Biases up front:

For many of the same reasons most of us don’t care for leftist movie stars, I don’t like George Clooney, but after he publicly made fun of Charlton Heston’s Alzheimer’s, that was something altogether different. Unforgivable. An uncommonly cruel thing to do – even for a Hollywoodist — and it offered a disturbing glimpse into the mercenary assholery of a man willing to say anything for a place at the Hollywood Cool Kids’ Table. Clooney’s other problem is that unlike Jane Fonda and Sean Penn, he simply doesn’t possess the acting chops to transcend what a classless act he really is behind that Cary Grant-lite façade. Sure, Hollywood and the entertainment media adore him, but that’s because he’s the kind of guy who would make fun of Charlton Heston’s Alzheimer’s.

I do, however, like director Jason Reitman — quite a bit, in fact. “Thank You For Smoking” and “Juno” proved him to be a genuine talent, superb with actors and able to bring genuine warmth to the kind of stories lesser directors would distance us from with “quirk.” And as we saw with the subtle anti- abortion message in “Juno,” Reitman’s the rare filmmaker today who puts the quality of his story above the clichéd politically correct demands that bring down so many others … like, say, the wretched “Avatar.” (more…)

All your life, you’ve heard about the American Dream: find a wife or husband, pop out some kids, buy a house with a white picket fence and live happily ever after in the cozy embrace of suburbia.

But what if that cozy embrace wasn’t there anymore? Take a look around you at the news and official statistics, and it’s clear that America and its attendant “Dream” is in a heap of trouble. What if you did all that hard work, only to see it swept away by a devastating layoff? How would you handle it?

In his new film “Up in the Air,” George Clooney delivers perhaps the most well-rounded performance of his career while finding rays of hope and humor in the economic darkness of our present times. As Ryan Bingham, a corporate downsizing specialist, he flies around the country helping administer mass layoffs for companies too scared to handle such situations themselves.

Ryan has the patter of a concerned friend down to a T, calmly guiding people through the devastating moments of hearing they’ve lost their job by discussing their severance packages, giving them a pep talk and then providing them their final proverbial shove out the door with a kind smile and perhaps a pat on the back thrown in for effect. But his own personal life is nearly bereft of such touches, or connections of any kind – he’s on the fly over 300 days a year and wishes he could make it 365. If a woman’s around to seduce from time to time, Ryan will engage in some fun but meaningless sport sex and move on. (more…)