The Hot Blog Archive for October, 2008

Hard To Fight This…

70,000 in Mile High in August… 100,000 in Denver today…
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9 Comments »

The McCain Campaign Speaks To The $150k Shopping Spree

Today, Ellzabeth “Talking Points” Hasselbeck introduced the “concern over the $150k wardrobe is sexist” lie into the campaign, followed by Sarah Palin emphasizing personal accessories as the issue and McCain claiming – without detail – that at least a third of the clothes had been returned or not worn (what does that mean?)… and all I could think of was…

ADD, 3:51p – And here is a glimpse of another view of a similar Charles Durning character on election night… the guy run out of town on a rail, Senator Mccain… and Pappy O’Daniel, still sweet Sarah Flainin’ Palin…

7 Comments »

Weekend Estimates by Klady

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So now we know

43 Comments »

Why Should Any Voter Trust Her When The McCain People Do Not?

Andrew Sullivan, the single most valuable aggregator at this time in this political season, pointed to it and said it first. But read the CNN story and be amazed
A second McCain source says she appears to be looking out for herself more than the McCain campaign.
“She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone,” said this McCain adviser. “She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else.
“Also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom.”

21 Comments »

Friday Estimates by Klady

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Well, the dancing tykes will thrash the cutting psychs this weekend, guaranteed by the Friday win at the box office for HSM3 over Saw5.
That said, the Saw franchise remains a cash machine for Lionsgate. This opening will be right in line with Saw

66 Comments »

The Difference Between The Two Camps

If, say, a Clinton said of Joe Biden, “”Thank God, he’s not gonna have to be president from day one,” we would see the quote and the idea that this is an issue used daily by the McCain campaign to show that Obama made a bad choice for VP and lacked judgment… too risky… not ready…
But it was Joe Lieberman who said it about Sarah Palin. The full quote is: “Thank God, she’s not gonna have to be president from day one, because McCain’s going to be alive and well.”
The quote, even in context – never much of a concern when the McCainers are smearing – still suggests doubt about whether Palin is ready for the job and reflects poorly on McCain’s judgment.
Of course, we have been listening to half a Joe Biden quote for a week now

1 Comment »

20 Weeks To Oscar – Do Politics Matter?

Four years ago, it was one of our softest Oscar seasons.
Eight years ago, it was one of our best.
How much does the election matter?
2004 didn’t seem terribly urgent, as the election went. As much as people wanted Bush out in this town, by this time of year it already seemed pretty unlikely that John Kerry had it in him to overthrow the W.
There was something rather retro about the season, with The Aviator, Ray, and Finding Neverland all set in the past; Million Dollar Baby feeling for all the world like a 50s period drama, and the only “current” movie was Sideways, which was, as most Payne/Taylor films are, kinda 70s.
Left behind were Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, Fahrenheit 9/11, The Sea Inside, The Motorcycle Diaries, Collateral, House Of Flying Daggers, Bad Education, and others

24 Comments »

The Vet Who Did Not Vet & True


Review – Changeling

Changeling is an interesting true story. A woman in the late 1920s, a single mother with a low-end (but rising) management job at the phone company, comes home one day after being called unexpectedly into work on an off day and finds that her son is missing. Five months or so later, her son is returned

15 Comments »

Million Dollar Bigot

Here is the new trailer for Gran Torino
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I hope it’s great… but I wonder how big the story can be… and I now know where Chris Nolan got the sound design for Christian Bale in the Batman suit.

20 Comments »

And He Ran It… Sold It… As (Racist/Sexist) Fact

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The AP (home of the neck & neck poll of 50% evangelicals) story
ADD, 1:24p – What Fox News said yesterday
(45 minutes and counting of me watching Fox News without a mention of the story aboiut the falsification.)
ADD, 1:42p – From the now removed MySpace page of the hoaxer… amazing…
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40 Comments »

AFI Has No Doubt About Doubt

Congratulations are due all around now that Scott Rudin and Miramax decided to launch Doubt‘s public life at AFI Fest, here in L.A., next week on Opening Night.
The film heroically replaces The Soloist, which after thinking it would stay in place, had to go when the talent just didn’t want to play along with a premiere six months before an opening day.
to my eye, this is an upgrade for AFI and a good, solid decision for Doubt, which will be landing for the Los Angeles critical community a day after both Milk and Frost/Nixon screen for larger groups of press. But Doubt has an advantage in its placement… so loing as there aren’t too many sponsor speeches.
Of course, in the end, it’s akways the movies, the movies, and the movies.

13 Comments »

Timing Is Everything

I don’t want to diminish the significance of someone’s pain or to excuse a crime, if it took place, or the criminal…
BUT… I was listening to Dennis Prager just this morning, listening to the Republican talking points turning to “If Obama loses, his supporters will get violent.”
And lo and behold, a 20-year-old white woman who works a phone bank for the McCain campaign in Pittsburgh was allegedly attacked by a black man in PA

28 Comments »

Ron Howard, Andy Griffith & Henry Winkler Go Retro For Obama

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

Wow… it’s at Funny or Die, but it is kind of remarkable and serious, really. Andy Griiffith seems like someone who would be really helpful campaigning in the south.

26 Comments »

The Hot Blog

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon