Barack Obama gave a speech to the American Medical Association yesterday in an attempt to get the organization’s members on board with his plans for healthcare reform. The president’s appearance alone may have been good for his cause, given that it was the first such address to the AMA in 26 years, but many doctors are apparently still skeptical of the government’s ideas and how they’ll actually work.

Meanwhile, the issue of healthcare reform continues to be a difficult topic in Congress, and the road to legislation is sure to be long and filled with much debate. So, to help Washington in the process, or at least to keep the politicians sane with a little entertainment, we’ve come up with a little healthcare movie marathon.

The ten films selected are admittedly more left-leaning in their potential influence, but that’s not necessarily a political move on our part. We simply chose titles we like, and maybe it just so happens that we like movies that show charity as good, greed as evil and healthcare as a right that all humans should be afforded.

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Last year, following the SXSW premiere of Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, I had an interesting chat with John Cho, Kal Penn and Neil Patrick Harris about the ethnic stereotype humor in that sequel, as well as their thoughts on movies focused on the discussion of race in general. In a way, I think the first two Harold & Kumar movies did as much as is needed in terms of making fun of racism — and, more broadly, any kind of stereotyping or racial profiling — so my first thought after learning that a third installment was in the works was that it should just be a simple stoner comedy with little or no concentration on the ethnicity of the two main characters.

However, now that this third film has a title, and that title is A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas, I’ve changed my mind. Sort of. Instead of playing the race card, I hope that writer-directors Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg go for religious satire. After all, it’s set during the holidays, and considering most ignorant Americans would assume that Harold and Kumar aren’t Christian (they may or may not be), the movie could tackle that sort of stereotyping. Then again, I would love it more if they actually went with the “Harold & Kumar Babies” idea that Cho proposed last summer.

Anyway, while I spent the day dreaming of my ideal White (Castle) Christmas movie, everyone else was wondering how Penn’s Obama administration job will affect the making of this sequel. Check out other bloggers’ thoughts on AVH&KC after the jump:

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On Sunday at True/False, filmmaker/blogger AJ Schnack screened the first thirty minutes of Convention, his verite-style film documenting the 2008 Democratic National Convention with an eye on the Denver locals (politicians, city administrators, journalists, protesters) who were in the mix. Shot by Schnack in collaboration with nearly a dozen documentarians (including the Oscar-nominated directors Laura Poitras and Julia Reichert, and Daniel Junge, who directed the Oscar-shortlisted They Killed Sister Dorothy), the film’s making-of process was almost as much of a serendipity-dependent feat of execution as the event captured on screen.

As his, uh, primary inspiration, Schnack cites Robert Drew’s Primary, a Direct Cinema landmark documenting the Wisconsin primary race between John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey. The first American nonfiction picture filmed with sync sound, its IMDb profile reads today as a who’s-who of 60s documentary film: Drew as audio recordist, Albert Maysles and Ricky Leacock behind the camera and D.A. Pennebaker in the editing room. Time will tell if Convention’s slate of collaborators seems as starry 50 years on, but in the present it stands out as a film built out of and on top of connections made on the film festival circuit. If, in the context of the incestuous world of indie film, that hardly seems all that noteworthy, it is relevant that the production seems to have harnessed the scrappy, obsessive energy of that rather insular community and put it to the service of documenting an event that could potentially have meaning to a much larger segment of the population. …Read more

For all the media speculation on how the Obama presidency will affect pop culture, it’s surprising that Barack and Michelle’s marriage is not discussed much. This is a couple who embrace often, and not just for camera opportunities. She has even been seen wearing his coat as if it were a high school varsity jacket. Have we ever seen a happier presidential marriage? Seriously, if the Clinton era birthed a film like American Beauty, it’s no wonder that Revolutionary Road can only earn about an eighth of that film’s domestic gross now that the Obamas are in the White House.

But can Barack and Michelle inspire happier onscreen marriages? And can that in turn influence marriage in America? Although the divorce rate was higher thirty years ago than it is now, the marriage rate in this country is at an all-time low. And that’s probably because young people haven’t had an ideal married couple they could look up to. So, in order to help Hollywood produce more loving movie marriages, we’ve selected five onscreen pairings that may serve as models.
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It was shut out of the Oscar race for Best Documentary Feature, but Blessed is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh, now playing in New York City, could easily inspire a Hollywood film about the life of its heroic subject. And that dramatic version could potentially garner multiple Academy Award nominations. It wouldn’t be the first time a figure documented in a nonfiction film was later portrayed in an Oscar-nominated movie. In fact, one of this year’s Best Picture contenders, Milk, is almost like a remake of the 1984 Oscar-winning documentary The Times of Harvey Milk.

Actual dramatic remakes of documentaries include Werner Herzogs’ Rescue Dawn, which revisits the subject of his earlier nonfiction film Little Dieter Needs to Fly, Michael Caton-Jones’ Memphis Belle, which fictionalizes the story of William Wyler’s doc The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress, and Martin Bell’s American Heart, which is loosely based on one of the subjects of his Oscar-nominated doc Streetwise. Also, the upcoming HBO dramatic film Grey Gardens was inspired by the Maysles brothers’ doc of the same name, and Hollywood has toyed with or announced remakes of the films The King of Kong, Murderball, Bra Boys and Sherman’s March.

To carry on the tradition, we’ve selected nine nonfiction films in addition to Blessed is the Match that would make great dramatic features.
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President Obama is magical. How else to explain how he found time in his busy pre-inauguration weekend to attend the Sundance Film Festival? He saw some films, attended some parties, pitched a high-concept movie idea and even met Steven Soderbergh, who admits he didn’t vote for the guy but wishes him luck. Filmmakers Jesse Epstein and Natalie Difford, of Chicken & Egg Pictures, managed to document our new commander-in-chief in Park City just before he was due in Washington for the swearing-in ceremony.

Okay, the real Barack Obama wasn’t there. Instead, the video short features an Obama action figure, one of the many popular products available last week in the great merchandization of Obama (one of these figures sits in my apartment, too, so I’m not judging). But the toy does at least represent the spirit of Obama, which was certainly present at Sundance throughout. That final moment is not staged; many festivalgoers abandoned screening rooms to see the inauguration. And no coverage of the fest was complete without reference to the concurrence of events.

Maybe one day the real Obama will find time to attend the festival. Sundance vet Al Gore can bring him.

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• 50 Cent announced a new production company, Cheetah Vision, which currently has eight scripts in development, including the company’s inaugural movie, The Dance, starring Nicolas Cage. 50 Cent will also see his directorial debut, Before I Self Destruct, released this year for free as a supplement to his latest album.
• Despite the fact that the presidential inauguration typically occurs during Sundance, this year the festival took a more noticeable pause to watch Barack Obama sworn in yesterday. Sundance Institute’s Michelle Satterberg on the event: “I think we just didn’t care about it [before]. But this is different.”
• Steven Soderbergh hosted a “secret screening” of his latest, The Girlfriend Experience. Check out Karina’s review here.
• As Sony Classics and Lionsgate make their first festival buys, Summit is reportedly interested in I Love You Phillip Morris. Meanwhile, at Slamdance, North American rights to The Ante have gone to Panorama Entertainment. Other Sundance titles likely to sell soon, according to Anne Thompson: Shana Feste’sThe Greatest; Bobcat Goldthwait’s World’s Greatest Dad;  the Ashton Kutcher-produced Spread; and the Anna Wintour doc The September Issue.
• Thompson also looks at the movie-related internet companies at this year’s fest. And on a similar subject, LouisGray.com asks,”Could Sundance do for Qik what SXSW did for Twitter?”
• According to E!, the whole “subdued” thing hasn’t actually affected the swag.
• Regarding the minor trend in Sci-Fi films this year, Moon star Sam Rockwell says, “I think in-camera effects are coming back full-throttle. I think people are getting a little sick of the glossiness of CGI and want to see old-school effects like they used to.” Hallelujah to that.
• Another trend this year: romantic comedy. Or, is it more like romantic “dramedy”?

• Robert Redford’s opening address yesterday offered a hopeful horizon. Though this year’s festival (and independent film in general) may face hard times, at least the Obama presidency is here. “This could be a very inspiring time for artists,” he told the crowd. And the concurrence (not coincidence) of the inauguration happening at the same time as Sundance, “draws attention to the fact that we’re going to be seeing changes coming when it comes to art.”
• Focus Features’ James Schamus also brings hope that passion for films could beat the empty wallet woes: “I’ve lost money on movies I’ve loved and acquired and made money on movies I’ve loved and acquired. I’ll overpay this year if I feel like it.”
• Update on the SAG controversy: Anne Thompson posts the guild’s response to the waiver “issue.” And if you want it more heated than that, check out the snowballing discussions from Nikki Finke and Patrick Goldstein.
• Sundance vet and regular Gregg Araki on the Prop 8 controversy: “a Sundance boycott would end up being a profound disservice to the gay civil rights movement as a whole.” Plus, the filmmaker takes a look at this year’s gay-themed films at the fest.
• Sundance and iTunes have gotten together again to make 10 of this year’s festival’s shorts available for free download during the event.
• Defamer’s Stu VanAirsdale lists this year’s “10 Celebrities With the Most to Lose,” with Spread star and online Sundance game show host Ashton Kutcher in the most “severe” position.
• E! ups the initial buzzed about titles to 25. Anyone want to go to 50?

• It was only a matter of time before some journalist tied Barack Obama to the outlook of this year’s fest. In the Toronto Sun, which says to “call it the Obamafication of Sundance,” festival director Geoff Gilmore is quoted as saying “A lot of the work seems to be putting us into another world — I don’t know if it’s escapist, but it is about fantasy and the future, and there’s animation we didn’t see in the past … Whether that’s a reflection of the times we live in, or just an aesthetic trend line of the moment, I don’t know.”
• While the fest has been called “subdued” this year, some non-film nonsense will still be occurring this weekend as Ashton Kutcher and Digg co-founder Kevin Rose co-host an interactive online game show in Park City called 24 Hours of Sundance and viewable at Qik.com.
• Two distributors actually looking to load up on a few films this year, in spite of the economy: Oscilloscope and IFC Films. Also at Variety: a list of the 19 films with buzz going into the fest.
• The Hollywood Reporter spotlights the growing trend not to use Sundance as a film market. They also highlight lower-profile buzz films to watch out for, including dramas Amreeka; Five Minutes of Heaven and Bronson and docs The Cove and The Carter, and predict acquisition for 10 films.
• Stu Van Airsdale, at Defamer, meanwhile predicts bidding wars for five films: I Love You Phillip Moris; An Education; The Greatest; Cold Souls; and Bronson.

One of the many things Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich did this week — instead of resigning from his position, as many people desired — was sign into law an increase on tax credits for films produced in his state. So, it should be only appropriate, and somewhat bittersweet, for the inevitable movie about his life and corruption hearings to be shot there.

Now that we’ve got a location for the film, it’s time to cast the players in Blogojevich’s scandalous tale. The Washington Post has already published a list of possible actors to portray the lead (John Travolta, Sean Astin, Gary Cole, Stephen Baldwin, Tom Cruise, Ray Liotta, Charlie Sheen, Mike Myers and Steve Carrell), but more difficult than casting Blogojevich (see our pick below) is determining what other significant figures should be prominently featured.

A straight biopic calls for way too many characters, so we’ve narrowed the film down to focus on just Blagojevich’s arrest and subsequent (forthcoming) trial. As always, if there’s another character to be included or another thespian suited to a role we’ve cast, chime in with a comment. Also, due to the fact that we’ve previously done posts about Barack Obama casting, let’s just assume that he’ll only be portrayed by a voice on the phone, a la Al Gore in Recount.
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Thanks to Barack Obama, you’ve possibly had enough inspirational speeches for one year. But if not, go see Milk, and also watch this video, which splices together bits from 40 films including obvious choices like Independence Day, Patton, Braveheart, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Animal House, as well as surprise additions like Newsies, Swingers and Galaxy Quest. The montage had me at the 7 second mark due to an appearance from Fozzie and friends (from The Great Muppet Caper), but it goes on longer than 2 minutes.

This is not just some compilation of cinema’s greatest inspirational speeches, though; it’s a well-edited stitching of words that come together as one long speech, the most perfect inspirational speech ever. Even Obama could learn a thing from this video from YouTube genius Matthew Belinkie (he also gave us “The Dark Bailout”), especially if the president-elect finds himself at the center of an alien invasion, a war with England or in a roomful of Muppets at the Happiness Hotel.

Check out “40 Inspirational Speeches in 2 Minutes” after the jump.

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Wendy and Lucy, Kelly Reichardt’s follow-up to the much-acclaimed Old Joy, stars Michelle Williams as Wendy, a young woman traveling across the continent in search of a canning job in Alaska. Wendy has little to her name but a car, some pocket money and Lucy, her dog. When problems arise with one pole on that trinity, the others follow, as Reichardt takes us through an intimate procedural examination of how quickly a life can unravel when balanced on a precipice.

With Wendy and Lucy opening in New York tomorrow, I sat down with Riechardt to discuss Michelle Williams’ desire for invisibility, smashing the indie film glass cieling, and the “ever-evolving American Dream.”

Karina: I saw the movie in Cannes, and obviously every month it seems like a movie about economic despair is becoming more and more relevant.

Kelly: Give it a week.

Karina: [laughs] When you think about some of these economic problems, so many of them seem to stem from people being in denial, and just sort of a general unwillingness to talk about the how the way that we live has consequences.

Kelly: Yeah. The consequences are like the guy who got trampled at the Wal-Mart.

Karina: Yeah. So when you think about getting the film out there, what audience are you hoping it will speak to?

Kelly: I don’t really have a plan for the audience, just questions. Like, are we related and do we owe each other anything? Are we supposed to take care of each other to any degree?

And we know we’re connected. Because I didn’t run up my credit card, and now my 401K is disappearing. So, we’re clearly connected. I guess, it’s just that question of are strangers… Are we supposed to do anything for each other, or is it each man for himself? What is the American Dream?

Karina: Do you think that the American Dream is something that even exists anymore? This idea of being able to go West, and if you work hard enough you’ll be fine?

Kelly: I think it’s an ever-evolving thing. I once heard a show about this guy who coined the phrase “The American Dream.” Do you know who he is?

Karina: No. I’ll look him up. [Ed: it's this guy]

Kelly: Yeah. I need to look him up. Because I believe that what it was all about was that it was like a frontier kind of idea. And the American Dream at that time was, let’s say it was a really harsh winter, but my crop survived. Your crop died, but my crop is enough to feed both of us. That was the American Dream.

But, that guy never foresaw class. Like he didn’t imagine that there would be class divides in this country. He didn’t anticipate that there would be such a vast divide.

I guess that the idea of the American Dream is an evolving thing, or devolving thing. Has it really just come to my TV is bigger than your TV? What is it? What do we want this country to be - the great experiment? What’s it supposed to be? We just lived through such incredibly dark days. And even though the economy’s crashing now, there is like at least there’s hope. We’re living in the days of hope. [laughs]

Karina: Just because of Obama?

Kelly: I think, he is redefining - he talks about us being connected. He doesn’t talk about poverty a lot, I’ll admit that. But, just to change the conversation from something other than, “Go out and shop.” Or to give the impression that opportunity is just at everybody’s feet and all you have to do is bend down and lift it up. You know, it’s not the same for someone who grows up with an education to someone who doesn’t. At least he’s more aware of that. To not have a total elitist asshole running the country, I think will be somewhat better.

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It’s beginning to look a lot like 1991. A former Disney starlet is on track for a Best Actress nomination. One of cinema’s greatest villainous performances is a sure thing for an acting Oscar. And, due to a relatively disappointing crop of Academy Award contenders, an animated feature is being talked about for Best Picture. One major difference between now and 1991, however, is now there’s a separate Oscar category for Best Animated Feature. While that doesn’t mean Wall-E can’t be the first animated film nominated in the top category since Beauty and the Beast, it does potentially mean that it shouldn’t be.

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The Gus Van Sant-directed, Sean Penn starring Harvey Milk biopic Milk opens next week, and it’s already generating controversy, especially in California in the wake of the Prop 8 debacle. Penn is certainly no stranger to playing politicians in the limelight; his Willie Stark character in All The King’s Men was loosely based on Governor Huey Long of Louisiana. While we’ve had a slew of movies about fictional presidents and politicians, we’d like to see more biopics based on some of the larger than life characters who have dominated the political world. From Rahm Emanuel to Pat Buchanan, here’s a look at a handful of political firecrackers who deserve their own Oscar-baiting biopic.

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