Saturday, March 10, 2007

A Brief Comment

Lately, there seem to be a lot of what one might call "Something to outrage everyone" news stories — cases where we could disagree on what's happening but either interpretation is cause for anger. The case of Jose Padilla, the alleged terrorist, is one of those.

Either this guy's innocent or guilty. If he's innocent, then your government has held an innocent man prisoner for three and a half years, doing everything possible to not let him have his day in court or proper legal counsel. They've also either tortured him intentionally or just by keeping him confined the way they have, done severe damage to his physical and mental health.

Or maybe he's guilty. If that's so, then the outrage is that your government has botched his prosecution beyond belief. Many of the charges against him have been dropped or dismissed. The rest may get tossed because of his condition or because the prosecutors keep amending their account of the facts of the case or, most recently, because they seem to have "lost" the videotape of his last interrogation.

I don't know which it is. But something really stinks about this whole affair.

• Posted at 6:53 PM · LINK

Today's Video Link

As we mentioned back here, this weblog has only three missions in life. They're not about stopping Global Warming or the War in Iraq or any of those unimportant, easy crusades. Anyone can do stuff like that. No, we tackle the vital issues of the day which are, of course...

1. Get the Souplantation to add their Creamy Tomato Soup to their regular line-up.
2. Get the Cadbury Adams Gum Company to bring back Adams Sour Orange Gum.
3. Get Skidoo released on DVD.

So far, we've had limited success with #1. The Creamy Tomato Soup is back at Souplantation but only for the month of March. (We trust you're websurfing via wireless connection from some Souplantation while eating this scrumptious Creamy Tomato Soup. That's where I'm posting from until April Fool's Day. I'm at one right this minute, happily regaining much of the weight I've lost in the last nine months.)

There's been no movement on #2 so we've decided to focus our energies on #3: A legal, Kosher release of easily the oddest motion picture ever to be directed by an Oscar-nominated (though not for this) director and released by a major motion picture studio. You want to know how strange this movie is? The three minute chunk you'll see in today's video link, which is from the opening of the film, is the most coherent part.

I am told that Paramount Home Video, which I once urged here to show some moxie and put this thing out on DVD, is powerless to act; that the estate of director Otto Preminger controls the 1968 film and won't let it out. I think they're making a big mistake. If you try and suppress Skidoo, three things will happen. One is that it'll still be around but the bootleggers will make the money instead of the estate. Secondly, the movie will be seen only via crummy prints that will harm its reputation. And lastly and most significantly, people will think of this movie as something that Otto must have been ashamed of and will therefore view it the wrong frame of mind.

It only works if you presume that Mr. Preminger — a skilled filmmaker, as he proved so many times in his career — knew exactly what he was doing and made exactly the film he intended to make, and that his intention all along was to create something no sentient human being could ever understand. The very same year, Stanley Kubrick tried to achieve the same goal in 2001, but he failed by not casting Groucho Marx as God or Jackie Gleason as a mobster who trips out on LSD.

Here's three minutes of Skidoo with Gleason, Carol Channing and Arnold Stang. While you watch it, I'm going back to get more of the Creamy Tomato Soup and maybe another slice of the Garlic Asiago Focaccia. Come to think of it, I believe there's an actress in this movie named Garlic Asiago Focaccia...

• Posted at 5:25 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Jonathan Chait on two sad things. One is that John McCain seems willing to sell out an awful lot of his principles to try and get the Republican nomination for '08. The other sad thing is that he's doing it even though it doesn't seem to be working.

• Posted at 12:42 PM · LINK

May We Present...

This year's Academy Awards, like most recent ceremonies, struck me as conspicuously devoid of star power, above and beyond the folks who were there because they might be receiving an Oscar. And the ones who were there for other reasons were seen over and over and over. It might have been a small but thrilling moment to have Jack Nicholson come out to present Best Picture but by that point in the telecast, we'd seen Nicholson eighty times in audience cutaway shots and Ellen DeGeneres had acknowledged him from the stage once or twice. So it was like, "Nicholson? Big deal."

I asked here who there is around who might have been a big deal as an Oscar presenter and I asked it in two categories. Who would have been exciting to see who represented "Old Hollywood?" And who of our current pantheon of stars would have given you a tingle if they'd suddenly been announced? Here are some of the names I received in the first category...

Jean-Paul Belmondo	Sidney Poitier	Brigitte Bardot
Karl Malden	Shirley Temple	Ricardo Montalban
Tony Martin	Sophia Loren	Olivia DeHavilland
Cyd Charisse	Elizabeth Taylor	Jane Russell
Celeste Holm	Kirk Douglas	Joan Fontaine
Deborah Kerr	Richard Widmark	Paul Scofield
Kathryn Grayson	Jerry Lewis	Betty Hutton
Lena Horne	Deanna Durbin	Van Johnson

The two most often-mentioned names were Doris Day and Mickey Rooney. Based on my admittedly-limited encounters with both, I would guess the following: That if you went to Doris Day and said, "Either you appear in front of a live audience or every man, woman and child in the state of Ohio will die," she would shrug and say, "Goodbye, Columbus." And if you put Mickey Rooney up there, he'd still be talking about the days when he was the biggest box office star in the world and you could go into the MGM Commissary and see the lovely Miss Judy Garland order a chicken salad sandwich.

A number of you also mentioned Charles Lane. I think it would be better if we waited until he got a little older.

Many of the suggestions were for interesting teams...like Sean Connery, Roger Moore, George Lazenby, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig all presenting an award together. Of course, that would mean taking Lazenby away from his job as a seat filler.

Other teams put forth: Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke. Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman. Robert Redford and Paul Newman. Almost anyone and Paul Newman. Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks. Jonathan Winters and Robin Williams.

In the category of Newer Hollywood, I got very few reponses, mostly duos from hit movies — Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, Mike Myers and Dana Carvey, Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, the cast of Ocean's 13, etc. I suspect the Oscars may already be doing as well as they can in this area.

A couple of people asked what I thought would happen if the surprise presenter in the Best Director category was Roman Polanski. I think it would depend on whether he was brought on in handcuffs...but the response would have been interesting. Would people hesitate to applaud a man convicted of statutory rape? Or would they have figured that if it's okay for him to win that Oscar, it's okay for him to present it? I dunno. What I think would have upset many is if he'd "appeared" via satellite link the way he testified in that libel suit he brought against the magazine, Vanity Fair.

Thanks to all of you who sent in suggestions, even the joke ones like Tony Clifton, Ron Jeremy and me. My favorite suggestion, by the way, was from the person who wanted to see Shirley Jones and Marty Ingels present an Oscar. I think that would have been wonderful. Imagine that moment when they announce Marty Ingels and every single person in the Kodak Theater gets up and walks out.

• Posted at 8:39 AM · LINK