AND THE WINNER IS…

A friend snapped this shot of me with America’s two most famous Revs, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, as we awaited election returns at a political campaign’s headquarters several years ago

Rev. Jesse Jackson got himself into a bit of hot water this afternoon: following an interview at Fox News on Sunday, a “hot microphone” picked up a private conversation he was having with another guest in which he crudely expressed his frustration with Sen. Barack Obama‘s recent speeches about black fathers needing to take more personal responsibility for their actions. Upon discovering today they had this audio, the network—true to their shameless form that media critic/Oscar blogger David Carr captured so well in his piece in Monday’s New York Times—made gossipy references to its existence on its afternoon programs while hyping up its full airing later in the evening on their most tatsteless of institutions, The O’Reilly Factor.

When Rev. Jackson’s remarks finally aired, they actually seemed fairly harmless:

“See, Barack—he’s talking down to black people… I want to cut his nuts off.”

According to O’Reilly, Rev. Jackson apparently made further remarks that would be more offensive, but O’Reilly said he did not feel they needed to be shared with the public:

“We are not out to embarrass him and we are not out to make him look bad. If we were, we would have used what we had, which is more damaging than what you have heard.”

This conveniently allowed O’Reilly to seem gracious while still also causing viewers to imagine how horrible the unaired remarks must be.

Rev. Jackson, meanwhile, tried to get out in front of the story, telling CNN:

“This is a sound bite in a broader conversation about urban policy and racial disparities. I feel very distressed because I’m supportive of this campaign and with the senator, what he has done and is doing. I said he comes down as speaking down to black people. The moral message must be a much broader message. What we need really is racial justice and urban policy and jobs and health care. That’s the range of issues on the menu. Then I said something I regret was crude. It was very private. And very much a sound bite.”

Bill Burton, a spokesman for Obama, said the Senator “of course accepts Rev. Jackson’s apology.” Jackson’s own son, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL), who is the national co-chair of Obama’s campaign, was less forgiving, coming down hard on his father in a written statement:

“I’m deeply outraged and disappointed in Rev. Jackson’s reckless statements about Sen. Barack Obama. His divisive and demeaning comments about the presumptive Democratic nominee—and I believe the next president of the United States—contradict his inspiring and courageous career.”

The younger Jackson added that he will “always love” his father, but “I thoroughly reject and repudiate his ugly rhetoric.”

I suspect this little spat may prove to be representative of something bigger: a generational divide in the black community, not big enough to cause older blacks to stray from supporting younger Obama, but too big to deny. Older blacks, particuarly leaders like Rev. Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton, are inevitably going to have ideological disagreements with Obama such as this one (which stems from Obama’s recent and repeated criticism that too many black fathers “have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men”). When they do, it will be interesting to see how they reconcile their loyalties to the candidate who shares their race with their loyalties to their personal principles: they can either criticize the popular young black man who has gone where no other black man has gone before—including Jackson, who came up short in the 1988 presidential campaign, and in his own moral conduct—or muffle their own outspoken voices… a concept with which some may be, as Jackson demonstrated, rather unfamiliar.

Mikey D., Maria, and myself a number of years ago in Los Angeles

My friend Maria Menounos of NBC’s Access Hollywood, and originally of the Boston area, scored a big coup this week: the first-anywhere interview with the entire Obama family—Sen. Barack Obama, his wife Michelle, and his daughters Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7. Maria’s latest exclusive sit-down—which comes on the heels of one a few months ago with Sen. Hillary Clinton—was recorded yesterday in Butte, Montana, where the family was taking a brief break from the campaign trail to celebrate Malia’s birthday.

It seems to me to be a low-risk, high-reward PR move by the Obama campaign… as we learned from the candidacy of John F. Kennedy nearly fifty years ago, one should never underestimate the power of cute kids to appeal to the hearts of voters and also make the candidate himself seem more energetic, youthful, and likable in their eyes. (Also, it’s pretty hard to look at these kids and listen to what they have to say and still believe that Sen. Obama is the “elitist” that some have tried to label him.)

Maria’s piece has been serialized into four installments, the first of which aired tonight on Access Hollywood and the NBC Nightly News, with the others set to follow tomorrow, Wednesday, and Thursday. Below, you can watch a very short snippet from tonight’s piece and get a sense of what the rest of it is like… a laid-back chat in which the candidate largely sits back and allows his wife to riff on him and his adorable daughters to tattle about sides to him not usually on display to the public.

I’m so glad to see that Presto, the computer-animated short directed by Pixar veteran Doug Sweetland that precedes screenings of WALL-E, has shown up online, because it is a gem. My friend and I attended a late night showing of WALL-E that was predominately populated not with children thrilled to see the film, but with adults presumably seeking an alternative to Wanted and hoping just to be amused and pass the time. Things got off on the wrong foot with seemingly endless ads and previews of corny kids movies, but finally a Pixar logo appeared and people readied themselves for the main attraction, only to come to realize that what they were seeing was not WALL-E but rather something called Presto. (I actually worried for a moment that we’d sat down in the wrong theater.) As the short—which features no talking, only pantomime—began, the disappointment of a further delay was unmistakable… and then, quite remarkably, the audience was charmed and won over. There were a few chuckles at first, and then, before long, a full house of grown men and women fitfully laughing in unison at the zany antics of an animated rabbit (Bugs Bunny’s grandson?) and the inconsiderate magician who owns him. In between my own chuckles, I looked around in amazement. All I could think of was the similarly unexpected scene in Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels (1941, which inspired the 2000 Coen brothers film O Brother, Where Art Thou?) in which a bunch of hardened prisoners from a chain gang are ushered into a church, sat down, and shown a Mickey Mouse and Pluto cartoon, and within seconds are howling with laughter as if they hadn’t a trouble in the world. Such is the power of laughter, and nobody has offered it as purely, or consistently, or to as many people as Disney, and now Disney-Pixar. Check out the entire library of Pixar shorts on the company’s site, and give a look to Presto—even though it loses some of its luster when removed from the big screen—below…

Jim Sturgess and Kate Bosworth in 21 (Columbia), which will be out on DVD on July 22.

I first heard about 21 (Columbia, trailer) more than a year before its nationwide release when a friend of mine was cast in a small part in the film and spent several days on set in Boston. My friend had already been a part of several big studio movies, good and bad, and told me he expected big things from this one, so I did, too.

21 was adapted from Bringing Down the House, Ben Mezrich‘s 2003 best-selling non-fiction novel about a group of M.I.T. undergraduate math prodigies who are corralled into a room by one of their professors, taught how to “count cards” during games of blackjack, and then begin a series of highly risky but also highly profitable weekend excursions to Las Vegas. The production offered a thrilling story jampacked with glamour, sex, danger, and fantasy; was given a $35 million budget; was to be helmed by the quirky-but-proven young Aussie director Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde, Monster-in-Law); and assembled a choice cast headlined by promising up-and-comers like Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe) and Kate Bosworth (Superman Returns) and supported by veterans Laurence Fishburne (The Matrix) and Oscar winner Kevin Spacey (who was also a producer on the film). All the pieces seemed to be in place.

And then, on March 28, 2008, the film opened and proved my friend neither completely right nor completely wrong.

On the one hand, it was a smashing commercial success, earning $24.1 million over its opening weekend to finish #1 at the box-office, and then retained that spot the following weekend by bringing in another $15.3 million. When its theatrical run came to an end eight weeks later, its cumulative take was an impressive $81.2 million, more than double its budget, and this was before it hit the ancillary markets (DVD, Pay-Per-View, etc.), where most movies make the majority of their money. On the other hand, it disappointed most reviewers, garnering a mere 35% approval rating from the nation’s critics, and an even poorer 28% nod from the “Cream of the Crop” among them.

And where did I fall on the spectrum? I didn’t see the film until this week when I was sent an advance copy of the DVD, which will be released nationwide on July 22. Here’s my take:

It’s an enjoyable escapist movie that could have been even more. Much of this falls on Sturgess, a 27 year old from England, who is being touted as the next big thing after roles in Across the Universe (2007), The Other Bolelyn Girl (2008), and now this. I don’t see it. 21 is, in some ways, a descendant of Risky Business (1983), but Sturgess is, in no way, evocative of Tom Cruise or anyone with any real star power—he’s okay looking, with a pleasant personality, and enough acting chops to get by, but I don’t see any fire in the belly… I see a deer in the headlights, and not only when the part calls for it. Which brings us to Bosworth, the 25 year old Los Angeleno who previously worked with Spacey on the ill-fated Bobby Darin bio-pic Beyond the Sea (2004), in which she played Sandra Dee. The problem with her work in that film, and in this, is that she is the blonde minus the bubbly; she seems not quite a girl, and not yet a woman, and consequently afraid and unsure of how to handle herself. The result? On film, as incredibly hot as her appearance is, her personality is cold, rendering even her sex-scene—I won’t tell you with whom—snooze-inducing. And yet I feel guilty criticizing her because she seems to be trying so hard, especially with her character’s frequent costume, makeup, hair, and accent changes, almost trying to will a change of aura that never comes.

The film’s salvation comes from two places: [1] its two veteran actors, Spacey and Fishburne, whose calling card is their simmering-but-repressed intensity (remember Lester Burnham from American Beauty and Morpheus from The Matrix, respectively?), and who deploy it to great effect in their small roles in this film; and [2] it’s sleak aesthetics, which are owed to a first-rate team of professionals who worked behind the scenes, and which merit lengthier discussion below…

Despite any aforementioned shortcomings, nobody can accuse Luketic & Co. of “not getting it”: what American moviegoers repeatedly demonstrate with their wallets and pocketbooks is that they value style much more than substance—its presence is largely why past Vegas-set movies like the Ocean’s films (2001, 2004, 2007) have been commercially successful, and its absence is precisely why others like Lucky You (2007) flopped hard—and so that is precisely what the filmmakers of 21 offer from the first shot through the last.

The film opens with a shot from behind and afar of a person riding his bicycle over the Mass. Avenue Bridge with the Boston skyline behind him, and then—impossibly!—swoops around and in to a close-up of Sturgess’ face. It is an awesome, seemless blend of camera footage (Panavision digital, taken from a helicopter) and CGI footage done in post-production—I was, therefore, not surprised in the least to find that the film’s cinematographer was Russell Carpenter, who won an Oscar a decade earlier for doing that same thing, as well as anyone ever had, on Titanic (1997). He employs numerous other crafty shots using special lenses and innovative lighting techniques, the importance of which cannot be overstated: they, as much as anything, make the games of blackjack, which are inherently undertaken by individuals, accessible to the entire audience.

Along with the usual Filmmaker Commentary option, the DVD includes several additional bonus features, ranging from the very strange (“The Advantage Player” offers Sturgess, Bosworth, and others awkwardly reading from a teleprompter and trying, without much effect, to explain how to count cards just like they did, and ends with Bosworth saying “If we can help you be a better player and win more often, then we have done our job”) to the very informative (“Basic Strategy: A Complete Film Journal,” in which Luketic and Carpenter detail and discuss the differences and challenges of filming in Las Vegas versus Boston, and “Money Plays: A Tour of the Good Life,” in which production designer Missy Stewart and costume designer Luca Mosca explain the deliberate choices and immense work that resulted in the look of the film’s sets and fashion).

FILM: C+
DVD FEATURES: B+
IN STORES: 7/22

Other than film, there are only a few things that I truly love: family, friends, politics, baseball, and tennis. I’ve loved tennis all my life—played it since I could walk, including on my high school and college teams… worked as a ballboy for the world’s top players at a major tournament as a kid… taught it at various sports camps and privately after that… and watched every major televised tennis match I could. Nothing, though, could have prepared me for what I saw today. Like most huge fans of of the sport, I was up bright and early this morning to watch the championship match of the sport’s most hallowed Grand Slam tournament, Wimbledon, which pitted against each other the world’s #1 and #2 players, Roger Federer (my favorite) and Rafael Nadal. The match began at 9am EST… and it only ended minutes ago, at about 4:30pm EST! While some of that epic length can be attributed to two brief rain delays, the majority of it is owed to the relentless, awe-inspiring efforts of two of the greatest players to ever step on a court, whose rivalry had already produced numerous instant-classics, and who have now given us the single greatest match in tennis history, with Nadal prevailing 6-4, 6-4, 6-7 (5), 6-7 (8), 9-7. Don’t take my word for it… none other than former world #1 John McEnroe just said the same thing on NBC, while hugging and thanking both players for the gift of what they just allowed us to see. If you’re a tennis fan who caught today’s match, you’re very lucky. If you’re a tennis fan who missed it, you’re very unlucky. And if you’re one of those closed-minded ninnies who are not a fan because you regard tennis as a girly-man, tier-two sport, I no longer feel any need to even argue with you… I’ll put these two guys and their performance today up against anything you’ve got. The match re-airs on ESPN Classic at 7pm EST tomorrow evening, so see for yourself.

I’ve just gotten home from spending the 4th of July with some family friends. After dinner, they sought my advice about which DVD we should watch, and so I ran through the major players from last year’s awards season. Upon realizing they had not yet seen The Diving Bell and the Butterfly—a film I first saw at a private screening in early November, then watched on DVD three different times with three different groups of friends in order to make sure they saw it, and still have not tired of—I aggressively urged them to give it a chance… as the good folks at Miramax found last awards season, though, it is anything but easy to coax people into watching a French-subtitled movie about a stroke victim during their leisure time, least of all on a happy holiday! Nevertheless, they relented, and by the end of the evening were, like the other groups of friends with whom I had watched the film, completely awestruck. Reactions of first-time viewers like these, as well as my own sense that the film holds up strongly on multiple viewings, lead me to believe that Diving Bell may well be the 2007 film that most impresses cinephiles years from now. Don’t get me wrong: I still adore the characters who populate Juno, and respect the craft of No Country, and admire the ambition of There Will Be Blood, and revel in the brilliance of Gone Baby Gone, and enjoy the rollercoaster of Michael Clayton, and embrace the humanity of Lars and the Real Girl, etc., but the longer that Diving Bell saturates in my mind, the more I feel that each and every frame of it is a carefully considered piece of art, filled with layers of meaning, and that even one false move by screenwriter Ronald Harwood, director Julian Schnabel, or cinematographer Janusz Kaminski could have easily ruined the film, and yet there were none. If you haven’t yet seen it, get on it. And if you have—or once you do—check out my conversations with star Mathieu Amalric, who plays Jean-Do (and will next play the villain in the latest James Bond installment, Quantum of Solace) and with supporting scene-stealer Max von Sydow, who plays Papinou, both of whom offer much further enlightenment on the film.

Last night, I was having dinner at Carmine’s, one of my favorite local restaurants, and began chatting with our waiter, Frankie Mosca. I introduced myself to Frankie the last time I was in for dinner after I overheard him telling some other patrons about the ups-and-downs of his other career as a filmmaker. Since that visit, he was the subject of an interesting profile in the local paper, and has continued to struggle to complete his passion-project, entitled This Wretched Life. Anyway, last night, while discussing Hollywood’s ruthless and corrupting ways, Frankie mentioned a fairly recent film on that very subject which had somehow skipped over my radar—a documentary called Overnight (2003), which, according to IMDB, captures the remarkable “rise and stumble of Troy Duffy, the bartender-cum-filmmaker who was swept up by Miramax’s Harvey Weinstein to turn his script for The Boondock Saints into a feature film.” I saw the completed film version of The Boondock Saints (1999), which stars Willem Dafoe in a slick orgy of violence that has made it a cult favorite among many young people, but it never quite won me over. Nevertheless, I’ve just ordered a DVD of Overnight on Amazon, and look forward to checking it out. You can check out its trailer below…