“Movie review: 'All About Steve' - Times Herald-Record” plus 4 more

Movie review: 'All About Steve' - Times Herald-Record
Campaign finance laws before the Supreme Court - Las Vegas Sun
'Sopranos' actor Imperioli directs first film - Times & Democrat
Movie trailer: 'Whiteout' - New Orleans Times-Picayune
Hillary movie puts campaign finance limits at risk - Yahoo News

Movie review: 'All About Steve' - Times Herald-Record

Posted: 05 Sep 2009 11:05 PM PDT

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It's bad enough that the usually enjoyable Sandra Bullock has found a way to star in not one but two flat romantic comedies this summer, between "The Proposal" in June and now "All About Steve." But what's truly baffling — disheartening, really — is the fact that this latest one was written by a woman.

Kim Barker came up with the script in which Bullock's character, a crossword puzzle writer named Mary Horowitz, is singularly annoying from the first moment we meet her. It's almost misogynistic, the lack of humanity Barker's script gives this woman.

Mary is a goofy, clingy, hyperactive chatterbox who bores people everywhere she goes with her arcane bits of trivia and long-winded anecdotes. She lives at home with her parents (Beth Grant and Howard Hesseman, who don't get much to do) and needs to be fixed up on a blind date to have even a remote chance at intimate contact with a man. The film affords her no sympathy for any of these traits.

When Mary finally meets handsome cable-news cameraman Steve (Bradley Cooper, all blue eyes and blinding teeth), she immediately throws herself at him. Then she misinterprets a comment he makes in the frenzy of scurrying away from her as an invitation to join him on the road covering breaking news, and ends up stalking him across the country. During her travels, she befriends another woman who isn't drawn with a whole lot of grace: a full-figured, big-haired simpleton who doesn't understand Mary's many big words but does carry delicious snacks as she hangs out wherever the TV cameras happen to be.

There is nothing about Mary that's even vaguely appealing, but the feature debut from director Phil Traill makes it obvious we're meant to find her endearing. This much is clear from the way he focuses on Mary's signature clothing item — a pair of shiny, knee-high red boots — early and often, a lazy shorthand to indicate this person is supposed to be quirky but lovable.

Each time Mary finds Steve, she jumps up and down like a little girl, then runs toward him and pummels him with affection. It's actually pretty frightening behavior. Steve, meanwhile, is an enigma, good-looking but bland. Ostensibly, that's the point — that he's more of a figment of Mary's idealism than anything else — but that doesn't make him a terribly compelling character, and it doesn't make effective use of Cooper's charisma.

Thomas Haden Church provides a couple of laughs as Steve's self-serious reporter — his absurdly melodramatic live shots are pretty funny — but his character is also cruel to Mary by stringing her along and inviting her to join them at each new destination. (The ubiquitous Ken Jeong plays the crew's exasperated field producer.) Meanwhile, Kerri Kenney-Silver, Luenell from "Borat" and Charlyne Yi go to waste in throwaway supporting roles.

Then, just when it seems "All About Steve" couldn't grow any more insufferable, it turns strangely sentimental, which allows Mary to make profound observations about life in the form of forced crossword-puzzle metaphors. Too bad the movie itself doesn't have a clue.

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Campaign finance laws before the Supreme Court - Las Vegas Sun

Posted: 06 Sep 2009 01:28 AM PDT

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The federal and state campaign finance laws and legal interpretations of them at stake as the Supreme Court hears a reargument of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission: The court asked lawyers to answer this question: "Should the Court ...

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'Sopranos' actor Imperioli directs first film - Times & Democrat

Posted: 06 Sep 2009 01:21 AM PDT

"Sopranos" actor Michael Imperioli has taken on a new role: first-time film director.

"The Hungry Ghosts" _ packed with the kind of gritty passions found in the hit HBO series _ will premiere Sept. 15 in New York.

The evening will be something of a cast reunion for actors from "The Sopranos." Steve Schirripa and Sharon Angela star in the film, and Vince Curatola, Lorraine Bracco and Vincent Pastore are expected as guests. The TV series ended in 2007.

"Ghosts" won't have the usual red-carpet opening.

Ticket sales for what's billed as "a private screening" at the Rubin Museum in downtown Manhattan will benefit Tibetan refugees and elderly Buddhist monks led by the Dalai Lama.

"Buddhism is an antidote to the characters in the film," said the 43-year-old director, who studies Eastern philosophy and practices the tae kwon do martial art with his wife and children.

His movie's characters float like ghosts through an intense 36 hours of New York life, wrestling with drugs, alcohol and sex in what Imperioli calls "the human struggle for completion."

"They're lost and searching for something, restless and desirous of something spiritual _ and physical," he said in a telephone interview Saturday, adding with a laugh, "It's a common affliction, a universal one."

In this ensemble psychodrama, a cocaine-fueled radio host drives away his teenage son, who ends up in a park at night. A couple offers him alcohol and drugs, and the woman has sex with the youth while the man watches. In another narrative, a man fresh out of detox searches for his ex-lover, a woman who once taught yoga.

The various linked lives are saved by "a sense of compassion for each other, a sense of going beyond yourself," said Imperioli, noting that the yoga instructor tells the destructive radio host, "remember all the good that you've done."

In January, "Ghosts" opened the International Film Festival Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

Eighteen cast members, including Angela and Schirripa, have worked at the 67-seat Studio Dante theater that Imperioli and his wife, Victoria, run in Manhattan's Garment District.

He wrote the screenplay for the film he calls "a family affair."

With his wife co-producing and designing the sets, plus the actors' modest fees, the 105-minute movie was shot on a mere $600,000 budget.

Imperioli is now aiming for distribution of his independent silver-screen debut.

On the Net:

"The Hungry Ghosts" tickets: http://www.studiodante.com

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Movie trailer: 'Whiteout' - New Orleans Times-Picayune

Posted: 06 Sep 2009 02:54 AM PDT

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• Review: '9' is breathtakingly original 9/4/2009, 2:43 p.m. CDT

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Hillary movie puts campaign finance limits at risk - Yahoo News

Posted: 06 Sep 2009 01:49 AM PDT

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court appears poised to wipe away limits on campaign spending by corporations and labor unions in time for next year's congressional elections in a case that began as a dispute over a movie about Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The justices return to the bench Sept. 9 — nearly a month early — to consider whether to overrule two earlier decisions that restrict how and when corporations and unions can take part in federal campaigns. Laws that impose similar limits in 24 states also are threatened.

The court first heard arguments in March in the case of whether "Hillary: The Movie," a scathingly critical look at Clinton's presidential ambitions, could be regulated as a campaign ad. The emphasis has shifted away from the 90-minute film.

Now the justices could decide whether corporations and unions should be treated differently from individuals when it comes to campaign spending. Restrictions on corporations have been around for more than 100 years; limits on unions date from the 1940s.

Deep corporate and labor pockets and the potential for corruption "amply justify treating corporate and union expenditures differently from those by individuals and ideological nonprofit groups," argued Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and other sponsors of a major campaign finance law who don't want any significant change to the restrictions.

But former Solicitor General Theodore Olson, who six years ago defended the campaign finance provision he now is challenging, said the limits are strangling corporate and union freedom to speak out.

"Why is it easier to dance naked, burn a flag or wear a T-shirt profanely opposing the draft," Olson said at a Federalist Society event in July, "than it is to advocate the election or defeat of a president? That cannot be right."

Wednesday's unusual session — the court only rarely orders a case to be reargued — also will be the first to include the newest justice, Sonia Sotomayor. In August, the 55-year-old New Yorker became the court's first Hispanic and third female justice ever.

It also will be the first argument for Solicitor General Elena Kagan, a finalist for the high court seat that went to Sotomayor. Yet another former solicitor general, Seth Waxman, is representing McCain and Feingold in an effort to preserve the 2003 provision that tightened limits on ads paid for by corporations and unions and broadcast close to an election.

Kagan, defending the law on the government's behalf, and Waxman will face skeptical conservative-leaning justices, who appear to hold the upper hand on this issue. The court's liberals generally have voted to uphold campaign finance laws. Sotomayor's ascension to the court did not change its ideological balance, giving opponents of the current campaign finance laws hope this court will strike them down.

The court could have decided the case narrowly following arguments on March 24. Instead, on the last day they met before their summer break, the justices said they would consider overruling part of their 2003 decision that upheld major portions of the McCain-Feingold law as well as a 1990 decision that upheld limits on corporate spending in elections.

Three justices on the court now — Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas — already have signed minority opinions that advocated striking down both laws as unconstitutional restrictions on speech. Since the 2003 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito have joined the court. Both have questioned the validity of campaign finance laws, but have not yet gone as far as their three conservative-leaning colleagues.

Roberts and Alito made clear during the original arguments how much they worried about the control the campaign finance laws give government over political speech.

"If Wal-Mart airs an advertisement that says, `We have candidate action figures for sale, come buy them,' that counts as an electioneering communication?" Roberts asked government lawyer Malcolm Stewart.

"If it's aired in the right place at the right time, that would be covered," Stewart said.

Stewart later added that campaign finance laws could be applied to mediums such as books and e-books. "That's pretty incredible," Alito said. "You think that if a book was published, a campaign biography that was the functional equivalent of express advocacy, that could be banned?"

Olson picked up on Alito's incredulity in his brief to the court. "Enough is enough. When the government of the United States of America claims the authority to ban books because of their political speech, something has gone terribly wrong and it is as sure a sign as any that a return to first principles is in order," he said.

Olson is representing Citizens United, a conservative not-for-profit group that wanted to air ads for the anti-Clinton movie and distribute it through video-on-demand services on local cable systems during the 2008 Democratic primary campaign.

But federal courts said the movie looked and sounded like a long campaign ad, and therefore should be regulated like one.

The justices could have decided the case on narrow grounds this year, saying for example that movies aired on-demand are exempt from campaign finance laws.

The call for new arguments to address the broader limits on corporate and union spending makes supporters of those laws nervous.

"This has the potential to unleash massive corporate spending," said Democracy 21 president Fred Wertheimer, a longtime proponent of limiting money in politics. "It would be a disaster for democracy."

___

The case is Citizens United v. FEC, 08-205.

___

On the Net:

"Hillary: The Movie": http://www.hillarythemovie.com

Federal Election Commission: http://www.fec.gov

Background on the case: http://tinyurl.com/cfltxp

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