Latin. In so doing, the org has determined that Gibson’s film is not eligible for a Best Drama Golden Globe award. Except the word “foreign” doesn’t really apply because neither language is spoken anywhere in the world — they’ve been extinct tongues for many centuries. The Oxford Dictionary defines “foreign” as “being from another country,” but the countries or cultures these languages were spoken in centuries ago don’t exist. There is reason to call The Passion of the Christ an exotic language film or a non-English speaking film, obviously, but there is absolutely no factual or rational basis for calling it a “foreign language film.”

I don’t care about Roger Friedman’s motive in floating the idea of Harvey and Bob Weinstein taking over Sherry Lansing’s job and running Paramount Pictures. It may be an actual possibility or just hot air, but….hello?…it’s an excellent idea! An amazing idea. And I don’t care if David Poland or anyone else thinks it’s unlikely. A couple of shrewed, scrappy New York Jews steering the Paramount Pictures ship is an exciting and radiantly beautiful thing to contemplate. And I like the idea of Scott Rudin running Miramax also. It’s all a perfect Hollywood quilt. This industry would instantly become 33% healthier if these two scenarios come to pass.

I can’t make the link work, but this is an actual posting on Craig’s List that went up on Wednesday, 11.3, written by some guy in Philadelphia: “Straight male seeks Bush supporter for fair, physical fight. I would like to fight a Bush supporter to vent my anger. If you are one, have a fiery streak, please contact me so we can meet and physically fight. I would like to beat the shit out of you.”

So the smoothly assured, tonally agreeable, well proportioned Alfie is dead, which amounts to a mark against the concept of Jude Law being a movie star. No question that a $2935 average on 2215 screens for a $6.5 million total sucks. I don’t get it, I really don’t…this movie is far from a burn…but it’s dead now and it’s off to video. (It performed pretty well in England — go figure.) Paramount distrib chief Wayne Llewellyn suggested that one possible reason it flopped is that red-state moviegoers “didn’t want to see a guy that slept around.” Yeah, those red-staters are a pretty anti-libidinal bunch.

In Nancy Hass’s New York Times profile of producer Scott Rudin (Sunday, 11.7), it’s reported that Rudin “has told a few insiders that he has been offered the top job at Miramax.” Whoa…where did that come from? Is this for real, or is Rudin making a point? “I know that movies are basically meant to be entertainment, but I’m not that interested in entertainment,” Rudin (Closer, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou) also tells Hass. She also writes, “[Rudin] claims to be driven by what he calls a ‘hugely romantic view of talent’ and the need, at least sometimes, to say ‘something absolutely worthwhile.'”

And yet Hass’s piece also includes a coded journalistic reference to Rudin’s next two adult-themed films, Closer and the Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. “Whether Closer, with its searing look at relationships and adultery, or the zany Aquatic, directed by Wes Anderson and starring Bill Murray, will combine emotional depth with box-office magic remains to be seen.” The meaning of the phrase “remains to be seen” is New York Times-ese for “they don’t quite hit the mark.” I’m not saying this is the case (and I hope it’s not), but I know all about namby-pamby Times tippy-toeing.

Four early observations on Oliver Stone’s Alexander (Warner Bros., 11.24), which screened for junket press on Saturday, 11.6: (1) Val Kilmer steals the movie in the role of Phillip of Macedon, Alexander’s warrior father, which is good for Kilmer — this will counter-balance his playing the prophet Moses on stage in that bizarre Ten Commandments musical; (2) There’s a pronounced gay love element in the film — Colin Farrell’s Alexander and Jared Leto’s Hephaestion characters, both “very pretty” and said to be “madly in love with each other,” according to one viewer (one should quickly add that sexual closeness between male warriors in ancient Greece was a different equation than a generic gay relationship today); (3) This aspect may encounter resistance with red-state audiences, especially given the virulent red-state rejections of gay-marriage initiatives, plus the general homophobic current in Bubbaland; and (4) the strongest political echo isn’t in the gay behavior, but, in the view of one major critic, in the notion of “a leader from a priveleged family with a powerful father who goes off and conquers middle-eastern territories.”

Posting Later Today…

Wednesday’s column will be up sometime around 3 or 4 pm this afternoon (okay, maybe not until 5 pm). I will overcome this late-posting problem somehow. I want to, I mean. I’m thinking of buying this high-energy powdered stuff called Superfood. A friend has told me about it. Has anyone tried it?

Knockout

Life is suddenly full of sparkle and possibility when a movie surprises and delights you. I live for moments when it all comes together in the dark and you’re suddenly part of an off-the-page experience, when the spark plugs are firing and everything has kicked in and it’s all a smooth groove.
You’re hearing and reading it everywhere and the buzz is not exaggerated. Brad Bird’s The Incredibles (Disney, playing everywhere) is a major wow and easily one of the coolest films of the year. It’s got the stuff and the attitude that super-hits are made of.

My willingness to invest in big-studio animated features over the years has been, shall we say, restrained. Their relentless brightness and bouncing imagery is, for me, headache food.
But every so often one comes along that’s especially rich and witty (i.e., 80% of the jokes geared to adults) and revved-up in a “familiar” but totally fresh way — The Little Mermaid, Toy Story, Alladin, Shrek. Or it’s an exception to the rule in some gentler, more soulful vein, like Iron Giant.
< ?php include ('/home/hollyw9/public_html/wired'); ?>
The Incredibles is one of these and a lot more. Being my usual show-me self on top of feeling incredibly bummed by the election, I went to see this Pixar-produced film two nights ago with an attitude. I tried to feel bored or irritated by it, but it wouldn’t cooperate. It’s simply too well written, too sharp, too synched-up.
I never thought I’d feel this jazzed about a family movie. It’s not just an exceptionally good animated flick — it’s X-factor. It doesn’t just fill the screen; it seems to reinvent notions of what a family-type entertainment can be. If only they were all this hip and plugged in and given to flight. They’re not, of course, and that’s the reality that gives The Incredibles a truly exceptional profile.
The two things that keep paying off like a slot machine are Bird’s script — funny, fairly original, truthful, Simpsons-like — and Pixar’s absolutely dazzling and eye-popping digital animation, which has become an entire trip in itself.
I tried to speak to some tech guy at Pixar about the astonishing leaps their digital animation has made over the past few years, but the p.r. bureaucracy was overloaded with the film opening the next day, so take it from me on faith: the hard-drive imagery in The Incredibles is so vivid and startling that it looks almost psychedelic.

There hasn’t been an attempt in The Incredibles to simulate organic reality as a form of sensual me-too-ism. The idea, rather, seems to have been to digitally reconstitute everything in a way that seeks to constantly persuade the viewer that Pixar’s version is better. The textures of the spandex superhero suits, the strands of hair…the look of nature itself ….the flora and heaving seas….everything has been revised into a vast alter-reality that doesn’t pay tribute to as much as compete with the real thing.
I urge everyone who cares about absorbing these amazing images to the max to see The Incredibles in a theatre equipped with digital projection. The general color-pop, texture-throb elements are mind-blowing in this way. Digital delivers a certain hyper-sensuality that’s hard to describe, but once you’ve been there there’s no going back to the farm.
Bird’s script is basically about the rejuvenation of middle-age, which in itself doesn’t sound particularly kid-friendly. This is why I liked it, of course, but I can’t imagine any kid over the age of seven or eight who wouldn’t feel the same.
The happily-ever-after story is fantasy, of course, but rooted in what feels to me like hard middle-class experience. It’s not just a lot of bullshit ideas thrown in because they’re funny, like they’re making some Will Smith movie. The script has an undertow. The underlying message is that parenting doesn’t necessarily amount to a banishment of adventure and vitality, and that a family in a rut can rediscover and replenish itself.
Mr. Incredible (voiced by Craig T. Nelson) and Elastigirl (Holly Hunter) are onetime super-heroes sidelined by lawsuits (some of the people they’ve saved are resentful of their heroism and have turned to shyster lawyers to try and clean up) and middle-aged responsibilities. They’re just a couple of parents trying to cope and keep it together with three kids, bills and lethargy to cope with.
To escape the drudgery, Mr. Incredible and his former superhero pal Lucius (Samuel L. Jackson) — known in his heyday as Frozone, a spandex guy who can turn water into ice — listen to a police-band radio at night in order to find life-threatening situations they can jump into and be heroic in, just to feel the old juice.

The action kicks in when Bob is offered some freelance superhero work after getting fired from his dead-end insurance-company job. Elastigril gets the idea he may be cheating on her. It turns out his new employers are baddies with the usual sinister motives, which lead to Mr. Incredible being in jeopardy. This results in Elastigirl and their two teenage kids, Violet (Sarah Vowell) and Dash (Spencer Fox), donning the superhero attire and jetting off to the Jurassic Park-like island in the Pacific where Dad is being held.
Hence the third act with the family fighting a diseased wannabe-superhero creep (Jason Lee) and his giant spider-like killing machine, both on the island and then back in the big city, etc. A bit predictable…okay, more than a bit…but rousing and satisfying and funny all the way.
The Incredibles isn’t just a great animated feature in the mainstream vein. It’s a deeply satisfying movie-movie (and that term is used alot without much sincerity). I wouldn’t call it blazingly profound or super-original, but it passes along some fundamental truths about families and middle-age and the need for a sense of vitality in life, and that’s no small thing. And it ties the bundle together with wit, humor and splendorous style.

Fahrenheit Redux?

Like everyone else, I’ve been assuming over the last several weeks that if Bush won the election Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 would be dead as a Best Picture contender. If Bush had lost, nominating the Moore doc “would have been a way for Hollywood to celebrate itself and its influence,” a journalist friend recently said.
It may not have had much of a real chance regardless, despite its phenomenal financial success. Some have posed questions about Fahrenheit‘s thoroughness and veracity, and there’s the effect of all those right-wing Moore-slamming docs to consider. But ironically, it may be that Bush’s electoral triumph has actually improved its Oscar standing.

Here’s the scenario, as advanced by industry tipster Pete Hammond:
Academy voters, who are overwhelmingly liberal and, like most people I’ve spoken to around town over the last two days, probably deeply depressed over Bush’s triumph, may decide to nominate Moore’s film for Best Picture as a way of saying or doing something in response to the election, instead to wandering around and looking like they’ve been kicked in the stomach.
Nominating this anti-Bush doc, which the Cannes Jury was not alone is calling a first-rate piece of filmmaking, would be at least that….a retort, a nice tidy little f***-you to the Reds or, more to the point, the Karl Rovies. We will not lie down, acquiesce, go along. What this film says is valid and verified, and it links to core convictions that most of us share.
“My thinking a long time ago was that if Bush should win it would take all the heat out of Fahrenheit,” Hammond told me Thursday afternoon. “Then I changed my mind, and now I’ve really changed my mind. Now that there’s even a more intense feeling about Bush and everything this film was about, it may actually help the movie.”
Nominating Fahrenheit 9/11 would be “the most collective statement that the Hollywood community could make,” Hammond believes. “And remember they only really need a [marginal] number of votes to nominate it, and Academy members may look at this as not only a deserving film but a way to say something…I think it could be in a stronger position than if Bush hadn’t won.”

Former Universal Pictures honcho Tom Pollock, whom I briefly spoke to outside Hollywood’s Arclight theatre last evening, disagrees. “I happen to be one of those who supports a film for Best Picture based on its artistic merits, and not on any political baggage or import that goes with it,” he says. “And my interest, right now, is on other films.”
Marketing veteran Marvin Antonowsky, also an Academy member, doesn’t believe in the Hammond scenario either. “I don’t think it’s going to happen,” he said Friday morning.
I don’t know if it’ll come about either, but emotionally it would feel awfully damn good if it did. It would also be, in my humble view, an artistically justified thing. Just ask Quentin Tarantino or Tilda Swinton.
Fahrenheit 9/11 is an extremely persuasive piece of hard-core agitprop. It was the year’s second-biggest cultural lightning rod movie (after The Passion of the Christ). It made motion picture history by becoming the first documentary to pass the $100 million barrier. And it cut through the sludge and, in the view of many millions, said something right and valuable and brave.

Creasy’s Legacy

Paul Doro has sent in an interesting piece that analogizes voter attitudes with the import of two Denzel Washington films that opened earlier this year:
“It may surprise you, but two Denzel Washington characters hold the key to this year’s election, and particularly the whole red state/blue state issue,” Doro begins. “What happened can be summed up, or at least echoed on some level, by Tony Scott’s right-wing Man on Fire and Jonathan Demme’s liberal-minded The Manchurian Candidate.
“On one level or another, Bush vs. Kerry was like Scott vs. Demme. Or Creasy vs. Marco.
“Although it was a major summer thriller about a live-wire topic, Candidate managed a gross of only about $65 million, and thus was seen as a disappointment. Fire , released in April, managed to hit a slightly spunkier figure of $78 million. Neither was a monstrous hit or a huge disaster, but they paralleled the election, which also had a clear winner despite being a close contest.

“Creasy, Denzel’s Man on Fire character, went on a brazen mission of cold, calculated revenge in the film’s third act. He killed (i.e., slaughtered) without remorse in order to accomplish what he felt was absolutely necessary or at least deserved, which was delivering justice to the kidnappers of a little girl he’d come to love.
“Creasy’s attitude was clear: collateral damage be damned. If you got in his way, tough shit. He was righting a wrong. Completely a black-and-white issue. Old school and Old Testament. An eye for an eye. When someone strikes at those close to you, you strike back. That is easily understood and digested. You appeal to people’s base emotions and make it difficult for them to see it any other way. Good must prevail over evil and order must be restored.
“Just like the United States did in Iraq, Creasy essentially did it all solo. He didn’t care what anyone else thought about what he was doing. He wasn’t going to listen to what anyone else had to say. He received a little help here and there, but it was ultimately his mission. He didn’t require allies or approval.
“And audiences that showed up, ate it up. They took comfort in seeing Denzel seek vengeance (and is it any coincidence that his character quotes the Bible?). They loved watching him mercilessly torture and kill in order to rescue the little girl.
“It was pure and it was simple. Everyone cheers for a righteous man who has a troubled past (remind anyone of anyone?) but is trying to do right. No one stopped to question the moral issues. Complexity is not in the building. He did what had to be done. For Red State voters, what’s not to love?
“On the other hand, the vastly superior The Manchurian Candidate (in my opinoon, of course) didn’t exactly set the summer box office ablaze. Maybe that was because last summer was busier and more competitive than usual, but you can’t say that it didn’t disappoint at least a little.
“Denzel’s Cpt. Marco falls into the gray area. He’s a much more complex man than Creasy . And despite being a military man (Kerry), he has a tough time winning people over. Maybe he just lacks charisma. Or he seems a little distant. Maybe he’s too smart for his own good and comes off as an elitist. Whatever it is, people don’t immediately warm up to him. They are skeptical and take convincing.

“Intelligent and thoughtful, Marco’s methods are quite different from Creasy’s (as is their respective situation). He gathers evidence and seeks facts. He asks questions first and pulls the trigger later. Maybe he never gets around to pulling the trigger. Maybe he finds other ways to accomplish his goals. Maybe he can find allies and work with them to achieve things. Better to make friends than enemies.
“There is evil in the world, Marco believes, but it isn’t obvious. It doesn’t always announce itself. You have to look for it and calmly, carefully attempt to stop it. There are lives at stake. You don’t want to cause any unnecessary harm. Quite the opposite. Better to be certain about what you’re doing. Better to know exactly who your friends and enemies are.
“Ask people why they voted for Bush, especially moderate, non-religious freaks. Stoppping gay marriages might have been a hot-button factor, but their vote really boiled down to terrorism. Not wanting to change presidents while we’re at war. Not really believing that Kerry could protect us. Believing that Bush could do a better job of keeping us safe, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
“In short, people wanted the man who shoots first and asks questions later. The man who is simple and sees things in black and white. The man who will do whatever it takes to find the bad people and destroy them, consequences be damned. They made their decision at the box office, and at the polls.”

Prick Up Your Ears

Michael Bergeron of Houston, Texas, was the first to correctly identify all three of Wednesday’s sound clips.
Clip #1 is Burt Lancaster’s J.J. Hunsecker speaking about Tony Curtis’s Sidney Falco in Alexander McKendrick’s Sweet Smell of Success (1957). Clip #2 is Cary Grant and Ingrid Mergman in a third-act scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946). And Clip #3 is Kirk Douglas and George Macready in a scene from Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory.
Here are today’s dialogue clips. Clip #1 is from Walter Hill’s Streets of Fire….kidding! It’s actually the easiest of the three, and features a certain debonair actor who committed suicide over, if memory serves, a profound case of boredom. Clip #2 ought to speak for itself, and Clip #3 is a tiny bit harder than the other two, but not by much.
Harder and harder clips will follow in the weeks to come. Send in your answers quickly and include a JPEG photo, and I’ll post the winner in the column in next Wednesday’s column.

Linney

“I love Laura Linney as much as you do, and maybe even more, but surely the
unmitigated commercial failure of Newmarket’s P.S. sends her chances of a Best Actress nomination completely down the gurgler? And is it certain that Searchlight won’t push for her in the leading category for Kinsey?” — Australian Exhibitor Guy
Wells to Australian Exhibitor Guy: The movie died, eh? Toast? Off to video? I guess Laura Linney’s great performance doesn’t deserve a Best Actress nomination then. Really too bad. I wish P.S. had been more successful because if it had been, Linney’s performance would be a contender.

Lefties

“In Wednesday’s column you said your spirits needed a lift. I’ve been trying to find some small consolation in the fact that we’ll probably never have to see or hear George W. Bush again.
“Now that he’s a lame duck, we won’t have to watch him campaign again. Now that he’s no longer accountable to voters, he’ll refuse to give press conferences. And now that he has an even larger Republican majority in the Senate and House, there will be nobody to hold him accountable with public hearings for the inevitable scandals that usually bog down second terms.
“I expect the laziest president in history will spend much of the next four years on vacation at his ranch (out of sight, out of mind) while the world goes to hell.” — Mike Scholtz, Duluth, Minnesota.

“I’m a little surprised at the election as I figured Kerry would win by a narrow margin. Bush is riding on the coattails of the evangelical crowd, since I guess any Christian who at least thinks about going to church has a moral inclination toward Bush since he considers Christ his main man.
“In any case, nothing can be done. It’s over and nothing really ever changes anyway. Life just goes on. Try to stay out of trouble, I guess. I know the Kerry win meant a lot to you. I guess this also means Fahrenheit 9/11 is not going to be nominated?” — Kathyrn Garcha.

Youth

“The Youth Vote is the Fool’s Gold of Elections. The Democrats know they don’t vote. The Republicans know they don’t vote. This hasn’t changed. And it likely never will change. So why did Kerry try so hard to get the youth vote? And just months after that strategy clearly failed Howard Dean.
“Sure, they’ll vote for ya… on msnbc.com, yahoo.com, or cnn.com. But will they show up at the polls? Well they haven’t done it yet, and there is no reason to believe that they will anytime soon.
“I imagine that standing in a two-hour line at the polls is similar to standing in a two hour long line at the DMV, but without the obvious benefit of walking out with a drivers license. The `I voted’ sticker is cute, but just isn’t enough to entice the young voters who are now, more than ever, expecting things to be quick and easy… two things that voting is not.
“And I say this as a voter that fits into the coveted 18-29 age group… as someone who woke up at 5:00 AM on Tuesday to get to the polls by the time they opened… as someone who voted for the president of the United States for the third time… and as someone who voted for Bush.
“As for your extreme fear of the way that the country is choosing it’s leaders, rest assured that while some dumb people voted for Bush for the wrong reasons, some dumb people voted for Kerry for the wrong reasons too (like the mythical draft). Generally it evens out. Libertarians (who make more sense to me than the Republicans or the Democrats) tend to vote Republican because we don’t have a viable alternative. The lesser of two evils, in our view.

“If you wanna blame something original, blame the same-sex marriage initiatives that were on the ballot in 11 states. Evangelical Christians weren’t voting for Bush based on his DUI in 2000. Well this year in swing states such as Michigan and Ohio same-sex marriage initiatives were on the ballot. That initiative may have gotten them to the polls and while they were there they probably voted for Bush.” — Derrick Diemont , Yorktown, VA.
“Why did the Blues lose? Maybe if people who happen to disagree with them politically weren’t automatically labeled as fascists or Bubbas or gun-toting, three-tooth rednecks who hate all them queers. Maybe if people like Nick Kristof and Lewis Beale would stop complaining about Red Staters ‘voting against their own interests.’
“And perhaps, just perhaps, people who vote Republican know what their own interests are better than Nick Kristof. and they think it’s the height of arrogance for him to tell them what they should think is important. Maybe if people who support the President weren’t diagnosed as psychotic.
“Gee, I can’t imagine anyone getting all that thrown at them and not wondering if the accusers have just a hint of elitism. If you stopped spending all your time disparaging such a large percentange of the voters, they might swing your way every once in a while. Just a thought.” — Bryan Farris, Baton Rouge, LA.
Wells to Farris: You’re right, Bryan. It’s mean and dismissive of Blues to suggest that Reds don’t respect the rights of gay people. Reds have long been known for their respect for gay rights, and it was lax of me to ignore this.

Righties

“How sad you are! To me, you’re just another wacko liberal living among other wacko liberals who really believe that people living in La La Land know what’s best for the country. You people live in a bubble, feeding off each other’s discontent. It must really hurt you folks to have to come to the realization that your opinions carry zero weight in America.” — Louis L. Orlando.
“Stick to movies. Your politic rants are for the birds.” — Bicycle Bob
“Maybe its time for you to admit liberalism is dying a slow and tortured death in this country. It’ll hang around in [the] big cities and Massuchucetts but it’s dead everywhere else. And why? Because it is out of touch with modern America.” — Mindy Cohn
“Did you pack your bags for Canada yet? You and Alec Baldwin can catch the flight together.” — Mark Zeigler.

From a Friend

“A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles.
“It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt.
“But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are the stake. Better luck, therefore, to us all; and health, happiness, and friendly salutations to yourself.” — Thomas Jefferson , 1798.

There is an acute disconnect between what the Reds are saying about Tuesday’s election and how the Blues and their philosophical cousins in Europe, South America and Mexico have reacted to it (i.e., adversely, with horror). Deal with it, Bubbas — the folks outside our borders and across the seas genuinely feel you’ve unleashed some very dark forces upon the world. Of course, people have always heard what they wanted to hear and have disregarded the rest, etc. But one could truly argue that the Reds — at least in terms of world opinion — are, in a very real sense, living in a walled-off realm. Or, to borrow a phrase from Hannah Arendt√ɬ≠s “The Origins of Totalitarianism” (1950, in “the gruesome quiet of an entirely imaginary world.”

Late Again

Apologies to all in confessing that Friday’s column won’t be up until 3 or 4 pm Pacific. Hooray for The Incredibles, a possible new potency acquired by Fahrenheit 9/11, first peeks at Alexander this weekend, new dialogue audio clips, etc.

After the Fall

I was goaded early this morning by a conservative woman friend. (Yes, there are righties in Beverly Hills — they just don’t announce themselves). I had initially provoked her in an e-mail yesterday, telling her to grim up for a Kerry win. Now she was calling back to gloat over the Bush win, which she said was driven by moral reasons on the part of right-thinking Americans.
This beautiful fascist blonde was puffed up like a toad about a near-surreal state of affairs. The Reds so despise the perceived elitism and morally jaded attitudes of the Blues, she was more or less saying, that they’ll cut off their nose to spite their face.

“One of the Republican Party’s major successes over the last few decades has been to persuade many of the working poor to vote for tax breaks for billionaires,” Nicholas Kristof says in a New York Times column published this morning.
The final outcome of the election was uncertain as Kristof wrote the piece, but “John Kerry’s supporters should be feeling wretched about the millions of farmers, factory workers and waitresses who ended up voting — utterly against their own interests — for Republican candidates,” Kristof added.
< ?php include ('/home/hollyw9/public_html/wired'); ?>
The Red’s went for Bush for “moral reasons”? Am we all co-starring in a Twilight Zone episode? Is that Rod Serling standing off to the side of the sound stage, being cryptic and grinning and smoking an unfiltered cigarette?
Who were the pollsters talking to? And what about those exit polls we were all told about yesterday showing Kerry taking the election?
In his concession speech a minute or two ago (it’s now 11:19 am), Kerry just said, “America only moves forward.” I know he doesn’t believe that the election results has supported this statement. Tens of millions in this country, I’m sure, feel that the opposite has just kicked in.

I get it on one level. To be elected President these days you have to have at least a touch of that Andy-of-Mayberry quality, and Kerry was badly cast. Too tall, too rich, too much of an Easterner. He didn’t energize the youth vote. He turned out to be a taller Michael Dukakis. If Bill Clinton had been allowed to run, he would have won hands down.
I’m trying to keep myself from throwing up as I write this. I don’t want to succumb to negativity, but I despise Bubba Nation and the thinking that led to what happened last night. And yet I know that hate is futile and will get me nowhere, and that it’s time to turn the page.
“If people want to vote against their own best interests, it’s gonna come back and bite them in the ass,” a journalist friend, Lewis Beale, wrote me this morning. He said that while researching a just-published George Romero story in Toronto, “Every Canadian I spoke to thought a Dubya victory would prove that America was absolutely psychotic. Time Canada published a poll in which 56% of Canadians said the word would be `worse off’ if Bush won.”
If there’s any reason to think otherwise, I’d sure like to hear it. My spirits need a lift, as there’s obviously no comfort to be gotten from Ilsa of Beverly Hills.

Bunker Blues

Speaking of facism, Adolf Hitler is back. The Austrian corporal may not mean very much in terms of significant box-office, but he obviously still has the power to greenlight movies. Thematically he is still the gift that keeps on giving.
There was that four-hour CBS biopic, The Rise of Evil, that aired last year, plus that ’03 documentary called Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary. There was also Menno Meyjes’ Max (’02), a low-budgeter about a young and unsettled Hitler in old Vienna.
And now comes Downfall, a smart, vividly rendered, highly convincing ensemble drama — funded, filmed and performed by Germans — about the last few days of the Hitler regime, focusing yet again on spiritual and cultural collapse as the last of the loyal huddle in an underground bunker in Berlin.

This is nothing new for anyone with any mileage. There’s already been two respected, reasonably accomplished Hitler-in-the-bunker dramas — Hitler: The Last Ten Days (’73) with Alec Guiness in the lead role, and The Bunker (’81), a TV pic with Anthony Hopkins as Adolf.
But it’s been 20 years plus since the Hopkins film (which I never saw), and a couple of generations have grown up since. And Downfall has a certain cultural authority due to the fact it’s the the first German-funded film to tackle the subject head-on since G.W. Pabst’s Der letzte Akt (1956), which nobody has heard of, much less seen.
But what kind of currents can A. Hitler be expected to stir among U.S. audiences? And especially within the Academy?
This is obviously one question facing Downfall‘s producer and screenwriter Bernd Eichinger, who’s also the head of the Los Angeles-based Constantin Film.
Using the perspective of Junge, the young woman who worked for Hitler from ’42 until the end and whose recollections were the entire focus of the Blind Spot doc, is one thing that sets Downfall apart. (An excerpt from the respected ’03 documentary is used at the end of Downfall.)
Directed with workmanlike efficiency by Oliver Hirschbiegel, Downfall is based on “Inside Hitler’s Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich,” a book by Joachim Fest, and the memoir “Until the Final Hour: Hitler’s Last Secretary” by Traudl Junge (the Blind Spot subject) and Melissa Mueller.

The result is an exceptional historical piece. It’s all about detail, detail and more detail — not so much a Hitler character study as a Guernica-sized, pointillist portrait of the last remnants of Nazi culture collapsing into itself.
Plus it has an extremely feisty and snarly (if not entirely unfamiliar) Hitler portrayal by Bruno Ganz, along with a supporting cast that delivers one memorable drill-bit moment after another.
I don’t know where to start in praising them all, but the stand-outs include Alexandra Maria Lara (as Traudl Junge), Corinna Harfouch (as Maga Goebbels, the wife of the famed Nazi propaganda minister), Ulrich Matthes (as Goebbels), Thomas Kretchmann (as a morally dissolute soldier), Heino Ferch (as Albert Speer), Juliane Koehler (as Eva Braun), Michael Mendl (as a tough German general), Goetz Otto (as Hitler’s personal adjutant) and Donevan Gunia (as a Hitler youth dodging Russian bullets).
Downfall was favorably reviewed several weeks ago out of the Toronto Film Festival. Variety’s Derek Elley called it “classy upscale fare” and “a cumulatively powerful Goetterdammerung.” And it has done well commercially since opening in Germany, Austria and German-speaking Switzerland in mid September.
And yet Downfall appears to have a problem in Los Angeles. There doesn’t seem to be enough of a receptive mood among the early-viewing industry crowd, which will have something to say about whether Downfall has any kind of shot at being nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

Downfall hasn’t yet found a U.S. distributor, which surely says something about the mood out there.
On Tuesday I wrote that Eichinger hadn’t hired a savvy, plugged-in public relations veteran (someone like Fredel Pogodin or Nancy Willen, say) to rep Downfall with the Academy’s foreign branch and, less importantly, the Hollywood Foreign Press, which hands out the Golden Globe Awards. But today (Thursday, 11.4) I was told by publicist Anna Gross that Karen Fried (formerly of Rogers and Cowan, the Angelotti Company) is being brought in to handle this.
And there’s an idea out there — pretty much groundless, if you ask me — that the film portrays Hitler with too much sympathy.
Derek Elley said that Downfall “will undoubtedly raise discussion in some quarters for its coolly objective, humanistic approach.” I echoed this view myself in my 10.22 column. I had been told that the film depicts Hitler in a way “that may seem overly sympathetic (i.e., too vulnerably human) to industry mainstreamers, which, if true, means it’s toast.”
I’ve seen Downfall and it isn’t toast. It deserves respect and allegiance. And it doesn’t soft-pedal the venality of Adolf Hitler in the slightest.
Gnomish and bent-over, Ganz’s Hitler is a raging misanthrope who sometimes screams about being betrayed or poorly served, is sometimes in denial about his troops’ ability to resist advancing Russian troops, and sometimes wants to pull the proverbial temple down on his (and everyone else’s) head.
Most of the story is about the last ten days of Hitler’s life, from his 56th birthday on 4.20.45 to his suicide on 4.30.45. But a lot of fascinating stuff happens all through the film that doesn’t concern Hitler, and there’s almost an entire act lasting about 40 minutes that unfolds after he and Eva Braun are gone.

There’s a devastating sequence in which Goebbels’ wife Magda poisons their six children before she and her husband commit suicide by pistol.
You’re led to assume that Lara’s Traudl Junge will be a key character, since the film begins with her being landing the Hitler secretary job in 1942. And the film does stay in touch with her, but it pays attention to so many other characters as well.
I don’t know what else to add, except to reiterate that Downfall is in no way a Hitler-coddling thing, or even a slightly oblique one.
Okay, there’s one device in this movie that tries to vaguely humanize the guy. It shows us that Hitler loved his dog, a German Shepherd named Blondi. And yet just before he kills himself Hitler gives orders for Blondi to be given poison, and we see this happen and we hear the poor dog cry out just as the poison is being put in her mouth. So the hint of that regular-guy, dog-loving thing is pretty much cancelled out.

Prick Up Your Ears

Here are three dialogue clips. Listen to `em all and try to identify, but you can’t just say the movie title – you have to identify the actors too. They’re all fairly easy, if you’re any kind of movie buff.
Clip #1 is, I think, fairly legendary and rooted in the lore of yesteryear nocturnal Manhattan, Clip #2 is pretty hard to miss if you’re a fan of intelligent thrillers, and Clip #3 should also be easy to spot (and I’m not gonna say why).
Harder and harder clips will follow in the weeks to come. Send in your answers quickly and include a JPEG photo, and I’ll post the winner in the column as soon as he/she is known.

Election

I’m being told that I was too harsh last night in condemning the 18 to 29 year olds for their weak turnout, which, according to MSNBC, amounted to the same percentage of youths who voted in 2000. But the fact is that voting levels yesterday were higher across the board, including the 18 to 29 group, so it was all proportional.
So okay, I over-reacted. But obviously the youth vote still wasn’t high enough. They could have changed things and they didn’t, and the slackers know who they are.
“Before you deride an entire age group as `scumbags,’ you may want to look at your statistics. Even though the 18-29 voting group represented 17% of the electorate, as it did in 2000, the fact is that many, many many more voters in that age group came out to vote this time, but so did older voters so the percentages did not change. It also appears that the voters in the 18-29 age range voted much more convincingly Democratic than they did in 2000.

“Apparently the large numbers of older voters who came out in 2004 but not 2000 were able to offset those Democratic votes. You may want to point your ire at these older voters, but that would not fit in with your pattern of deluded but cranky nostalgia for the survivors of the 60s and 70s.” — Marc Reiner, New York, N.Y.
Wells to Reiner: I don’t have any particular nostalgia for the `60s and `70s, although I’m a huge fans of ’70s movies. Especially ’70s crime movies. Which reminds me: Charley Varrick is showing this Saturday at the American Cinematheque.
“Okay, yes — fuck Red America and its President. But take it easy on the kids. 17% is a decent turnout from any 10-year demographic slice. And if the percentages held from 2000 it means 20% more of them did get out.
“If you’re looking for a goat this morning I’ll offer Bin Laden. That egomaniac’s sudden appearance on Friday spooked the sheep enough to carry the day for Bush.
“But it’s a hard morning. I’ve never been more proud to be an Illinoisan; I wish I could say the same about being an American.” — Joe Greenia, Chicago.
“One reason why that youth vote number is so low (at least for the lower half of the demographic) is that most people of that age are out at college. Often, that means they are a good distance from their polling place and don’t go to the polls. If they vote, it is via absentee ballot, which that poll wouldn’t account for. Neither me, nor my wife voted in ’92, when we were in college.

“Stronger arguments can be made that Kerry failed because just saying that you are not Bush isn’t good enough for a lot of people. Also, having a personality of a stump doesn’t help. Whether we like it or not, how personable a candidate is is more important than how intelligent he is.” — Jason Birzer.
“The under-29 crowd voted in the same numbers as it did before. However, since more people voted in this election than in the last election that statistic represents a larger number of people. So there were in fact more under 29’s who voted this time than last time, just not enough to insure a Kerry victory. It might be a good thing that a lot of them didn’t show up, since not all young people are Democrats.
“Still, if you want to be pissed at someone, be mad at the kids at Ohio State University. If they had all gone and voted in Ohio rather than sending in absentee ballots in their home states, the state might have swung blue.” — Bradley G. Sims.
“I would save my venom for people like Michael Moore. Fahrenheit 9/11 cost….what? About as much as an average episode of Friends? It made over $100 million in the theaters and became the biggest selling DVD of 2004. And yet Moore continually refused to let it get a free showing prior to the election. He would only permit pay-per-view or pay webcasts. It shows where his priorities truly lie.
“However, I doubt if Moore is doing an Oskar Schindler right now, agonizing over what more he could have done to change he election. Now he gets four more years of profitable bitching.” — Rich Swank.
“I wrote to you last week in a very optimistic way about the youth vote, but clearly my fellow young Americans fucked me. We did show up in record numbers (seeing as how the voter turnout was extraordinary and my demographic maintained the same % of voters as we did in 2000), but it wasn’t enough. If only a dense atmosphere of apathy didn’t surround the beautiful havens of passionate and informed democracy, like my university.

“As for myself I was there at the Connecticut polls at 5:45 AM with Kerry propaganda to represent my age group, but apparently I didn’t represent them accurately. Thanks for your clear perspective on the whole thing and I can’t wait to commiserate or celebrate with you in ’08. Until then let’s hope the movies are good.” — David Ehrlich, Columbia University, New York, N.Y.
“I woke up very early this morning with a sense of hope. I hoped that maybe, just maybe, there was a silent coup just waiting to bre and boil over. But as I sit awake at 3:10 AM CST, I’m left wondering, what happened?
“How is it that Bush stands such a great chance of winning? How is it that this man that really does represent so many bad causes has such a strong base of support? How is it that a country that makes Fahrenheit 9/11 the highest-grossing documentary of all time, something that really does show that there is a strong part of the country dissatisfied with our current leadership, let the film’s subject stick around?
“How is that possible? How did this happen? And wwho knows what will come next? Where will we send our war on terror next? How many more will die in Iraq? How many Americans will suffer at home through Bush economic policies, education policies, and civil rights violations? Four more years. How anyone could be so irresponsible to not vote is beyond me.
“I will wake up in roughly five hours to attend classes for the day. The world I wake up in will remain unchanged. And I will feel sick to my stomach. To Bush supporters, congrats. I applaud your passion and your desire to see this man remain in office. You have your beliefs and you stuck by them all the way to the end. To Kerry supporters, we tried. To the undecided that chose not to vote, thanks.
“I’m angry. I’m opinionated. I’m trying to remain calm. But if the young voters didn’t quite show up in the droves that people expected them to, I wonder how they will feel if the draft is reinstated. I’m just wondering what the hell happened.” — Andy, Vermillion, South Dakota.

“Come on Jeff — split the country? Is it really that bad? Do you really feel so harmed and disillusioned and assaulted by this regime that you feel the country should be split in two? This is just getting ridiculous.
“I know people care for what they believe in, but the madness that has taken place over this past election cannot go much further. I am probably considered the enemy by you. I am in that 18-29 group that didn’t vote but would have voted for Bush. Its not that I really like Bush — it√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s that it√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s a choice between what I felt was the lesser of two evils. I find that Kerry seemed to be a weak person with follower qualities written all over him. The democrats shot themselves in the foot with having someone as mediocre as Kerry as their choice.
“My generation will not be remembered as the Generation of Shame because we chose not to vote in this, anyone closely related to your thoughts should be. I just find it to be a horrible travesty to consider splitting the country over this, or that this election needs to be as divisive for the general public as it is shown to be by people of your stripe. I have many friends who are hard-line blue like you, and guess what, we are still friends. We may have differences but we stick through them. You need to learn that this is not the end of the world.” — David Harper.
√¢‚Ǩ≈ìIn regards to your comments that all 29-and-unders are a Generation of Shame and that it is their fault for yesterday’s election, go fuck yourself. Last election it was all Nader’s fault, and now it is young people√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s. Maybe Democrats should think about creating a stronger, clearer message, and stop looking for scapegoats when they lose elections. Your comments reek of sore losing. By the way, these comments are coming from a Shame Generation 22 year old Kerry Voter.√¢‚Ǩ¬ù — Dan Morfesis.
“If you ask me, the American people let us down. The whole world, I mean. We were
expecting a change. Americans should be aware that their Presidential election affects every other country, and they should be able to see beyond their fears. They should carry the title of ‘strongest nation in the world’ with more dignity. Instead of starting wars all over the world to help us all to be ‘free,’ they could simply avoid wars…or better yet, avoid the President who seems so eager to start them. That would be much more helpful.” — Alexandro Aldrete, Monterrey, Mexico.

A heartfelt tribute to the 18 to 29 year-olds who stayed home yesterday and didn’t vote, as written by Cake’s John McCrea (and pointed out to me on Tuesday evening by literary agent Victoria Wisdom):
“How do you afford your rock’n’roll lifestyle?
How do you afford your rock’n’roll lifestyle?
How do you afford your rock’n’roll lifestyle?
Excess ain’t rebellion.
You’re drinking what they’re selling.
Your self-destruction doesn’t hurt them.
Your chaos won’t convert them.
They’re so happy to rebuild it.
You’ll never really kill it.
Yeah, excess ain’t rebellion.
You’re drinking what they’re selling.
Excess ain’t rebellion.
You’re drinking,
You’re drinking,
You’re drinking what they’re selling.”