from Frank Rich, writing in the New York Times, under the headline “The Cannes Landslide for Al Gore”:

Let it never be said that the Democrats don’t believe in anything. They still believe in Hollywood and they still believe in miracles. Witness the magical mystery comeback tour of Al Gore.

And Rich nails it:

Still, the unexpected rebirth of Al Gore says more about the desperation of the Democrats than it does about him.

Maybe the Democrats wouldn’t have to be so desperate if they would listen to the “engaged progressives with foreign policy ideas“…er, I mean the “neocons“… in their midst.

Sofia Coppola’s new movie Marie Antoinette, which just opened at Cannes, looks to be interesting. First of all, the audience booed (presumably, the French critics), although it had been highly touted. Then it generated discrepant views from two of the New York Times’s film critics, which is rare. It givest this movie a culture-war subtext, which I find even more interesting. (Coppola caught some flak for her last movie, too, the entertaining, stylish, and knowing Lost in Translation . She was accused of making fun of the Japanese.)

Manohla Dargis ($$) disliked the film, and she thinks Coppola doesn’t get it.

The princess lived in a bubble, and it’s from inside that bubble Ms. Coppola tells her story. Thus, despite some lines about the American Revolution, which is helping drain the king’s coffers and starve his people, Ms. Coppola ignores what’s best about Marie Antoinette’s story.

She doesn’t seem to realize that what made this spoiled, rotten woman worthy of attention weren’t her garden parties and fur-lined shoes, but the role she played in a bloody historical convulsion.

A. O. Scott ($$) has a different take on things:

The applause after the press screening Wednesday morning — there was some! — was mingled with boos, perhaps from die-hard republicans (in the French rather than the American sense) offended by Sofia Coppola’s insufficiently critical view of the ancien régime in its terminal decadence. In the movie, the hungry peasants and restless city dwellers who ultimately brought down the French monarchy are mainly a distant rumor, as the action takes place entirely within the hermetic world of the Bourbon court, with its intricate codes of behavior, its curious blend of idle hedonism and solemn purpose, its pervasive gossip and its obsession with fashion and appearance.

The Guardian called it “baffling and historically obtuse” but admired its sumptuous style.

Coppola herself noncommitally told The Times (London):

“I wanted the film to be credible but I was inspired more by the visual than historical facts. I want people to be transported into another era with an echo of today.”

My interest is piqued. Gotta wait till the fall, though.

That’s how Jacob Heilbrunn refers to “a host of pundits and young national security experts associated with the party [who] are calling for a return to the Cold War precepts of President Truman to wage a war against terror.”

Among those he cites are Peter Beinart, author of the new book The Good Fight; Governor Mark Warner (whose disastrous cover photo on the New York Times Magazine I made fun of here), and the crew at the Progressive Policy Institute, which I wrote about approvingly here.

I referred to them as “engaged progressives with foreign-policy ideas.” Heilbrunn calls them “neocons.” Hmmm. Oh well.

This new crop of liberal hawks calls for expanding the existing war against terrorism, beefing up the military and promoting democracy around the globe while avoiding the anti-civil liberties excesses of the Bush administration. They support a U.S. government that would seek multilateral consensus before acting abroad, but one that is not scared to use force when necessary.

These Democrats want to be seen as anything but the squishes who have led the party to defeat in the past.

And, of course, Heilbrunn predicts a big fight between this “fledgling” group and the “establishment”:

The battle will come from the generation of Democrats who came of age during the 1960s and who were instrumental in finishing off “Cold War liberalism” because of its failures in the jungles of Vietnam.

Vietnam, remember, was a liberal, not a conservative, war, undertaken by warrior intellectuals who were liberal at home but saw falling dominoes everywhere around the world. (The same lack of nuance plagues the Bush administration, which has been trying to depict a global kind of Islamic totalitarianism, when the foe, as in the Cold War, is really more diffuse and less of a monolith than American leaders are prepared to believe.)

The Moveon.org types are hardly prepared to go down without a fight. At the moment, with no end to the imbroglio in Iraq in sight, they — the populist left — are poised for their greatest influence in the party since the McGovern era.

The new Democratic hawks, like the old neoconservatives of the 1970s, represent an insurgency, a direct challenge to the establishment.

Excellent. The Democratic Party needs to have this fight. I look forward to it. Let the best arguments win. But let there be argument.

I’ve been lazing about and ignoring the news so that I’m not tempted to blog—as if!—and I’ve also been trying to fix up my online home.

There’s a new address for my Feedburner feed, and it should work now when you click on the orange button:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/how-infotaining/ttWJ

Also, my RSS feed is:

http://how-infotaining.com/?feed=rss2