Candidates, 7/30.

This'll be the entry that collects notes on Swing Vote and Stealing America: Vote by Vote, but first: FilmInFocus has asked five political minds "to stand back from the current race and vote on their five favorite campaign films." Posted so far are lists from David Sirota, author of The Uprising, and Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America.

"An inflated, dumbed-down variation on the 1939 John Barrymore vehicle The Great Man Votes, Swing Vote is as tired as its stunt of casting a dozen cable-news blowhards as themselves," writes Bill Weber in Slant. "Replacing its father-love syrup with genuine election-year vinegar would be change you could believe in, or at least stay awake through."

Updated through 8/5.

"In Stealing America: Vote by Vote, director Dorothy Fadiman does a fine job outlining the ways in which the integrity of the United States electoral process is repeatedly undermined by fraud, de facto disenfranchisement and the concerted efforts of corrupt politicos to draw on any available means to ensure the successful campaign of their candidate; where she runs into trouble is in trying to pose solutions." Andrew Schenker in Slant.

For Vadim Rizov, writing in the Voice, she runs into trouble a lot earlier than that. He lists the doc's many sins (in his eyes, of course), and then: "What matters is that Stealing America: Vote by Vote - even by the political video documentary's meager standards - plays like a particularly dull PowerPoint presentation. The case it lays out is factually sketchy, but as a movie, it's unforgivable."

For Filmmaker, Nick Dawson talks with Fadiman "about covering a story the mainstream media had avoided, the advantages of having true independence as a filmmaker, and where Hollywood is going wrong."

At the SpoutBlog, Karina Longworth notes that many on both the left and right sides of the aisle aren't too happy that Oliver Stone is pushing his W. into theaters before Election Day.

Update: And FilmInFocus has just added Nation columnist Katha Pollitt's list of five.

Update, 7/31: "[Director Joshua Michael] Stern (who also co-wrote the script with Jason Richman) is a touch too slick - and too soft - to pull off a truly incisive American political satire, but he's also far from stupid, and the longer Swing Vote hangs around, the more engaging it becomes," writes Scott Foundas in the LA Weekly. "It's twice as smart as you have any reason to expect but still only half as smart as you wish it were."

"Swing Vote is absurd, and by all rights it shouldn't work," writes the Stranger's Annie Wagner. "I won't say it's Capra-esque, but it's awfully nice."

The New York Press's Armond White finds it "superior to such pseudo-political comedies as Dave and The American President."

The Los Angeles Times profiles Swing Vote's leads: John Horn with Kevin Costner and Michael Ordoña with Madeline Carroll.

IndieWIRE interviews Stealing director Fadiman.

Meantime, Glenn Kenny has a very fun entry on the dust Jeffrey Wells has kicked up with his comments on Jon Voight's knee-slapper of an op-ed in the Washington Times.

Jim Emerson at MSN: "Lights, Camera, Election! Political lessons we learned from the movies." And at his own site, he's got more notes and a question: "What else should have made the list, and why?"

Updates, 8/1: "Swing Vote isn't exactly a toothless political satire," writes Slate's Dana Stevens. "It's something worse: a satire with dentures. What little bite it manages to apply against the American electoral system is fake, to be removed at will whenever a truly chewy topic comes up."

"A pleasant muddle about life, liberty and the pursuit of Budweiser, among other noble and base causes, Swing Vote is also one of the most surprising, politically suggestive movies to come out of Hollywood this year," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "Swing Vote is a mainstream, eager-to-please, relatively generic endeavor, not an auteurist showcase. Mr Stern does nice work with the actors, even the weak ones. But it's difficult to pick out a distinctive voice amid the loud music and equally blaring commercial imperatives that mandate that even the sharpest political jabs be delivered with smiles."

"Swing Vote is a polemic about process: It's vitally important that you vote, the movie argues, but whom you vote for makes not the slightest difference," writes Christopher Orr in the New Republic. "Indeed, to a degree the movie seems not even to recognize, it is not about the political ramifications of voting at all, but the therapeutic ones."

"The modern political comedy falls into one of two extremes; either it's a bland bore with no actual politics in it that makes you want to fall asleep (Welcome to Mooseport, My Fellow Americans) or a bleak blunt satire that makes you want to slit your wrists (Wag the Dog, Thank You For Smoking)," writes James Rocchi at Cinematical. "In our divided, focus-grouped age where politics is, to flip von Clausewitz, the continuation of war by other means, most political comedies either skip any real ideas in the name of making money ('Ha! The president fell down!') or go for the jugular on their way to the poorhouse.... Swing Vote isn't going to be remembered as the best political comedy of our time (Ivan Reitman's wacky-but-warm Dave still holds that position) but it's not a bad showcase for Costner, and its heart and brain are both in something close to the right place."

"[G]iven the way things turn out in this cynical, confrontational film, one wonders if it was Mr Stern's decision to go goofy at the outset, or if it was the decision of a studio executive concerned that the film was mocking its audience a little too directly," writes S James Snyder in the New York Sun.

"Costner makes a convincing everyman, even handling the transition from drunk to diplomat in one week flat," writes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times.

"[T]he film radiates squandered potential in every frame," sighs Nathan Rabin at the AV Club.

"Borrowing the idealism of Frank Capra movies and the cynicism of Preston Sturges comedies, but not near those old masters as an entertainer or political guru, Stern suggests that the real hero is the ordinary Joe who goes to the polls and votes these rascals in," notes Richard Corliss in Time. "Swing Vote has aspirations to be Molly - or, in a pinch, Bud. But it's closer to the parties' idea men, trying to guess what the people want, then desperately laying it on."

"There are some interesting little surprises in Joshua Michael Stern's Swing Vote, glimmers of intelligence flashing briefly amid the muddiness of the picture's uncertainty," writes Salon's Stephanie Zacharek. "Unfortunately, you have to wade through the whole movie to get to them."

Nathan Lee in the NYT: "Stealing America: Vote by Vote might have been this year's most alarming and patriotic documentary if it weren't so shoddy and dull." More from S James Snyder in the New York Sun - and Salon's Andrew O'Hehir:

1) As Fadiman's computer experts tell us, fixing a moderately large number of votes is technically feasible. 2) If Karl Rove and Dick Cheney could do such a thing, they certainly would. 3) The whole thing is unproven and unprovable, and gets a pretty low Occam's-razor score for probability. Conspiracy theories, whether they're about the JFK assassination or 9/11 or Flight 800 or, I don't know, the 2002 Kings-Lakers series, represent our desire to see order in a chaotic and ambiguous universe, whose patterns are generally too large for us to grasp. On a more practical level, they generally require a degree of competence, organization and secrecy for which human beings are not much noted.

[...]

It's one thing to have a point of view, even an unpopular or outrageous one, and pursue it vehemently. It's quite another to feign an interest in the truth while ignoring all complicating or contrary evidence.

Meantime, Dan Rather picks his five for FilmInFocus.

And Jane Hamsher (firedoglake) presents her five.

Update, 8/3: "[D]isappointingly weak," sighs Alonso Duralde at MSNBC. "There's substantial evidence that Republicans have committed election chicanery in Florida in 2000, in Ohio in 2004, and with the politically motivated hirings and firings at the Department of Justice. We currently have an election where an African-American with a Muslim name has a better-than-average shot at being elected president. Times like these call for smarter and sharper movies than Swing Vote."

Update, 8/5: "The makers of Swing Vote, the new film starring Kevin Costner, have pulled off a rare double play, producing a smart political satire that is also heartfelt and moving. It's also a film that turns out to be remarkably relevant to the 2008 race," argues Arianna Huffington.

Online listening tip. Discussed on the Leonard Lopate Show: The Best Man, The Candidate and Bob Roberts.

Posted by dwhudson at July 30, 2008 12:31 PM