The new trailer for Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Storydebuted yesterday on CNN.com, but obviously the world (including me) was too busy crapping on the Avatar trailer to notice. Even the Wolfman spot received more notice. For awhile last night I thought maybe people, even those on the left, were tired of Moore completely. But no, there has finally been some discussion of the thing today.
And the consensus appears to be that Moore isn’t making films any fresher or more groundbreaking than James Cameron is. In fact, Moore’s latest seems surprisingly dated. This is something we’ve expected, of course, given the ongoing story of the economic meltdown, but it is interesting to see so much Bush as well as a complete lack of footage that appears to have been shot since Obama was elected.
Worst of all, everyone agrees, is the use of M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” on the soundtrack. Even if that song hadn’t been used to death by Pineapple Expressand Slumdog Millionaireads, I would think I was watching a trailer from 2008. How about, given the current events, Moore just rereleases Sicko instead?
Check out what the rest of the film blogs are saying about the film/trailer after the jump:
What’s better than hearing from young, generally apolitical American movie actors on their opinions regarding the presidential election? Hearing from old, generally funny British movie actors on their opinions regarding the election. I’m not sure what is so interesting about John Cleese talking smack about Sarah Palin, but it’s become a very popular clip, despite the fact that it’s just Cleese chatting and not, as I wish he was, presenting an anarchic parody sketch featuring a talking parrot intended to represent the vice presidential candidate. Perhaps the Monty Python gang could have written something as silly as the McCain/Palin campaign, but I’d much rather see proof of that than hear about it.
So why am I featuring the clip today? Well, perhaps in anticipation of W., this will just be a week filled with celebrity endorsement videos. No, I’d rather not, especially since a lot of them, like the Hayden Panettiere ad on FunnyorDie.com are not even a little bit amusing. Besides, yesterday’s clip already pointed out that these things aren’t exactly all that film-related (and at least Joseph Gordon-Levitt had visual aids). So here’s the real reason I’m commenting on this video: please, John Cleese, or anybody else, make some political videos that are actually funny. Remember how great the Will Ferrell as George W. Bush ads for ACT were four years ago? That’s what I’m talking about. Paris Hilton spouting her economic policy a while back was fine and all, but when a few mediocre and obvious sketches from SNL represent the best political parody we have at a time so close to a major presidential election, it’s time for someone to rise to the occasion of hilarity.
Earlier this week, I recommended 10 movies for Democrats to watch. So, to balance things out and hopefully show a lack of bias, I’ve now selected 10 recommendations for Republicans, too. This was actually the more difficult task, because there are so many classic films that display conservative values — and in the 1980s alone, I think there were about a billion films promoting relatively right-wing lifestyles and ideas. Therefore, I’ve limited my picks to the last two decades, except for one underrated gem that left me with quite an impression as a boy.
The Dark Knight(2008) Some said Batman is Bush, others said Cheney, but either way this past summer’s superhero blockbuster resonated with certain conservatives who saw the film as something of an argument about — if not apology for — the actions of the current administration. Similarly, this summer’s Hancock and Iron Man have been read as being particularly relative to Republican politics. …Read more
I’m not expecting to learn anything from Oliver Stone’s Bush biopic, W., but it’s possible that I will. After watching this clip depicting the first encounter of the future President (played by Josh Brolin) and the future First Lady (Elizabeth Banks), I’ve already learned something I didn’t previously know: that Laura was a Democrat, one who even campaigned for ‘68 Presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy, before meeting the conservative, Barry Goldwater-reading man of her dreams at a backyard barbecue.
Surprisingly, Stone’s portrayal of how George and Laura met is accurate. At least, it is if Wikipedia is to be believed. And I guess that only guarantees me that the setting is correct. The dialogue is probably only based on speculation. Not that I mind. I still love Stone’s The Doors and have no problem with the romantic fabrication of how Jim Morrison and Pam Courson meet in the film, and as a Doors fan, I know how ridiculously false it is.
It seems appropriate to follow yesterday’s footage of Oliver Stone’s W.with the international trailer for Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon. Both films are about leading candidates for worst U.S. President of all time (well, after we discount Harding, Buchanan, Jackson, Pierce and a number of others). And each has a subject that apparently inspired the year’s biggest blockbuster, The Dark Knight.
Weeks ago, in an opinion piece published in The Wall Street Journal, mystery author Andrew Klavan basically stated that Batman is George W. Bush in the comic book adaptation. Today, Gabe at Videogum jokingly wrote, “just from watching this trailer, I learned that Richard Nixon was the inspiration for Batman’s voice in the Dark Knight.” Now, the question is, will either of these comparisons help their respective films ride the success of TDK? Oh, and how does Entertainment Weekly’s caricature of McCain as Batman figure in?
After watching the trailer for Oliver Stone’s W. a few weeks ago, I had the impression that the George W. Bush biopic wasn’t going to be an impersonation fest. Of course, we only really got to hear James Cromwell as George H.W. Bush, and he didn’t seem to be bothering to sound like anything other than himself — not that I was expecting him to do Dana Carvey doing the senior Bush, but a bit of a change in voice, in order to make me not feel I’m watching the junior Bush getting yelled at by L.A. Confidential’s Captain Smith, would have been appreciated.
Fortunately, as we can now see in some new behind the scenes footage courtesy of Access Hollywood, Josh Brolin is making an effort to sound like the man he’s portraying. Maybe it’s not so perfect that he’s mistakable for the real deal when you listen to the audio alone, but at least he doesn’t just sound like Josh Brolin, either. The video also gives us additional glimpses of Toby Jones as Karl Rove and Elizabeth Banks as Laura Bush. The latter can be seen studying actual footage of the President (and likely the First Lady) and practicing mannerisms, and thankfully providing a tiny bit of playfulness to an otherwise too-serious looking set.
Now, when do we get to hear Banks speak? And, for that matter, when do I get my anticipated impersonations of Condi, Colin, Karl, Don and Dick?
It started off seeming like a joke. But Oliver Stone’s Bush biopic was legit — even if it then appeared to indeed be “a joke”. And now, because the internet can’t lay off writing about the thing (Bush=traffic), we are able to see just how much of a joke the thing is. Thanks to The Hollywood Reporter’’s Risky Biz Blog, we can read the first three pages of the script (originally titled Bush, now known as W), which looks like it was written by a student in a high school creative writing class (it was in fact written by Wall Streetscribe Stanley Weiser). Well, obviously Bush experts would declare it inaccurate. Are we to really believe that Bush called Karl Rove a “turdblossom”? If the script wanted to get the facts straight, he would have used “butthead” instead.
Throwing a wrench into the WGA talks that neither side really needed, SAG has started talking shit about the recently-cemented DGA/AMPTP deal. SAG’s Alan Rosenberg wrote a letter to his guild warning them that the publicized details of the DGA pact were too vague to put much faith in, and that the pact may not actually be a victory on the digital download front. The DGA’s Michael Apted responded (and I’m paraphrasing), “If you don’t know the details, how come you’re sending letters, gettin’ all up our shit?”
Variety has scant new details on Mark Romanek’s exit from Universal’s Wolfman remake: in this case, “creative differences” seem to translate to “money.”
Oliver Stone’s not just talking about making a George Bush movie––he’s now found someone to fully finance the thing, so that it can be fast tracked into production by April, and possibly in theaters in time for the November election. Chris previously did a double take on this project here.
Here are some gags that could have been saved for the actual movie: George Bush smoking pot and saying the words “cock sandwich”; the one-eyed inbred son in the basement, which comes after an obvious set-up, anyway, and which reminds too much of the tow truck driver’s house in the woods from the first movie; and the Ku Klux Klan sequence, which feels ripped straight from O Brother, Where Art Thou?– it will likely still be funny in the movie, despite its being familiar, but there’s no need to make us feel like the movie won’t be fresher than a sack of chicken rings.
This is Michel Gondry’s video for Bjork’s Declare Independence. It’s okay. It kinda has the feel of a musical number from Dancer in the Dark, except shot with a more expensive camera, and instead of Catherine Deneuve dressed like a factory worker, there are soldiers bopping around on strings. I actually kind of prefer the clip I found on YouTube, embedded above, which uses stock war footage and clips from Spike Jonze’s video for It’s Oh So Quiet to create a screed against “the Bush monarchy.” At the very least, it’s got a crackpot energy to it that Bjork used to be so good at, but hasn’t been able to pull off in awhile. I don’t think Michel Gondry directed that one, though.Gondry video via Fimoculous.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
filmcouch-114
It started off 
