I just saw the film and performance in question. Both were very interesting to me. Day-Lewis is powerful and enigmatic in a role that requires him to be just that. I had no trouble at all understanding Plainview. This was accomplished in his performance, plus there are at least three or four lines of dialogue in which he clearly states all you need to know about who he is. Almost all other dialogue he speaks are the things he feels are required of him if he is to function in a world of humans who don't interest him very much. I found the movie fascinating.

This article... not so much. After a couple of paragraphs, I was skimming. It seemed kind of desperate to make a case that I feel was unsupported by what I saw in the film. For Stephanie to write things like "But if the performance fails -- and this one does..." Wow. I thought his performance was very successful. Guess I was wrong, because Stephanie apparently has objective proof that here opinion is the correct one.

It's like, the other day I got an email from a professional writer who said, "Yeah, it's amazing how some writers mistake their opinion as being unassailable truth." That's about the clearest summation of the facts that I can think of.

In a few days, DDL will pick up another acting award. How awesome that only Stephanie will have been able to look at the performance through the eyes of true clarity. Only Stephanie.

Her reviews are often controversial on Salon, and in the past I have sometimes defended her, not because I think she is right, but because her job is not to bolster a commonly held opinion. However, sometimes, as in the case of this article, she does cross into the realm of the insufferably pompous. As someone up-thread asked, "Who is this WE" you keep talking about?"

I live in Oregon, and like many Americans I wont even have the opportunity to vote for my preferred candidate. Hillary may make a good president, I can't really say. Maybe she really will follow through on her promises; however, the only thing her claims for "experience" bring up to me is that she has 30 years of being chin deep in a political system that I have come to despise. I try to imagine the year 2016 coming to pass with Hillary Clinton still as president (assuming an eight-year term) and I just can't do it. It is so time for new blood, new young energy, new ideas, new strategies, new paradigms. We've wasted enough time and squandered enough resources holding on to old tired ideas. The old guard neocon empire builders can't die off soon enough for me.

Time for a change.

I haven't seen the movie, but it was interesting to see Stephanie echo my opinion based on seeing the trailer. When they show Christina in her pig nose I thought, "Hmmph, she's not so bad. Cute eyes and a sly sense of humor. That's not all bad. Better than if she had a curly tale."

Ye gods, the typo imps strike again.

He totally nailed the Bush persona with a single word: Stra-tee-ger-ee. Hilarious.

I can understand how people might be tired of Ferrell, but to say he is entirely unfunny? Ridiculous!

Someone up-thread already pointed out some of his classic SNL skits. They didn't even mention that Ferrell is the wielder of the cowbell in that immortal skit with Christopher Walken. Oh, but perhaps the Ferrell haters can't for the life of them understand why that skit was funny either.

You have to admit this is pretty spot on: The way out of a massively credit-crunched economy is to Buy More Crap!

The other day, I heard one economist on the news express his fear that people might waste the rebate by paying off the crap that they already bought. Silly American people. They can't seem to get anything right these days.

Simple answer: There should be no seating of delegates without a proper campaign and revote.

More complex answer: The entire election process needs a ground-up rewrite; Election 2.0. Talk about disenfranchisement, my state (Oregon) won't even have it's primary for a couple of months yet. A local news anchor asked, I think it was Cokie Roberts, whether that means our vote means anything. She pointed out that this year that means we could come down to being a state that decides the issue. But decides what? I, and most of my friends, were looking forward to casting a vote for John Edwards or Dennis Kucinich — a candidate with true populist and progressive ideas. Now, we MIGHT be a state who gets to cast a vote between a third and fourth choice. How exciting.

Third: Dress it up it however you want, but I can tell you from watching it from afar, on the sidelines, that for the past few weeks Senator Clinton has only been telling me all the scaredy cat reasons I shouldn't vote for Senator Obama. If I see her one more time delivering just a speech deriding him for making "just a speech" I think the irony overload might make my brain explode.

Obama offers hope (that bastard, I certainly "hope" we are not foolish enough to buy into that!"; Clinton talks as if her proposed policies are like cold hard money in the bank certainty. Neither position is the slightest bit more substantive and real than the other. But Clinton should know that her tactics are pissing me off. I am so fucking tired of people trying to scare me all the time. It never fucking ends.

Trust me. If sanity allowed a person to fly, I'd be giant condor, riding a patch of sky for hours on end.

Alas, I remain earthbound, with all you crazy folk.