It’s the old man versus the young, less-experienced black man. No, I’m not talking about McCain and Obama. This is the election battle between Emperor Palpatine and Lando Calrissian for the leader of the Star Wars galaxy. But if the good folks at Funny or Die intended for real life analogy then that means Sarah Palin = Darth Vader and Joe Biden = Chewbacca — speaking of which, isn’t it time we have a candidate with some awesome facial hair, preferably the sideburn-mustache combo (aka “Friendly Mutton Chops”) sported by Chester Arthur?

Despite the issues with his age and appearance, Billy Dee Williams is pretty awesome to have appeared in this video. It would have been even cooler, though, if he’d cracked open a can of Colt 45 at the end, for the clincher. Otherwise, the clip peaks with Admiral Ackbar’s “It’s a trap!” (a nice touch considering I found the video via the Ackbar-obsessed Fark.com). As for the answer to the question of what Calrissian is smuggling this time? I’d say he’s got a couple doughnuts hidden in those cheeks (and yes, they have doughnuts in the Star Wars galaxy).

Yesterday we pointed to a clip showing that everybody and their Pokémon-loving little brother seems to be endorsing Obama. Well not so fast, my friends, we’ve got them right where we want them. What if some legendary Hollywood directors produced attack ads for the McCain camp? Then we’ll see who has an eleven point lead! Folkinz points us to a clip of what it might look like if John Woo, Kevin Smith, and Wes Anderson went GOP. Although it would never happen in reality, anything is possible on the internet!

The Wes Anderson piece at the end is particularly good. If McCain just put guys in yellow jumpsuits running through the background in slow-mo in a few of his ads, I think he’d get at least a two point bump. The John Woo bit is pretty funny, but it could have used a much bigger budget, to the tune of ten million or so. But with McCain’s current fund raising woes, it’s not likely. Maybe Palin can hire Michael Bay to do some ads for her inevitable 2012 bid. They’d better start financing and preproduction right now.

In the 16 months or so since it first became possible to distribute full-length feature films in single viewing windows embedded in a blog post, there’s been a lot of talk as to how a film presented in this matter might function. For Four Eyed Monsters, the first feature film made available legally in a single stream on YouTube, the embed functioned as a meme spreader for the FEM brand (and the page the embed code came from served as a revenue generator for Spout.com). At Telluride last month, Annette Insdorf talked about the embed’s value as reference point within online criticism, which is something we’ve done here on SpoutBlog, most recently with Steven’s post last week on DW Griffith’s Abraham Lincoln.  Also last week, Anne Thompson suggested that Wayne Wang’s Princess of Nebraska, recently made available for streaming in full on YouTube, can serve as a marketing tool for the film Wang made concurrently, A Thousand Years of Good Prayer, which is currently in theaters. In pieces in the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal, John Horn and John Jurgensen both suggested that free streaming solutions for features are performing a kind of public service; Horn commended SnagFilms, the portal for ad-supported embeddable documentaries, for their ability to bring “important movies to audiences that otherwise might never have known the films existed,” while Jurgensen focused on Hulu and YouTube’s potential to help relieve the “glut of movies jockeying for theater screens.”

This is all well and good, but in most cases, up until now an argument could have be made that the “better” place to see the film in question would be on a big screen, and/or with an audience, because the assumption has been that the natural home for cinema is in a cinema, that distribution via embed is an alternative option when theatrical distribution doesn’t work out. The same can not be said for The End of America, Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg’s non-fiction adaptation of Naomi Wolf’s book and ensuing lecture tour, which debuted on SnagFilms today. This is the first film I’ve seen that seems ideally suited to be seen as a blog embed, and not just because a good deal of the footage within was pulled from web video sources. Essentially a Top Ten list followed by a How To, it’s the first film I’ve seen that seems to have internalized the structure of the traffic-baiting blog post.

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This past weekend, Saturday Night Live received a huge ratings boost thanks to the appearance of vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. But as much fun as it was seeing her act the good sport next to a jokingly critical Alec Baldwin, it only made me anticipate her inevitable feature film debut. I mean, did you notice she was the only person who didn’t need to keep reading from the cue cards? She’s a natural. And whether her ticket wins or loses the race on November 4, it’s certain that one day Palin will at least make a cameo in some kind of fictional movie, whether she means to or not.

So, as we wait for her to show up in a small part in the Coen brothers’ adaptation of Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (both because she’s from Alaska and reminds me of Frances McDormand in Fargo), let’s take a look at some other politicians who’ve made interesting film cameos, some intentionally and some not.

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Find more videos like this on The Spill.com Movie Community

Oliver Stone’s W. opens tomorrow, and it’s been a controversial project because it tackles the life of an existing president. But Stone could have been even more contemporary had he rushed out a biopic of Sarah Palin. Sure, she’s only been well-known for a few weeks, but if Stone can rush out W. in a matter of months, maybe he can throw together a prescient Palin movie before Inauguration Day. Of course, he has even more time if she and McCain aren’t elected. And it probably would still be relevant, since surely we can expect a Palin for President campaign in a few years, right?

To help the director out, the crew over at Spill.com has put together an animated trailer for what Oliver Stone’s P. might look like. The trailer has been made to perfectly ape the style and cut of the original W. trailer, complete with Eddy Arnold’s version of “What a Wonderful World.” The Putin cameo seen through the binocular POV is priceless, and the Bullwinkle torture can be appreciated by anybody — not just the Palin supporters — who sat through The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle.

Be sure to rewatch the trailer and, in your imagination, substitute the animated characters with the respective cast members SpoutBlog picked out last month for such a biopic.

[via Erik Davis' Twitter]

There’s an argument to be made that W., Oliver Stone’s Josh Brolin-starring sorta-biopic on our sitting but barely-standing president, has been thrust on the culture too soon. What kind of perspective could Stone and screenwriter Stanley Weiser possibly have on the Commander in Chief with George W. Bush still bumbling along in office, still a regular fixture on cable news and a constant target for Saturday Night Live? And wouldn’t the real W’s minuscule approval rating suggest that interest in dramatization of his presidency would be slim? But maybe a better argument is that W. has hit at exactly the right time — in fact, maybe the only time when this oddly argument-free work of trompe l’oil comedy could possibly slip seamlessly into the media diets of average Americans. Almost unbelievably, Stone has John McCain to thank for this accident of timing: W. would look much more freakish as a bizarrely idea-light folly if it had been released into a world that hadn’t ever seen (or even conceived of) Tina Fey’s dead-on impression of Sarah Palin.

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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.

Striking while the “Bill Ayers is an unrepentant terrorist” iron is hot, AJ Schnack has published a post on his blog by Sam Green, the co-director of the Oscar-nominated documentary The Weather Underground. Green, who says Ayers has “become a good friend” of he and his co-director Bill Siegel, talks about the frustrations of watching his subject become a Republican talking point. As Green points out, the McCain/Palin argument connecting Obama to Ayers compltely omits any explanation for how a “terrorist” can become a “Distinguished Professor” thanks to thirty years of cultural evolution. “To have all of his work, and what he’s about, so publicly misrepresented must be extremely painful,” Green writes. “There really is nothing, or at least nothing significant, at the heart of the Ayers-Obama connection.” More here.

If John McCain doesn’t become the next President of the United States, perhaps he could take a completely different sort of gig, as The Penguin in the next Batman movie. Of course, there’s already a worthy candidate for that role, too, but if Philip Seymour Hoffman doesn’t want the job, Christopher Nolan should give it to the senator. That is, if Nolan actually decides to include the villain in his next installment, and so far it hasn’t seemed likely that he would.

The idea of McCain as The Penguin sparked from a campaign speech the presidential candidate gave last Friday in which he inadvertently channeled Burgess Meredith while congratulating his running mate, Sarah Palin, on her performance at the VP debate the night before. Since then, YouTubers galore have sampled the speech, whether using the audio to redub a scene from Batman Returns, as you can see in today’s Clip (and here), or intercutting the audio and video with footage from Meredith’s portrayal of The Penguin on the old Batman TV show, or simply drawing in the necessary accessories and props to make McCain look like Meredith’s Penguin.

The whole trend may have actually begun with a little joke on The Young Turks talk show. But how about it? Ehh? Throughout the Town Hall debate last night, while watching McCain waddle around that stage, I couldn’t get the Penguin thing out of my mind. He’s perfect for the part. Ehh?

After a long layover at Port Authority spent reenacting scenes from Keane (see what I did there? I went for the obscure but creepy reference, instead of the topical, populist one) I took the bus up to Woodstock, NY this weekend, to spend about 24 hours at the Woodstock Film Festival. I finally saw Sean Baker’s Prince of Broadway, an improvised family dramedy which plays something like a Hollywood remake of L’enfant set in the bootleg luxury trade on the streets of New York; it won big at LAFF and took Woodstock’s top narrative prize on Saturday night. The awards ceremony where Broadway was honored was indie star-studded, surprisingly casual and fun, and –– maybe unsurprisingly––littered with references to the ongoing presidential election. “Kevin, we’re giving you the Maverick Award,” screenwriter Ron Nyswaner said at the start of the show to director Kevin Smith. “That means we think you’re qualified to be the leader of the free world.”

You’ll find some of the night’s most memorable quotes, from Smith, Ang Lee and others, below the jump. Above, you’ll find video of James Schamus’ Trailblazer Award acceptance speech, and the tail end of his introduction by Lee.

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With Halloween less than a month away, it’s time to start thinking about what to go as. That is, if you haven’t already. A good costume-loving cinephile typically knows well in advance what he or she will dress up as for Halloween (and Comic-Con, too). But if you’re one to wait until the last minute, and also one who likes to be a lot more contemporary than, say, dressing up as a Ghostbuster or Edward Scissorhands, I’ve got some suggestions for you for costumes based on recent films.

Check them out after the jump.

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And the right thing sure ain’t any sort of riff on Jungle Fever. Spike was in Toronto promoting both his film Miracle at Saint Anna and the relatively new online film festival Babelgum, where he serves as “the ultimate jury.” Meaning, he picks the final winner.

We caught up to ask him what he thought about vice presidential nominee and hockey mom Sarah Palin, and it looks like he wants a showdown between Barack and Sarah.

“I think with that speech…when she said that speech it allowed Joe America to go after her. None of this stuff about how you can’t go off on her because she’s a woman. The stuff the she spoke, he should go after her hard. It’s time to take the kid gloves off.”

Can we assume that Spike is ready for some Democratic mudslinging? If he doesn’t ultimately direct the definitive Obama biopic with Denzel Washington playing a prominent role, then there is no justice in the world.

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.
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Last Friday, before conspiracy theorists were questioning who actually birthed newborn Trig Palin, and long before it was announced that Bristol Palin is a (first time?) teen mom-to-be, I was innocently thinking of the more simple Sarah Palin movie. The one that goes sorta like The Contender, except that in this case the nude photos, which may or may not be of the female VP candidate, are pageant-related rather than a remnant of sorority hazing.

Now, of course, despite the gossip blogs’ wet dream that there are indeed scandalous photos out there of the former Miss Alaska runner-up, the movie goes a little more like Juno — or, as many a site has effortlessly pictured it, Juneau. Either way, both The Contender’s Joan Allen and Juno mom Allison Janney could easily pull off the role of Sarah Palin, but I’ve got my heart set on someone else for the part (see above). And I’ve gone ahead and cast the rest of the movie, too (see below). But feel free to comment below with your own choices for each of the cast.

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