TOASTING THE MAXIMUM LEADER

Here are the 15 finalists in moveon.org voter fund's amateur "Bush in 30 Seconds" political ad contest. To watch the ads, just click on the high- or low-bandwith versions (and don't forget to click the left arrow when the screen comes up). Some of them are terrific. For a quick taste, here's a random sample of photo stills from six of the 30-second spots: "Child's Play," "Polygraph," "Bring 'Em On," "Human Cost of War," "Leave No Child Behind" and "Gone in 30 Seconds."  

Moveon.org says it created the ad contest "to bring new talent and new messages into the world of mainstream political advertising" and is seeking "the ad that best explains what [the Maximum Leader] and his policies are really about -- in only 30 seconds." 

My favorites among the finalists are "Child's Play," "Desktop," "Bush's Repair Shop" and "Gone in 30 Seconds." Oh, and here's a minute-long, must-see cartoon ad for Halliburton by Mark Fiore. It's not part of the contest, but it would make a funny spot.

The winner, to be chosen by a jury, will be announced on Monday. The jurors include various show-biz types (Jack Black, Benny Boom, Margaret Cho, Hector Alizondo, Al Franken, Janeane Garofalo, Ted Hope, Michael Mann, Moby, Michael Moore, Tony Shalhoub, Russell Simmons, Michael Stipe, Gus Van Sant), two political strategists (Donna Brazille and James Carville), one pollster (Stan Greenberg), one intellectual (Katrina Vanden Heuvel), and -- to lend authority -- a partridge in a pear tree.

January 7, 2004 12:30 PM |

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Me Elsewhere

'WILD SIDE' STILL ROCKS 

Nelson Algren was one of the great American authors of the 20th century, it is no exaggeration to say, and among the most neglected. Consider his underrated classic, "A Walk on the Wild Side." The title -- popularized and co-opted as an idiomatic phrase by Hollywood and Madison Avenue (institutions Algren loathed) -- is familiar to most anyone who speaks English or knows Lou Reed's lyrics. But the novel itself? Hardly.

BUSTER KEATON REVISITED 
Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat is not a biography. "This book is merely a fan's notes," Edward McPherson writes in the introduction, although his publisher ignores the disclaimer and calls it a biography on the cover. In fact, the book is a bit of both, a difficult combination to bring off unless you're David Thomson, who set the standard with Rosebud, his penetrating rumination on the life and career of Orson Welles, which was nothing if not a distillation of every obsessive thought he ever had about the myth and the man and all his movies.
LAUREN BACALL, STILL SALTY AT 80 
When Lauren Bacall writes that her singing voice ranges "somewhere between B minus sharp and outer space," she's being candid and funny. It's not every stage star with two Tony Awards for best actress in a musical whose vocal talent offers so little promise. (OK, Harvey Fierstein excepted.) Still less would one admit it.
THE STARS ACCORDING TO BOGDANOVICH 
Peter Bogdanovich's superb collection of movie-star profiles and interviews -- a sequel to Who the Devil Made It, his interviews of top film directors -- begins with an affectionate tale about Orson Welles that reminds us just how intimate the author's connection to Hollywood's greatest has been. But contrary to what we've come to expect from dime-a-dozen celebrities and celebrity interviews not worth two cents, the tale avoids bromidic egotism and journalistic platitudes.
SAMMY'S WHITE DREAMS 
Four decades ago Lenny Bruce sentenced Sammy Davis Jr. to "30 years in Biloxi," stripping him of "his Jewish star" and "his religious statue of Elizabeth Taylor." Now we have two new biographies of Davis that spring him from ridicule, if not from doubts about his legacy, and restore a measure of dignity to a black entertainer whose huge fame and success never overcame his devout wish -- indeed his lifelong effort -- to be white.
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