The us-es out there

Milk

Crit

The real challenge for this film was not whether it could be moving and inspiring but whether it could be as moving and inspiring as its trailer, which is hands-down the best I've seen this year. Well, yes, it can. Is. Penn is perfect, everyone in the cast is excellent (I finally get my daughter's infatuation w/ James Franco), and though I might cavil a bit with the tape-recorder-memoir frame, it's hard to argue with Van Sant's structure of the story.

Impossible to watch the climactic sequence of the campaign against a California-wide ballot measure that would have allowed school districts to fire teachers for no other cause than homosexuality without thinking of this year's victorious Proposition 8, overriding the state supreme court ruling that legalized gay marriage (among other antigay votes in other states). But it's worth noting that Prop. 8 succeeded, barely, via a perfect political storm: a strangest-of-bedfellows de facto alliance of Catholics, Mormons, and an understandably enthusiastic voting bloc with an unfortunate history of cultural conservatism and homophobia. Can you say "last stand"?

Still, it wouldn't hurt if the next Harvey Milk were to come along.

Trailers

• Duplicity--I guess it's appropriate that after seeing today's film to admit that I find Clive hotter than Julia. Looks like a perfectly silly film that might be tons of fun. Soft 4.
  
• Entre les murs (The class)--OK,I know you're sick of my rants about distributors that take wonderfully poetic, evocative foreign-language titles like, say, Between the Walls and "translate" them into bland, generic English-language titles, so I'll spare you this time around. I'll just say I'm in.