ELECTION 08: Obama arouses unexpected interest, voters, with plea

As the US election campaign enters its final week, the number of emails from both sides has shot up, with titles often cryptic enough to pique your interest. (One being ‘Three Friends’ from Hillary Clinton, and ‘A Special Message’ from her husband, the acclaimed saxophonist.) However all this activity seems to have fritzed the innuendo filter at the Obama camp, with one title in particular tickling many a funny bone in the News Hour office.

It reads: ‘It’s in your hands, will you help?’

Before going onto to extract much sniggering with mutterings about the ‘final push’ in the body of the message. How long before a staffer pleads with the American public to them to help ‘secure this erection’ for Barack? He needs the votes to satisfy him, your honour.

UPDATE [12.31am]: The situation has intensified. Now, a missive from Mrs Obama, entitled ‘What Barack Needs’. Heavens to Betsy he’s insatiable. She goes on: ‘Barack will need you more than ever before…we are so very close.’ And then, she goes and brings money into it. The cheek of the woman, it’s enough to make someone feel used…

In Las Vegas, an autistic kingpin?

Was Frank ‘Lefty’ Rosenthal, kingpin of Las Vegas, mildly autistic? The recent obituaries point to such tendencies; the New York Times reports that he was obsessive about the number of blueberries in the muffins that came out of the Stardust’s kitchen (ten was the perfect amount, apparently – you wonder if they had to be a certain size, too), while Casino scribe Nicholas Pileggi said Rosenthal was a ‘real Rain Man type with numbers. He didn’t need an adding machine’.

Considering the absurd complexities of sports betting, this must have given the man nicknamed after his left-handedness (nothing more sinister, apparently – but then Victorians supposedly forced the left handed to write with their rights, so it has more of a taint in recent history) a real edge.

Still, saying someone who doesn’t need a calculator is autistic is a bit like saying someone who survives a car bomb is Superman – which Lefty did, incidentally, in 1982.

FILM: Brad Pitt defies age and sense in Coen Brothers comedy

The most surprising thing about Burn After Reading, the new Coen Brothers spy comedy, is Brad Pitt – despite being 44, the Pittster could easily pass for a hard-living late 20s as brainless gymworker Chad. Part of this is mannerisms – Pitt chews gum, gulps soda, blasts on his iPod, moves and grins like an idiot with odd hair to boot (what is it about the Coen Brothers and hair? Remember Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men; that stuff acted by itself). The key may be that Chad looks like someone who thinks he is early 20s but is more than a decade on. Here’s another factor which may have helped, but Pitt’s turn in Burn is every bit as compelling as Tom Cruise’s in Tropic Thunder.

Elsewhere it is essentially a comedy of petty, pointless individuals – scurrying around like hungry ants, pursuing adultery, money, positivity and youth. The ageing character Frances McDormand plays becomes obsessed with plastic surgery (a nice counterpoint to Pitt’s appearance), and the film veers away from what, at first, looks like it might be a long straight dive into the miseries of late-life singledom.

Scenes which could be difficult, long-winded or bloody are tied up by cutaways to a secret service office, where the characters’ petty infidelities and blackmails are put into perspective by people whose perspective you don’t trust. Regardless, this is a relief. Who wants to see someone cut up and dump a body in a comedy? This isn’t Eastern Promises, dammit. Contrary to some reports, the film does ‘end’, at least in terms of the plot, albeit in a deus ex machina form (if it’s good enough for the Greeks?). The difficulty is that the remaining characters aren’t wound up; there’s not much justice, if you will. The balancer is that they’re almost all so unpleasant it doesn’t matter.

Here’s a question: is the film’s theme, that these petty people are all so unimportant as to be beneath wrapping up properly, more indicative of laziness than cleverness? As with No Country For Old Men, you can come out of the cinema feeling like you’ve been had. On the other hand, it’s a comedy and one that does what so many don’t: make you laugh. Isn’t that more important?

ELECTION 08: Palin adds Molly, Chuck and Jane to rollcall of demographic stereotypes

Demographic catch-alls are a wonderful thing, if only for the images they create in Joe Public’s mind. Take Joe the plumber, mentioned 20 times in the third presidential debate – he was neither Joe, nor a plumber. He was, however, completely bedazzled by all the press attention. In a scene that will no doubt be enshrined in retrospective absurdity, ‘Joe’ (aka Samuel) held a press conference at which he made this astonishing admission:

‘I’m not Matt Damon.’

Quite. Matt Damon is also different to how he appears – despite being the star of the latest video-game-to-film franchise, Max Payne, ‘Matt the actor’ is also one of a small cadre of celebrities campaigning for good, clean toilets. So maybe he and Joe the plumber have more in common than Joe thought – if he were a plumber, that is. Like Transformers, there is more to demographics than meets the eye; but it’s a good starting point, certainly for comedy.

Sarah Palin, recently interviewed by CNN, came out with some more rather fabulous prompts for conjuring voter types. We had:

-Molly the dental hygienist
-Chuck the teacher
-Jane the engineer

All good, solid-sounding American names – and 2-to-1 female. But what about the minorities? Who is representing Leroy the barber, Muhammad the street-sweeper, Jaswinder the taxi driver or Jorge the illegal immigrant? Wide open minorities my friends, wide open.

Still, the king of categorising the rank and file will always be Monty Burnsin The Simpsons – names such as Joe Meatball, Eddie Punchclock, Johnny Lunchpail and Sally Housecoat conjure broader, truer images than Joe the plumber ever could. (Even if they do belong in the 1920s.)

NEWS HOUR EXCLUSIVE: Mild mannered crime reporter unmasked as mild mannered superhero

News Hour suspects that the BBC crime correspondent Ben Ando may be a superhero in disguise, having split his Kryptonite identity (Benando) in two to create a more earthly moniker. Like Clark Kent, he cuts an unassuming appearance in his reports for the BBC. Reporting on crime is certainly an excellent cover for preventing it – in this sense, Benando has stolen a lead on his bespectacled friend, who was merely a roving reporter, unfocused and relying on the dogged news sense of his colleague, Lois Lane.

Benando bows to no-one in presenting a normal front to the world – take it away, Ben:

“I am married with two young daughters and I live in Cambridgeshire. When I’m not working – or sleeping – I enjoy football, cycling and drawing.”

One suspects there may be a phone box for quick changes in the garden.

“Ben’s off again – tidal wave in Korea, meteor shower in Moscow. Hope he brings back some chocolates this time.”

FILM: Tropic Thunder – Fun but flabby, and eats itself

The late, late, Tropic Thunder review – possibly in time for a DVD release, and the bigger multiplexes. Much of the first third of Ben Stiller’s comedy is unnecessary, and seems to exist largely for Steve Coogan, who gets killed so early on he becomes irrelevant. Why not just dump the actors straight in their jungle nightmare and fill in the blanks with the odd bit of canny dialogue? The film opens in a jawdropping all-action style that it goes on to spoof – lightly at first, before eagerly employing so many of the genre’s trappings that it becomes what it mocks. The budget is colossal, and overshadows the conclusion – explosions, pitched battles and the machinations of a drug-farming child. Boys with toys and all too much, too big.

The middle section lives up to its promise; Robert Downey Jr in blackface is superb, and the racial sparring with his actually black co-star is underused – this is the only point at which the film tests its limits. The ‘retard’ aspect, represented by Stiller’s action hero’s failed Oscar bid (in the role of a Dr Dolittle farmhand called ‘Simple Jack‘), is a must for lovers of the politically incorrect but occasionally veers into the blunt unfunniness of such genre clonkers as Sports Movie, aka The Comebacks (a little better than Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, etc…praise so faint you need a microscope to see it).

As the jungle frenzy hits its stride with Stiller murdering an endangered animal, it is cut-off – too quick, too quick. An all too brief musing on the actor’s mask and some spectacular makeup is all that really follows. In the back of it all is Tom Cruise as a bald, evil movie mogul with enormous hands and a taste for salacious R&B. While often called a cameo, it is much more than that; a flat-out rendition of the sinister and the terrible, culminating in an extraordinary thru-credits dance sequence that mesmerises the mind. Cruise is no stranger to playing the unpleasant (see Magnolia), but that shouldn’t detract from his comedy tour-de-force here. It’s not enough to like it simply because it’s ‘bold’ for him not to play the hero; like it because he’s damn good at it. A shame that can’t be said for the rest of the movie.

ELECTION 08: The Bradley switch for Obama – on, or off?

When interviewed by Larry King, Michelle Obama said she believed that the Bradley effect was not in play for her husband’s campaign. This is open to question. The famed effect, much-mentioned since Barack Obama secured the nomination, runs thus: in 1982, Tom Bradley, an African American then mayor of Los Angeles, was running to be governor of California. Polls during voting put him clearly ahead (King recalls 65 per cent of voters claiming allegiance), but his Republican opponent won a narrow victory. Why?

Bradley was not an unpopular man – he served LA as mayor for twenty years. Assuming the problem was not the polling, why would people claim to support him, and then not do so? The obvious answer is unspoken racism, one perhaps subconsciously fuelling some of the increasingly hostile Republican rallies of late (speculation, understand). Also, when asked a socially sensitive question by a pollster – especially in a city as defined by race as LA – some will want to give the more socially acceptable answer, even if you’ve just emerged from the privacy of the voting booth having done the exact opposite.

This is not necessarily racism; said voter might just prefer the other guy (or gal), as is their right. When people are quizzed about their TV viewing habits, they claim to like documentaries, but the viewing figures (except the more celebrity focused polemics on the British terrestrial channels) don’t bear this out. Entertainment always wins over fact, in TV. As such with politics, especially in troubled times, people will choose the safer option. The question is, which is safer? A 72-year-old white man with extensive experience and an irascible nature – or a younger black man with a flair for nuance, from a party that isn’t so closely associated with the current economic downturn?

One alarm bell for Obama rings from the primaries, when Hillary Clinton frequently led the popular vote; Obama fared better in the closed debates of the caucuses rather than the open voting. It was in the latter where Clinton, with her blue collar spunk, would fire up the electorate. The United States isn’t California, and this isn’t the 1980s – but Obama remains truly untested at the ballot box or Clinton wouldn’t have been so successful.

UPDATE: It was , of course, off.

ELECTION 08: At VP debate, plucky Palin builds dam to hold back flood of Bidenfact

The Vice-Presidential debate ended up fairly even, but only if one factors in the incredibly low expectations for Republican underdog Sarah Palin. The Republican candidate gave a perfectly adequate performance, and even managed to twist Joe Biden back into a position opposing gay marriage that he didn’t want to take quite so openly (not something the Democrats want to shout from the rooftops, you imagine). When the issue of climate change arose, Palin sidestepped questions of cause and focused on a solution – Biden was quick to take the man-made position of party favourite and Oscar-winner, Al Gore. Low expectations aside, Biden won without a doubt.

Seven times out of ten, the Democrat was more convincing, although one could accuse him of blinding the audience with numbers. Such was the weight of facts he deployed that the Democrat’s brain began to falter, neurons misfired at the crucial moment, causing the accidental substitution of names. Mindful of his need to be the good guy, the senate veteran flashed his pearly whites at every opportunity; the occasional long intake of breath was the only overt indication of irritation at Palin’s cutesy needling.

He frequently called John McCain a ‘good man’, and was sure to insert the words ‘middle class’ at every opportunity (a weak point for McCain). Biden’s style was heavily editorialised, a sign of his senate experience – Palin bobbed around like a plastic duck with a touch of the chipmunk, weaving around the facts and quacking punchlines with a smile. Despite her relative lack of numbers, her neurons failed, too; she managed a corking slip with that statement that ‘[John McCain] is the man we need to leave’, swiftly correcting that to ‘lead’.

Biden scented blood, and even tried to best Palin’s down-at-home Sally Housecoat credentials – telling the audience how he spends ‘a lot of time’ at Home Depot, and recalling a conversation with a man named Joey (Sixpack?) who couldn’t afford to fill his gas tank. Joe Biden, man of the people; this was halfway believable, but where Biden really shone was on foreign policy. He has authority, weight and an apparent sincerity that you don’t get to think you mean without years of experience. The man looks Presidential, and he’s the back-up; against him, Palin looked like the straight talker in a children’s comedy in which a chimp is elected to office. It wasn’t a level playing field.

Palin couldn’t hope to compete, which begs why she is in the race at all. A breath of fresh air she may have been, but at a time of bailouts and multiple wars, isn’t something slightly staler better? And was it really wise of Palin to remind viewers that she has only been ‘at this’ for five weeks? Doesn’t that rather negate the experience as a governor and a mayor that she is so keen to claim as counting just as much as that achieved at higher levels? Food for thought, and a meal that now sits in the digestive tract of more than 73 million Americans.

Opik bends gravity on new career path?

Rumour has it (well, The Independent’s gossip column, and even most news stories – so, fact, really) that the newly single Lembit Opik, MP, is gearing up to succeed Simon Hughes as President of the Liberal Democrats by hiring a slick PR outfit. Engaged until recently to Cheeky Girl Gabriela Irimia (now said to be happy without him, Irimia claimed to have felt ‘brainwashed’ during their relationship – was the PR in effect there, too?), and most recently tarnished by the mantle of reality TV through Living With The Cheeky Girls, Opik apparently climbed his first ‘challenge’ when The Sun reported he was joining Celebrity Big Brother.

He said no, of course. He is a politician – a man of thought and dignity, existing on a plane far above such things. [PAUSE] But is it not convenient that such an offer should suddenly appear, allowing Opik to distance himself from that filthy genre that so many people watch? If you were being cynical, you might almost suspect that the offer never existed in the first place, and simply appeared in order for Opik to get his serious hat on. But that would be terribly cynical. And that’s not the business of this blog. No sirree.

SCIENCE EXTRA: Renaissance man’s plan to snare rogue space rocks with ‘cosmic condom’

Radio reviewer’s technicolor swansong

Full colour continues to wash like a technicolor river over Fleet Street. Roger Alton’s spunkier, glitzier Independent has been the latest paper to wrap itself in the coat of dreams, leaving Richard Desmond’s Dailys Express and Star as the last stop-outs. Alton’s Independent is a curious beast, at once more expensive yet superficially less authoritative, although the passionate layouts and colours of last week’s launch have settled down to something more legible since the launch.

As with most revamps, so come the updated byline pictures; the once long-locked Thomas Sutcliffe is now flecked with grey at the temples, but retains his boyish grin – with touches of youth added through a flamboyant shirt and the shortening of his name to ‘Tom’. Hermione Eyre, the Independent On Sunday’s TV reviewer, has morphed into an impossible glamour puss – while her counterpart on the page, radio writer Nicholas Lezard, appears to have had his picture updated for the first time since he took on the role ten years ago. The radio column – easily one of the more personality-branded in the critics section, and always very readable – has since been axed. It seems rather remarkable to make someone pose for a byline picture one week then fire them the next, especially as it was supposedly due to a ‘lack of funds’. Still, such is the way of these things.

Lezard’s last column (filed next week, we think) may take an intriguing departing line – he has rarely been shy of contrasting the merits of radio with TV in the past. Witness the recent ‘More people listen to the radio than watch television these days’ and a speculation on the future swap of ‘word counts and salaries’ between the radio and TV reviewers. (Speculation of a feud is, one thinks, symptomatic of too much thought on the topic)

ELECTION 08: On the podium, Biden bites?

As the evening of the US Vice Presidential candidates’ debate arrives, a thought occurs. The Democrats’ Joe Biden is known for being a bit of a loose cannon, a trait perhaps exacerbated by the swagger that 35 years in the senate must bring – he’s known for saying it straight. His opponent Sarah Palin has a reputation as a decent debater, and a way of speaking with an eerie finality, if she is on relatively safe ground.

An interview can be much more intimate than a debate – it can focus on the person, not just the issues, so the Katie Couric mill is hardly a fair indicator of form behind the podium. Still, there is only so much one can say without the knowledge before looking a fool, no matter how much elan it is delivered with. Odds are then, that Biden will trip Palin up at some point – the key will be how he does it. Too hard, he ends up cast as a misogynist; too soft, he looks weak. (Oh no, not another John Kerry, think the Reagan Democrats.) The target is also important; it must be the issue, not the woman – turnabout for Palin in this would not be nearly as bad, and could even be seen as ‘spunky’ (fighting the Washington insider, sticking it to the man – ‘if those punks down at City Hall don’t like it, they can swivel on this mid digit…..why I oughta….etc’).

Here’s the question, though: if Biden bites in a manner considered ungallant, and the Republican machine pounces, how much does that make Palin look weak for not being able to take it? She’s never been cast as a victim, after all. Nor should she be.

This all depends on context of course, but both candidates have tricky lines to tread tonight; at least Sarah Palin has the benefit of bargain basement expectations. On the plus side for everyone else, there should certainly be enough fodder for another Saturday Night Live spoof.

End of the world, by other means; is Jonny Wilkinson the saviour?

Apocalypse – once it was carbon-pumping evil industry’s fault, now it’s down to lending by evil banks. The shift has been from climatic to economic, as represented by HBO’s new series Americatown, originally intended as a saga of immigration in New York, now repurposed as a musing on total US economic collapse and ensuing mass migration. (Think American Chinatowns in every far flung capital, can Britain be far behind? Imagine that, the British quarter in Paris – all greasy chip shops, booze-soaked bars and equestrian shops. I suppose the equivalent already exists across Spain, in the guise of expat communities.)

Britain, meanwhile, is ‘Broken’, according to both Noel Edmonds and The Sun (but not Gordon Brown). The second, smaller leg of Noel’s recent resurgence rests upon his various projects at Sky1, the parent company of which of course, owns The Sun – Broken Britain is clearly a common theme for both of them, and trips of the tongue rather nicely. ‘Slightly misshapen Britain’, ‘Sprained Britain’, or ‘Damaged Britain’ don’t work quite as well. One imagines these were thrashed through in short order at an editorial conference; the beauty of broken is its close association to fix (‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’), on which Noel and his redtop ally are both keen to wax. Even Richard and Judy are getting in on the act. In these troubled times, it’s nice to celebrate the nice; as long as no-one is exploited, who can argue with that?

So far left in the cold by Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper empire, a nonetheless resurgent British Conservative party has developed its own particular take on the problem – David Cameron pledged to mend Britain’s ‘broken society’. Similar, yet different. Whatever their aspirations to broad-based support, the Conservatives probably think themselves a little above alliteration. He was later forced to clarify, claiming that he only meant ‘parts of Britain’ were broken; akin to a human breaking an arm or a leg, perhaps – it would not naturally follow that the entire person was broken. Does Mr Cameron believe that partially disabled people are broken? Does he have an axe to grind against paraplegics? We should be told, certainly before the paralympics. Perhaps he has some horrible plan up his sleeve.

Amid all these differing versions of looming apocalypse and its varying solutions, there lies the path taken by Jonny Wilkinson – drifting between injuries once again, the once-prolific goalkicker appears to be beating the hippy trail, taking the path to enlightenment through Buddhism via quantum physics, and wearing his hair long. How long before he fronts a documentary explaining the discipline, or writes an illustrated pop-up book on the Large Hadron Collider? One for the Christmas list, that.