The Screengrab : john mccain

And Bob Hoskins As Joe The Plumber

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 17:30:00 GMT

Well, we figured it was only a matter of time. I suppose we're just lucky it's the still somewhat respectable Los Angeles Times who's doing it, instead of, say, the New York Post, or worse yet, the National Review.

We're talking about casting the lead roles in the 2008 election, which, if it ends anything as crazily as it's played out so far, will be in theaters near you by around 2010 at the latest. (Of course, that depends on who wins. There may not be any theaters near you by 2010 if it's the G.O.P. candidate.) The Times has decided to put their best guesses to filling the big-screen roles of the candidates and their various First Ladies and Gentlemen, and their choices run the gamut from obvious (Tina Fey as Sarah Palin) to intriguing (James Caan as Joe Biden) to inexplicable (Paul Giamatti as John McCain?).

Will Smith as Barack Obama seems like a boringly safe choice; why not Don Cheadle, or our personal favorite pick, Anwan Glover? You gotta take risks sometimes, in casting no less so than in politics. What about you, Screengrab readers? Who would you cast as the 2008 contenders and their spouses?

Warners DVD Keeps John McCain Interview Under Lock and Key

Connery, Lazenby, Moore, Dalton, Brosnan, Craig, Obama...

Phil Nugent — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 19:00:00 GMT

We're used to seeing actors endorse political candidates, but not like this: in an interview with that distinguished cultural journal Parade, Daniel Craig sizes up the American candidates for president and decides which of them is best-suited to take his job. After asking Craig about which Hollywood "tough guy" he would most like to emulate (“The obvious choice for me would be Bogart. Not only because of that ease he had with his unique take on masculinity, but also—and this is much more important—because he got to sleep with Lauren Bacall.”), interviewer Kevin Sessums hits him with the big one: “Who do you think would be the better James Bond—Barack Obama or John McCain?” As Sessums reports, "Craig doesn’t hesitate. 'Obama would be the better Bond because—if he’s true to his word—he’d be willing to quite literally look the enemy in the eye and go toe-to-toe with them. McCain, because of his long service and experience, would probably be a better M,' he adds, mentioning Bond’s boss, played by Dame Judi Dench. 'There is, come to think of it, a kind of Judi Dench quality to McCain.'”

In other election season movie news, Reuters is reporting that a majority of people who responded to a Moviephone.com poll voted Harrison Ford's character in Air Force One as their favorite movie president, coming in ahead of Morgan Freeman in Deep Impact. Trying to explain this, Moviefone's Scott Robson says, "It seems everybody is looking for a commander-in-chief who can come in and take command. Our readers voted with their hearts at a time when you have the economy going down the tubes, but in an ideal world it would be great to have a president who can kick some ass." It will be remembered that presidents Ford and Freeman stood up to Gary Oldman in a Satanic goatee and a big fucking rock from space, respectively. Others who made it onto the top ten include Bill Pullman in Independence Day, Jack Nicholson in Mars Attacks!, and Jeff Bridges in The Contender, who, respectively and with varying results, stood up to alien attackers, more alien attackers, and Gary Oldman in an Antonin Scalia haircut. E. G. Marshall in Superman II finished out of the money entirely, proving that if you balance the budget but also kneel before invading Kryptonian supermen, one guess which act is the one that everyone remembers.

Screengrab Review: "W."

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 16:00:00 GMT

It's not for me to offer unsolicited advice to a famous and successful filmmaker like Oliver Stone, especially when it's too late for said advice to be taken anyway – but what the hell, while I'm here I might as well tell you my idea for the movie Stone should have made instead of W. As you may have read here in the Screengrab or elsewhere in the liberal elite media, W. is a biopic of our current president, George W. Bush, who is not up for re-election and is leaving office in January no matter who wins. (Unless he barricades himself inside the Oval Office with a shotgun and a bottle of whiskey, which might have made for a good scene in W…but I'm getting ahead of myself.) As such, W. is unlikely to have a substantial effect on the upcoming election.

What if, instead, Stone had made a movie about the administration of President John McCain? Stone and his screenwriter Stanley Weiser could have cooked up a juicy, paranoid fantasia of a potential McCain Era in American history, supplemented by flashbacks from McCain's actual colorful past. It would be a similar movie in many ways; as Tom Dickinson writes in the fascinating Rolling Stone cover story "Make-Believe Maverick," McCain and Bush were both youthful fuck-ups with daddy issues, the major difference being that "George W. Bush was a much better pilot."

Our 43rd president's career as a pilot isn't covered in W. but Stone's film samples most of the greatest hits from Bush's misspent youth. We see his hazing as a Yale fraternity pledge, his inability to hold down a job for long (whether it be on a Texas oil rig or on Wall Street), his fondness for the demon alcohol, his courtship of librarian and future wife Laura (Elizabeth Banks), his baseball dreams, his sobriety and salvation, and finally his entry into "the family business." And although we don't see much of brother Jeb in the movie, it's clear that (in Stone's view, anyway) patriarch George Herbert Walker Bush (James Cromwell) sees the boy he calls "junior" as the Fredo of the family.

These blasts from the past are scattered throughout W., which primarily concerns itself with the Bush administration’s ramp-up to the war in Iraq. The film opens months after the 9/11 terror attacks, as the president and his cabinet brainstorm a catchphrase that will resonate with the American people. “Axis of hatred” falls short, but…ahhh, “Axis of Evil! I like that!” This scene plays exactly like the moment in Stone’s The Doors when Ray Manzarek dreams up the keyboard intro to “Light My Fire.” Sometimes it seems there is only one biopic in the world.

Stone’s unique brew of absurdity, paranoia and psychobabble is at its most potent in these Strangelovian war room scenes. The cast alone makes for compelling viewing, if only for the wide variety of acting approaches. As Condoleezza Rice, Thandie Newton is such a near-perfect replicant, she doesn’t come close to resembling an actual human being – she’s like something Disney shipped in from the Hall of Presidents. Jeffrey Wright is doing a voice as Colin Powell, but to the best of my recollection, it’s nothing like Powell’s actual voice. Others barely attempt any imitation at all; as the man Bush calls “Vice,” Richard Dreyfuss only once hints at Cheney’s Penguin grin, but he’s got the prince of darkness vibe down pat. When Cheney explains what the real plan is for Iraq – that is, the establishment of a new American Empire in the Middle East and Asia, with delicious black oil flowing from every pipe – W. is at its most giddily satirical and subversive.

It’s a shame the rest of it is so pedestrian. It all flows together and moves along at a brisk pace – it doesn’t feel like a movie that was shot, edited and released within the span of a baseball season – but the script is far too reductive and simple-minded. (Yes, you could argue that’s appropriate to the central character, but then you still have to sit through it.) Stone likes to be able to claim he’s depicting both sides of the story, so he appears to treat key points like W’s religious conversion and romance with Laura seriously. Then he turns around and gives us one of those classic Bushisms (“Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?”) and jars us right out of the movie.

As Phil Nugent posted earlier this week, Stone had originally planned to include more black comedy and surreal elements, and I do think that might have been the more fruitful approach. To the extent that W. does work, give credit to Josh Brolin – he’s the one member of the cast who gives both a pitch-perfect impression and a genuine performance. It’s hard to play dumb and spoiled and, y’know, carelessly destructive of an entire country, and still maintain a modicum of likeability – but Bush did pull it off for a while and Brolin pulls it off here. Poor Elizabeth Banks is saddled with a conception of Laura Bush that doesn’t extend much beyond “enabling airhead,” and James Cromwell projects too much gruff gravitas to pass for the patrician elder Bush.

It all comes down to “Poppy didn’t love me best, so I’ll show him,” and even if that’s true in reality, it’s a boring cliché on the screen. And since we’re dealing with Oliver Stone, a point worth making once is worth making a hundred times, in 100-point boldface type, until not even the dimmest bulb in the audience can possibly miss it. I’m reminded of a scene in Barcelona, where a character explains that he understands subtext to mean a “hidden message or import of some kind,” but wonders what you call “the message or meaning that's right there on the surface, completely open and obvious?” That is, of course, the text – and Stone’s movies are all text all the time, right there on the surface, completely open and obvious.

Who Cries For The Film Nerds?

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 14:45:00 GMT

The economic crisis has been hard for everybody. Some of us have lost their homes; others have lost their savings or their retirement money. John McCain has probably lost the presidency. But, as usual, it's the film geeks who suffer the most, as word comes from Wyoming that the Jackson Hole Film Festival is no more.

We know what you're saying: "I didn't even know that there was a Jackson Hole Film Festival". Possibly you were also saying "I didn't know that there was such a place as Jackson Hole, Wyoming." A few of you were probably saying "Which one is Wyoming again? Is that the one that's totally square, or is that Utah?" I also think I heard a "Seriously? Jackson Hole? There's a place called Jackson Hole and they expected people to go see movies in it?" Okay, okay, settle down. That's enough jokes. The fact is, with the economy bad and getting worse, film festivals -- which once were sprouting like mushrooms -- are likely to become increasingly scarce, and that's not a good thing for movies in generally, and for independent film in particular.

Then again, Hollywood's so-called "Golden Age" began in the 1930s, when America was in the midst of the Great Depression. At a time of deep deprivation and misery, people wanted escape and entertainment more than ever, and the motion picture business thrived. So, what do you think, Screengrab readers? Will the economic collapse we're facing be the beginning of the end for cinema, or will it herald a new Golden Age?

Related Posts:

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The 15th (and Final) New York Underground Film Festival

Warners DVD Keeps John McCain Interview Under Lock and Key

Phil Nugent — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Warner Brothers is fending off reports that they are keeping promotional materials for the November 11 release of the 1987 film The Hanoi Hilton on DVD under wraps rather than using them to stir up interest in the movie rather than advertise any connection to Republican presidential hopeful John McCain. The movie, which was released during the same wave of Reagan-era Vietnam films that included Platoon and Full Metal Jacket (as well as such gung-ho popcorn entertainments as Rambo: First Blood Part II and the Chuck Norris Missing in Action films), is a sympathetically intended treatment of the American presence in Vietnam that is set among the prisoners of war being held at the Hoa Lo prison where McCain served his time as a P.O.W. (The movie is not meant to depict any actual person's experience. However, it does make room for an appearance by an idiotic American movie star and war protester, played by Gloria Carlin, who is called "Paula" but is obviously meant to be Jane Fonda.) Earlier this year, McCain filmed an interview about his own prison experience which was to be included on the DVD. Now, reports Michael Cieply in The New York Times, Warner Brothers has "moved quietly over the last few weeks to block any promotional showing" of any part of that interview, for fear that it "might embroil the project in electoral politics." A spokesman for Warners' home enterttainment division describes its decision as "just us trying to be cautious and not affect the election one way or the other.” In response, Lionel Chetwynd, the British-born Canadian-American writer-director of The Hanoi Hilton, has fired back that "Finding someone in Hollywood who says they don’t want to affect the election is like finding a virgin in a brothel.” And you thought that British-born Canadian-Americans never got off any good ones!

Released by the infamous Golan-Globus/Cannon Film company, and starring Michael Moriarty in his Method-space alien phase, with a supporting cast that includes David "Hutch" Soul, Jeffrey Jones, Paul Le Mat, John Diehl, and Doug Savant, The Hanoi Hilton originally managed to bring together people of all different political beliefs and attitudes about the war in brotherly agreement that this was one shitty movie. A barely detectable blip on the radar screens during its brief spell in theaters (despite attempts by some commentators to pull in conservative moviegoers by hailing it as the anti-Platoon), it has since found an audience of appreciative veterans and nostalgic military hawks who discovered it on videocassette and late-night showings on cable TV. Chetwynd, a self-styled Hollywood conservative whose screenplay credits include the TV films The Siege at Ruby Ridge and DC 9/11: Time of Crisis and who had a hand in Celsius 41.11: The Temperature at Which the Brain... Begins to Die, a "documentary" feature, intended as a back-atcha to Michael Moore, has recently had his attempts to arrange screenings of the movie squelched by Warners lawyers, although Daniel P. Tokaji, an associate professor at the Ohio State University law school, told the Times that “I don’t immediately see what law they would violate.” Chetwynd, who points out that another studio, Lions Gate, doesn't seem to be keeping the pre-election day release of W. under a barrel, probably sees all this as a part of a liberal-Holywood conspiracy to keep his movie from doing its part to propel John McCain into the White House. Those who've taken a look at McCain's latest poll numbers may suspect that it has more to do with Warners not wanting to damage DVD sales by tying their product to a failing brand.