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Under discussion:

Quiet City  (2007)

• Erik Skillman, the Criterion designer who recently regaled us with tales of his process putting together the box image for Berlin Alexanderplatz, has applied some of the same techniques to a portrait of Barack Obama. “I’m not sure I quite captured him (there’s a little hint of Reinhold in there that’s kind of strange), but for a 20-minute sketch it’s not half bad…” [via Cinetrix]
• Mike Jones has already started blogging Berlin. We’ll be keeping an eye on Filmbrain, Twitch and of course Berlin-based David Hudson for updates over the next week or so.
• Jette Kernion on the magic trick of Quiet City: “You can’t watch a man and woman who become fast friends like this without wondering whether they’ll hook up, which provides a small amount of suspense. But you get so caught up watching these people and their friends that the romantic potential hardly seems to matter most of the time.”
• Kevin Kelly balks at Christina Ricci’s suggestion that there’s a “sad guy” thing in Speed Racer that will make the boys cry: “What’s a sad guy thing that’s not a sad girl thing? Does Speed lose his penis during one of the races and get told that he can’t have any Speed Juniors?”

Under discussion:

Ghostbusters  (1984)

Juno  (2007)

The biggest shock in the Oscar nominations this year was certainly Jason Reitman’s bid for Best Director. In fact, it’s such a given that the Juno helmer won’t win the Academy Award that even the kids know it. One brave brat from the Santa Barbara Middle School Teen Press even tells Reitman to his face that he has no chance, in this slightly amusing video that’s circulating the interweb. Many are suggesting the clip was actually set up by Reitman himself, though the fact that he posted the video on both his Myspace and YouTube pages only makes it clear that he’s probably responsible for the thing showing up on the net at all. Either way, he at least has a good sense of humor regarding everyone’s doubts that he deserved the nod.

My favorite question, and one that I wish he had a better answer to, asks what his actual role was as director. That’s something I’d actually like to know. The acknowledgment of Juno having first and foremost a great script and great actors seems to indicate this is indeed an inside joke, but at least the question is a bit better when asked a second time: “but what did you do?” Anyway, the reference to the director’s father, Ghostbusters helmer Ivan Reitman is a bit sloppily handled by the kids — the fact that they are aware of Papa Reitman but don’t know Jason Reitman didn’t write the Juno script is further evidence that this is all a pre-written gag by someone other than middle schoolers. And meanwhile I still don’t really know what kind of great, Oscar-worthy contribution Reitman really made to the film.

LIBERTAS has an interesting post about how that Will.I.Am “Yes We Can” Obama video??????in which celebrities like Scarlett Johansson and Kate Walsh sing over and mug in front of Barack Obama’s New Hampshire primary “concession” speech??????is emblematic of a new kind of Hollywood political support. Dirty Harry riffs on a post by Jim Geraghty, who notes that the clip’s “substance-free message of ‘yes we can, unity is good, we have hope and the hopes of children are important’” is unobjectionable “because there???s no ideas in it; it???s entirely emotion.” He goes on to say that aligning oneself with that emotion is less a political action than participation in a “pop-culture phenomnenon.”And because pop culture is something American’s know how to participate in without thinking, by extension Barack Obama becomes the ready-made candidate for those who can’t really handle much more than passive consumption of an image as a stand-in for a feeling.

Dirty Harry actually sees this as a good thing. He likes the idea of ” a quiet advocacy from Hollywood for their guy (or gal)” because it stands in contrast to previous celebrity-led political spectacles, in which stars “have hurt their own careers and the candidate they want elected saying unbelievably stupid things.” But writing about the “Yes I Can’ video at NewTeeVee, Wagner James Au couldn’t disagree more…

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