Saturday, May 23, 2009

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Morgan Stanley To Boost Executive Salaries As Bonuses Decline Top
Morgan Stanley, the sixth-biggest U.S. bank by assets, will increase some executive salaries and double Chief Financial Officer Colm Kelleher's pay as bonuses come under scrutiny from the Obama administration and lawmakers.
 
GOP Rep Jason Chaffetz Slams 'Reprehensible' RNC Video Comparing Pelosi To Pussy Galore Top
At least one Republican doesn't think it's OK to compare Nancy Pelosi to Pussy Galore. After viewing an RNC video that juxtaposed the speaker with the James Bond villainess, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) told POLITICO Saturday: More on Nancy Pelosi
 
US Holds Journalist Without Charges In Iraq Top
The soldiers came at 1:30 a.m, rousing family members who were sleeping on the roof to escape the late-summer heat. They broke down the front door. Accompanied by dogs, American and Iraqi troops burst into the Jassam family home south of Baghdad in the town of Mahmoudiya. More on War Wire
 
Michael Giltz: Cannes 2009 Day Eleven: Two Minor Films and One Major Talent Top
You would think after coming to Cannes for a decade that I would have the place down cold. No such luck. Thanks to ever-changing rules and an odd refusal to share info in advance on when movies are actually screening, the final two days of Cannes consist of saying goodbye to friends and finding out a movie you really wanted to see began an hour ago. The Directors Fortnight recaps its winners today and tomorrow every film in Competition is shown, as well as the closing night film. I dutifully looked at the Fortnight schedule and showed up at 2 p.m. for La Pivellina. Ha! What they actually began showing was Montparnasse , a film I had heard literally nothing about. C'est la vie, no? I settled in, imaging, nay, hoping that this might be fate and I was about to watch a wonderful movie. Nope. Just one hour in length, it contained three vignettes seemingly unrelated -- two sisters talk about the fears and instabilities one of them suffers from, a nice guy has dinner with the father of a friend they'll soon be picking up at the train station, and a young single mother invites the burly but sweet singer of a band she's watched perform to come back to her apartment for a drink. They're all of minor interest but when you combine them together they seem even less interesting. I rushed outside, found a schedule of screenings posted on a pillar (why didn't they distribute them last night to our mailboxes?) and found out La Pivellina was playing next at 3:30 p.m. Voila! I get in line, go back and take the same aisle seat I was in a moment ago and wait for the movie. It received one of four awards handed out at the Directors Fortnight (while three were won by one of my favorites, I Killed My Mother ), so I settled back, imagining -- no, believing I was about to see a wonderful movie. Uh, I don't speak French and the movie had no English subtitles. (I am a little pleased that it took five minutes for me to realize this because the opening scene was so simple (a gypsy-looking woman -- or Romany, if you want to be polite) finds a baby seemingly abandoned in a park and tries to get someone to help her with it) I followed it for a while before realizing I shouldn't have to guess what she was saying. I go outside and ask the numerous guards and ushers if they know the English subtitling is off and they shrug their shoulders. I give up and head to the Directors Fortnight press office and explain the situation, trying to find out if the next two movies would or would not have English subtitling. She responded brightly that yes, of course La Pivellina naturally would have English subtitling. I explain I just came from the screening and in fact it did NOT have English subtitling. She's puzzled but brightly assures me that the next two movies indeed would. I'm not filled with confidence. Anyway, it's off to the Majestic Beach where I interview, Xavier Dolan, the handsome talented 20 year old writer-director-star of I Killed My Mother. He apologizes several times about his English not being so perfect even though I don't speak a word of French and make clear his solid English is far superior to my pidgin French. We only have 20 minutes but it's the sort of casual but serious interview that used to be a staple of Cannes for the press and all the directors and stars of the major films. Now, the number of media is so massive that except in rare cases all you get is a press conference quote (where you can ask one question) and maybe a round table with six or seven other journalists (where you get to ask two or maybe even three). Only with new, rising talent like Dolan can you actually sit down and talk at length, with the surf in the background and the festival buzzing all around. I reluctantly take leave of Dolan and head to the only other screening I can make for the day, a well-reviewed movie called The King Of Escapes . It's not a good movie but it's certainly wacky as it describes the life of a burly, bearish middle-aged guy who cruises for men with his good friend and then rescues a 16 year old girl from rapists and unexpectedly finds himself attracted to her. And she is most definitely attracted to him. Sexual fluidity doesn't even begin to describe the goings-on here, with older straight men taking a new drug and then going out into the woods to masturbate with each other, our gay hero having oodles of sex with his Lolita, and a reserved police chief who walks in at the most unexpected moments. It has a certain loosey goosey appeal and I really enjoyed the end of the fest crowd I saw it with -- the blue-haired ladies who snagged a ticket gasped with delighted shock as the men went at it with elan. A truly horrible score and weak visuals (though I won't soon forget our hefty hero running through the woods in his underwear) contribute to the over-all shabby air of a movie that does at least keep you off balance and ends well. AWARDS PICKS Sunday, the top awards will be handed out. It's a fool's errand to try and pick what will win because you're not talking about the consensus of the critics, you're talking about the reactions of the jury and the deals and counter-deals they make with each other in order to honor the movies they felt passionate about. So these are NOT my predictions for the winners; these are the awards I'd give out if I could. MICHAEL'S PALME D'OR: Un Prophete (this is also the critical favorite of all the movies in Competition) MICHAEL'S GRAND JURY PRIZE (RUNNER-UP) -- The Time That Remains MICHAEL'S BEST ACTOR -- Christoph Waltz of Inglourius Basterds (though I'll be very happy if Tahar Rahim of Un Prophete gets it) MICHAEL'S BEST ACTRESS -- Katie Jarvis for Red Road though Charlotte Gainsborough for Anti-Christ makes sense too Now this is where it gets tricky. The unspoken rule after the Coen Brothers swept is to limit any film to two major awards. So the trade-offs become very apparent here. MICHAEL'S BEST DIRECTOR -- Andrea Arnold for Fish Tank MICHAEL'S BEST SCREENPLAY -- Elia Suleiman for The Time That Remains MICHAEL'S CAMERA D'OR -- Perhaps the most combative category, with three very good movies battling it out. My guess is Samson & Delilah will triumph, but it could also be I Killed My Mother or Dogtooth and everyone would be happy. ( Dogtooth just won Un Certain Regard so that might kill its chances at this award. MICHAEL'S JURY PRIZE -- these are just random awards to make sure a notable achievement doesn't fall through the cracks. I'd say The Best Rewriting Of History to Quentin Tarantino for Inglourius Basterds and Best Performance By An Athlete to Eric Cantona for Looking For Eric. And I haven't even mentioned Police, Adjective. It was the runner-up for the Un Certain Regard prize and may well be the best reviewed film of the festival in any category (Competition, Directors Fortnight, etc.) It will certainly be on my best of the year list. I'm seeing four movies on Sunday and so for the first time I will have seen every film in Competition while at Cannes. Huzzah. Come back Sunday for reviews of four films and coverage of the awards. More on CANNES
 
Dennis Palumbo: The Dick Cheney "Problem": A Modest Proposal Top
To my teenage son's chagrin, I'm kind of clueless about computers. In fact, I only half-jokingly refer to myself as a Luddite when it comes to technology. Well, I'm up-grading from Luddite to full-blown Quaker, because after watching and listening to former Vice-President Dick Cheney's relentless attacks on President Obama's policies, I'm now in favor of bringing back public shunning. If anyone needs to be shunned, it's a guy who favors torture, unnecessary wars, and outing CIA agents. Hell, maybe shunning isn't enough. Maybe we should take a leaf from the Bush administration's playbook and subject Cheney to the "enhanced interrogation technique" known as putting people in stocks. It could be that a couple days in an enforced sitting position, locked in wooden stocks in the public square, while outraged citizens and bemused schoolchildren point and laugh would prompt an attitude adjustment on Cheney's part. Though, admittedly, I doubt it. What Cheney is doing with his incessant attacks on Obama is nothing less than attempting to undermine the presidency, which---paradoxically, given his so-called concerns---has the net effect of actually making us less safe. By emphasizing his lack of trust and belief in the current administration, Cheney makes strengthening our ties with allies a much more difficult task. It also makes Obama's goal of clarifying our commitment to national security while maintaining our core values as a nation all that much harder to attain. After 9/11, former Vice President Al Gore admirably threw his support behind George W. Bush, and urged everyone, including his still-dispirited supporters, to do the same. Where is this sense of patriotism and putting-America-first from Dick Cheney? Usually only too happy to wrap himself in the flag, Cheney apparently has no compunction about trying to undermine this new administration, even before it's been in office six months. So I say let's put on our colonial peaked hats, break out the wooden stocks, and make a statement of our own. Maybe then Dick Cheney will have the decency shown by his former boss and just slink back to some ranch somewhere, start clearing some pesky brush, and save his self-serving vitriol for his inevitable memoirs.
 
Karen Dalton-Beninato: Power to the Post: The Permanant Wave of the GOP Top
Last spring in New Orleans I met a D.C. lobbyist who had read my piece on John McCain's lack of a visit to New Orleans aside from his private fund-raisers, and we talked about how shortly after that McCain flew down and walked through the 9th Ward. I joked that maybe McCain's staffers were taking direction from the Huffington Post, and the lobbyist answered, "Actually they have to. It's the only way to get out in front of the news cycle as it breaks." Politico just echoed this, quoting Bryan Rogers who had been McCain's spokesman saying, "HuffPo and [Talking Points Memo] really are the assignment editors for many in the Washington press corps -- particularly the cables. That's not just a Republican hack saying it -- that's speaking as a press guy fielding calls and e-mails daily from the MSM that start with, 'Did you see this thing on Huffington Post?' They were effective and they wasted a lot of our time." You're welcome. Oil of Delay, McCain Cancels Louisiana Trip after Barge Spill and Rocky Road: Time Defends McCain's New Orleans Gaffe covered McCain's eventual ill-fated visit, and Ickies' Breakey Heart as the Fight Winds Down covered the left side of the aisle. Hillary Clinton's immediately seizing on Mayhill Fowler's Guns, God and Religion Barack Obama post (and its 6,000 comments) is an infamous example of the internet driving campaigns. Candidate responses were the gifts that kept on giving, and I was tempted to float a test balloon to see if advisers were actually charting their course with punditry. The test? Whether John McCain would rock a full-on Will Ferrell style perm. First headline: "Why Does McCain Refuse to Get a Perm?" Followup stories would have included: "John McCain Still Spurning Perm: Affront to His Base?" "V.P. Pick Palin: Pro Perm or Lock Blocker?" "Beltway Beauticians Ponder: Is McCain Curl-Worthy?" "Clowns Weigh In on Curlgate" "Mainstream Media Scoops Up Permanent Campaign" We'll never know if Rogers could have talked his candidate into curly locks, but to pull from Hemmingway, isn't it pretty to think so? The McCains are a web savvy family - Megan McCain is taking on Ann Coulter through the Daily Beast and Cindy could still mix it up with Whoopi Goldberg on Wowowow if they're into Cindy's musings. But Huffington Post exposure remains the golden mean with 8.8 million readers in April alone. Politico confirms that the right wing is now jumping through whatever flaming hoops it can for exposure here since RedState's approach no longer plays in Peoria. Speaking of which, have you gotten a good look at Republican Congressman and Huffington blogger Aaron Schock's hair lately? It's like he thinks he's too cool for curly locks. Twittered too. More on GOP
 
CANNES FASHION 2009: Vote For Best And Worst (PHOTOS, POLL) Top
More on CANNES
 
National Journal Details GOP's "Southern Exposure" Problem Top
Republican strength in the South has both compensated for and masked the extent of the party's decline elsewhere. More on GOP
 
Taliban Is Foiling Pakistan Army: Washington Post Top
The battle for control of Swat has tested the Pakistani government's resolve to confront a raging Islamist insurgency that has gripped much of the northwest and threatened to reach into the nation's heartland. The most recent wave of fighting in Swat began late last month after a peace deal collapsed and the insurgents, who had agreed to lay down their weapons if they were permitted to institute Islamic law in Swat, instead overran adjacent districts and moved to within 60 miles of Pakistan's capital, Islamabad. More on War Wire
 
US, Afghan Forces Seize 101 Tons Of Narcotics, Biggest Drug Cache To Date Top
American and Afghan forces seized what the American military called the single largest drug cache to date in a four-day operation that began Tuesday in the south of the country. More on Afghanistan
 

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