When it comes to sifting through all actors responsible for portraying the most powerful man on the planet, there's no shortage of options. John Travolta did a great Bill Clinton impersonation in Primary Colors and Timothy Bottoms delivered a near-perfect imitation of George W. Bush in both D.C. 9/11: Time of Crisis and That's My Bush! Neither one comes across as particularly flattering, so presidential nominee Barack Obama has chosen a safer bet: At a recent party in Los Angeles, Obama revealed that he prefers Jeff Bridges' conflicted commander-in-chief in The Contender. Granted, he may have said this simply to keep his audience happy -- in this case, Contender director Rod Lurie, one of the attendees who was willing to plop down $28,000 for the event. "'I just plugged your movie," Obama told Lurie, according to a report the director sent to Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeffrey Wells.

Still, when you're under the kind of intense scrutiny that Obama currently endures, Bridges actually seems like a pretty safe choice. Choose Anthony Hopkins in Nixon and it sounds like you're endorsing the bad guy. Choose Kevin Kline in Dave and you come across as disingenuous. Choose Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove and somebody will call you incompetent. Bridges, on the other hand, plays a fierce leader bound to his moral convictions. Of course, Obama also expressed sympathy over Lurie's short-lived television show Commander-in-Chief, which featured Geena Davis as the first woman president. Perhaps it's no coincidence that he and Hillary have publicly made amends.

Let's talk about Sex, baby ... I got an email from Melissa Silverstein over at Women and Hollywood yesterday, asking a pack of women who work in various aspects of the film industry to share our thoughts on whether a successful box office turn for Sex and the City, which opens this weekend, might herald a change in Hollywood's attitude toward chick-centric movies. Melissa posed the following questions:

• If it's a success do you think that this will change Hollywood minds about whether women can "open" movies?
  
• If it doesn't do the predicted numbers, do you think this will spell more difficulties for women centric films?
  
• Do you think that because this is an "event" that other films about women will be held up to an unrealistic standard?
  
• Do you think there is a double standard for this film?
  
• Are you surprised by the nasty tone that some of the media has taken on this week?

You can read my response, and the thoughts of some other smart women, over on Melissa's site, but in the meantime, I thought this was a great set of questions to pose to Cinematical readers. Whether you love Sex and the City or hate it, what are your thoughts on whether a big box office run for the film might change the way Hollywood thinks about movies for and about women? Discuss away ...

The film only got a brief, limited release in May, and now Variety reports that Warner Brothers has grabbed the North American DVD and pay-per-view/on-demand rights to Americanizing Shelley, which will be let loose on the American and Canadian public February 5 of next year. The brainchild of writer/producer/star Namrata Singh Gujral, and directed by Lorraine Senna (Sopranos), Shelley is a Bollywood/Hollywood production about a "wanna-be Hollywood player, who sets out to Americanize an Indian girl straight from the Himalayas." She comes to the US, sees her arranged husband smooching some white girl, and then gets picked to be Hollywood's next star.

If that's not enough to whet your appetite, how about the fact that the flick is pun-crazy? The film proves that "You Can't Curry Love!" and shows "a new game of the cowboy and the Indian." I couldn't make that up if I tried! Okay, I could, but I'm not sure that I'd want to. The former shows up on the film's website, while the latter is from the trailer. I wish I could tell you more about the film, but the synopsis on the website is just filled with puns and those lines that movie PR people love, like "Their clash in cultures soon gives way to understanding, unity, and love as they begin to see the world through each other's eyes," rather than solid info. But there is this: Shelley also co-stars has a cameo from ex-kid actor, Star Trek alum, and all-star blogger (who also occasionally writes for TV Squad) Wil Wheaton.

*Fixed thanks to Wil. Tricky website sporting Wil's face first, as if he's a co-star.

Michael Bay's Transformers hits DVD today (check out our review), and Paramount is celebrating by turning one of the film's stars loose in Los Angeles. No, unfortunately it's not Megan Fox. Standing at the West Hollywood Gateway shopping center (at the intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard and La Brea), surrounded by shops like Target and Jamba Juice, stands Bumblebee. It's an actual prop from the film, it stands 18 feet tall, and it weighs 8,200 pounds. The robot had to be assembled and set up by a forklift and a ten-ton crane. Bumblebee will be standing guard there through this Sunday, October 21st.

I went over this morning to snap some pictures. As I rounded the corner, I was expecting a madhouse -- people pointing to the skies and screaming, running in terror, etc. Or at least, y'know, looking in its general direction! But then I remembered I was in West Hollywood. You need more than an 18 foot-tall robot to stand out in West Hollywood. I could have strolled through the shopping center buck naked and juggling infants, and still wouldn't have been given a second look. Transvestites, Transsexuals, Transformers, it's just another day in Hollywood. Still, I thought the display was pretty sweet, and snapped some photographs for those of you who can't make it to L.A. Check 'em out, won't you?

Side note -- while picking up the new Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers DVD at the Best Buy there, I bumped into none other than actor Peter Weller! Was he just picking up some headphones...or was he there to pitch a Robocop Vs. Transformers flick to Bumblebee? I report, you decide.

Celebrities all over the place are going green. Every day there is a new eco story popping up. Cate Blanchett has become an environmental stickler in her home, with efforts that include installing 2-minute timers on on her shower. (This attempt is, no doubt, helped by the fact she has stylists and the like to keep her looking fresh.) There's Sarah Michelle Gellar who rides a pink bike around, and uses reusable bags for Whole Foods discounts. And some, like Adrian Grenier, coach others on how to be more green, like his tutorials for Paris Hilton. But I'm sure I'm not the only one who sees these stories and spots the imbalance between an actor's work and their personal causes.

The Telegraph posted an article yesterday calling Hollywood out on being one of the biggest polluters in soCal, whilst performing "eco-friendly gestures [that are] simply showy stunts that make little difference." It sites a two-year study performed by the University of California at Los Angeles, which found that production aspects like explosions and idling vehicles are only beat by the oil industry in regards to polluting emissions. But there's also the garbage -- the sets that get built and destroyed and everything else that's necessary to create a faux world.

Warner Brothers is finally starting to recycle sets, which is a plus, and other productions try to balance their negative environmental impact with positive action -- the Evan Almighty production planted "2,000 trees to 'zero out' its greenhouse gas production." But as Ed Begley Jr. says: "If you're going to drive around in a big ol' Hummer and then buy carbon offsets to mitigate that, that's like getting drunk on the weekends and throwing some money through the window of an AA meeting and thinking you're doing something." What do you think? Do the environmentalist acts of actors mean anything when they're in a resource-sucking industry? What can Hollywood do when it relies so much on energy and materials?

Barry Koltnow, over at the OC Register, has posted a little rant about Hollywood and the rampant cult of celebrity. He asks: "In the wake of everything that has happened recently with Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Richie, is there anyone left on the planet who doesn't think that something is terribly wrong with this Hollywood?" To him, something must be done pronto, and his suggestion: "Baby boomers need to seize control of the culture... Without our help, they will continue to worship people like Paris Hilton. They will continue to wear baseball caps crooked. They will continue to turn up their sound systems at red lights to a decibel level that would embarrass Blue Cheer." Granted, this is coming from a blogger who writes a lot about Paris and celebrity, but it's still an interesting notion: how did this all come to be?

Did boomers really, step back, let what Koltnow calls "slackers" take over and run Hollywood into the ground? Could a boomer resurgence change things? As long as the internet and super-quick media exists, I'd say no, because really, I don't think the actions are changing, just the way and amount that we hear about them. There have always been questionable celebrity shenanigans and wildness. A few decades ago, it was Drew Barrymore, and many years before her -- Marilyn Monroe. I'd love a new standard of beauty, regardless of age, but doesn't our current standard come from the past? If skinny-lust was only a construct of this generation, Twiggy never would've became a widely-recognized name. What say you? Is this "a clear call to arms?" Should we "crush the youth culture and save the world," or are we continuing an ever-cycling desire for celebrity drama?

[via Arts Journal]

They say Hollywood's the dream factory. In Confessions of a Superhero, director Matt Ogdens shows us some of the sweepings off the factory floor. In quick order, we're introduced to four would-be actors -- Christopher Dennis, Maxwell Allen, Jennifer Gerht and Joe McQueen -- who make a living between auditions and rare acting jobs by dressing as superheroes and posing with the tourists outside Graumann's Chinese Theater. It's a tightrope of a gig -- they have to stay on the public sidewalk outside of Graumann's, they can't ask for tips, they're on their own for supplies and support -- and as they suit up as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and the Hulk, their borrowed personas seem to press them down even as they raise them out from the crowd. Confessions of a Superhero finds delight and depression in the details -- Dennis over-spraying Superman's distinctive forelock, or how Gerht's Wonder Woman belt is held on by paperclips.

It also actually sits down with all the participants and takes them seriously -- just as seriously as they take themselves, which can be very much so indeed -- and asks each of them how they got in front of Graumann's, and where they'd rather be. There's a host of legal issues at play in Confessions of a Superhero -- the limits of free assembly, the nature of copyright -- but those don't get dwelled on; instead, we see the ups and downs of our not-so-fantastic foursome's work. We see Joe McQueen demolished by the heat inside his colossal Hulk costume -- on a record 106-degree day, it's a brutal 130 degrees inside the emerald-tinged mass of foam Joe straps on for work. We also see the curious aspects of making yourself into a public image -- when Dennis poses with one young woman for a photo, the camera gently drifts down to reveal that she is, in fact (and there's no other way to say this) cupping Superman's junk.

I think we can all agree that we're a little more preoccupied with celebrities than we should be. It's scary when I know way more about about people I've never met than my neighbors -- without batting an eye I could name Brad Pitt's girlfriends in chronological order, it's sick. Don't worry; I'm not about to hop on a soapbox about the evils of celebrity culture. Most "stargazing" is relatively harmless, although if you were Steven Spielberg or Jodie Foster, you probably wouldn't agree.

One of the most benign past-times of Hollywood lovers is collecting memorabilia. So while you and I might indulge in the occasional In Touch magazine or collector's edition DVD, for others collecting is a serious and expensive business. 20th Century Fox's charity auction in New York consisted of letters and contracts from some of the biggest names in Hollywood history. Included in the auction were a signed letter by Marilyn Monroe (sold for $7,000) and contracts from Katherine Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, and John Steinbeck. Steinbeck's contract for handing over the rights to The Grapes of Wrath was the big-ticket item of the day, netting $24,000. Proceeds from the auction; totaling $267,280, went to the Motion Picture & Television Fund, providing financial assistance to struggling actors and directors. The charity might be a worthy cause, but I can't imagine forking over almost $25,000 for paperwork. What memorabilia, if any, would you be willing to take out a small loan for?

Ryan Stewart wrote the other day about David Denby's depressing take on the state of film; now Anne Thompson is, in her polite way, slamming Denby for this lengthy piece he wrote bemoaning the state of the movie industry and how studios are focusing more on delivering content to iPods and computers than on delivering a quality movie theater experience. Yah, big deal, Denby, sayeth Thompson -- tell us something we don't know, already, and spare us the term-paper Hollywood biz analysis.

At the same time Denby is bemoaning the death-knell of the theatrical experience, the New York Observer has a much wittier memo to Hollywood up that's based on the opposite premise: That Hollywood actually cares about New York theater-goers. Writers Choire Sicha and Sara Vilkomerson get off some nice zingers, such as "We don't know what conspired to bring Ghost Rider in February. Look, it's Oscar-winner Nicolas Cage-and his head is a skull and it's on fire!" and:

"We're not stupid: No one in Hollywood actually loves Jesus. Things have gotten niche-ean now that the FoxFaith brand has launched. (Good job lifting the phrase "faith-based" from the Bush camp, News Corp.!) We suppose the Christians won't realize it was News Corp.'s Fox Searchlight that released Notes on a Scandal, with Cate Blanchett fornicating with a teen." Ouch.

Although box office takes continue to top eight billion dollars in revenue every year, it looks like Hollywood is in for a a bit of a Blue Christmas as gift giving continues to slip. According to this article in Variety, the Grinch appears to be taking over the duties of handing out presents and bonuses, and this is the pre-epiphany Grinch, we're talking about the miserly, Scooge-like one. So a lot of Tinseltown (ironic name, eh?) employees could be heading home with coal, or possibly a membership in the Jelly-of-the-Month club.

Most employees depend (or hope) on some sort of a Christmas bonus at the end of the year. When it doesn't come, you feel like you got Scrooged. Hollywood tightens their belt in increments every year to try to save on costs by doing things like shooting out of the country, nixing big budget films like Halo, and minimizing their risk wherever they can. During a time of year where we often find ourselves doing a little soul searching, would it kill to slip a little heartfelt sentiment and some sort of material goods in there?

As someone who has worked in the trenches of the industry, a little bit can go a long way. Our Christmas bonuses vaporized awhile ago, and the company Christmas parties were slimmed down to basically a few munchies and drinks in the parking lot, and it was like pouring cold water on our morale. Hollywood bosses, if you're reading this, consider taking your team out to lunch and telling 'em how much you need 'em. They'll appreciate it. The rest of you, carry on and keep checking your stocking. The Grinch can't make it every year.