Election Day is upon us; go out and vote! Now! Then, to celebrate that crackle of nation-changing excitement hanging in the air, see how Presidents from Ike to Obama (and some of history's lesser-successful White House hopefuls) seized the hearts and minds of the American people as seen in this riveting, superbly-edited campaign ad supercut.
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Just two quick observations about Joss Whedon's Zomney political ad, which has gotten plenty of coverage elsewhere. The video has a lot of smart, funny lines in it, but it's tough to beat the filmmaker's observation that: "The 1 percent will no longer be the very rich. It will be the very fast." more »
Republican candidate Mitt Romney caused an uproar during last night's Presidential debate with his vivid and hilariously ignorant "binders full of women" comment. But he didn't just alienate women and men and anyone appalled by his antiquated language and attitude toward gender equality in the work place — he launched the hottest meme since Big Bird.
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Politicians have long appropriated pop culture to lend their campaigns relevancy and catchy hooks, so it wasn't unprecedented when Republican nominee Mitt Romney began using the popular Friday Night Lights catchphrase "Clear eyes, full heart, can't lose" in his bid for the Presidency. That doesn't mean filmmaker Peter Berg has to be happy about it.
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Full disclosure right off the bat here, some die-hard Romney fans and those with hyper-sensitivity to the F-Bomb and haters of politics generally may not want to proceed, so if you do, go at your own peril. A tidy little vid starring Barack supporter-extraordinaire Samuel L. Jackson has hit the internet, and though a tad longer than the typical 30 second political spot flooding the airwaves in this election season, it is quite a bit more clever and funnier - though it helps if you're a supporter of the incumbent, naturally. And while it is unabashedly supportive of Obama, the prez does not come in and say he "supports this message" like in most other political ads. In this version, Jackson invades a home of a quiet suburban family of lackadaisical Obama '08 supporters to tell them to, "Wake the F**** Up."
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Also in Friday afternoon's round-up of news briefs, two more Toronto International Film Festival titles head for theatrical runs. And Sparkle's Mara and Salim Akil eye some Abandonment Issues.
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Animation icon Ralph Bakshi (Fritz the Cat, Coonskin, Wizards, Cool World) has never been afraid to push the envelope, and boy does he in Trickle Dickle Down, a new political short introducing his recently announced Bakshi Blues project. An announcement for the series declares, in no uncertain terms, "THERE IS NOWHERE FOR ANYONE TO HIDE." And how. Watch as Trickle Dickle Down takes aim at Mitt Romney with Bakshi's explosive take on trickle-down economics.
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Clint Eastwood has starred in and/or directed some of the smartest, most thought-provoking movies I've seen in the last 10 years. And that's making it very hard for me to get my head around his trite, addled performance at the Republican National Convention on Thursday night.
I'm not bitching about Eastwood's politics. I'm pretty certain that I don't share his ideology, but I can't help but respect someone who's not afraid to be politically unpopular in largely liberal Hollywood. more »
If the last Presidential race produced a fine docudrama, Game Change, based on the equally fine book, surely this year’s dust-up between the elephant and the donkey is worth dramatizing. Therefore, , submitted for your approval, is Movieline’s notion of ideal casting and concepts for the 2012 GOP slate, complete with courtiers, financiers and mountebanks. Tentatively, we’re calling it Liar’s Poker.
Let’s start at the outer circle of the power nexus and gradually move inward. more »
A longtime proponent of gun control, New York City Michael Bloomberg weighed in on the tragic shooting early Friday morning in Aurora, Colorado, that left 12 dead and dozens more wounded at a showing of The Dark Knight Rises. Twenty-four year-old suspect James Holmes was arrested after allegedly opening fire in the crowded theater and carrying a rifle, handgun and gas mask. The tragedy prompted Bloomberg's police commissioner to announce increased security at screenings of The Dark Knight Rises in NYC to prevent any possible copycat incidents.
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This morning's horrific Colorado multiplex shooting, which left at least 12 attendees of a midnight Dark Knight Rises screening dead, has prompted an ongoing wave of reactions from Hollywood to the White House and beyond.
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Good morning! By which I mean just go back to bed: "'Bane' is the terrorist in the new movie who drives the caped crusader out of semi-retirement in the final Batman movie. Democrats, who believe they have Romney on the ropes over the president's assault on his leadership at Bain Capital, said the comparisons are too rich to ignore. 'It has been observed that movies can reflect the national mood,' said Democratic advisor and former Clinton aide Christopher Lehane. 'Whether it is spelled Bain and being put out by the Obama campaign or Bane and being out by Hollywood, the narratives are similar: a highly intelligent villain with offshore interests and a past both are seeking to cover up who had a powerful father and is set on pillaging society,' he added." [Washington Examiner via Big Hollywood]
Or some other lukewarm cling-monkey: "If I were feeling less generous and more cynical on this holiest of all Oscar-calendar mornings, I might say that to decipher this year’s Academy Awards contest, we need only look for inspiration to the GOP presidential race. The Artist is Mitt Romney — desperate to please, doesn’t stand for anything in particular, not especially popular with the general public, will eventually keep most of its money offshore, and, though dinged up and trash-talked, will probably cross the finish line first by default. The Descendants is Newt Gingrich (emotionally unsteady, hard on wives, doing better than expected, but probably can’t go all the way). Hugo is Rick Santorum (a little slow, doesn’t really like anything that changed in the culture in the last 80 years). And The Tree of Life is Jon Huntsman (believes in evolution, probably a little too classy for this field)." [Grantland]
Today in the NY Times, David Carr has an intriguing look at the notorious 28-minute "documentary" When Mitt Romney Came to Town, a piece of presidential-campaign propaganda so slick and evocative that it brings to mind the work of contemporary Hollywood pros. Perhaps most notably, Carr writes, the film implicates Romney in a kind of "vampire capitalism" -- which calls for some perspective from the Oscar-winning director of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Bill Condon. Naturally.
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