Hollywood can’t get a break with its Iraq movies. Nikki Finke reports on the latest effort:

I’m told #7 Stop-Loss opened to only $1.6 million Friday from just 1,291 plays and should eke out $4+M. Although the drama from MTV Films was the best-reviewed movie opening this weekend, Paramount wasn’t expecting much because no Iraq war-themed movie has yet to perform at the box office. “It’s not looking good,” a studio source told me before the weekend. “No one wants to see Iraq war movies. No matter what we put out there in terms of great cast or trailers, people were completely turned off. It’s a function of the marketplace not being ready to address this conflict in a dramatic way because the war itself is something that’s unresolved yet. It’s a shame because it’s a good movie that’s just ahead of its time.”

And here I thought the movie had a chance. Tony Scott gave it a good review in the NYT, and specifically drew attention to the difference between this film and previous Iraq war movies:

Ms. Peirce’s movie, which she wrote with Mark Richard, is not only an earnest, issue-driven narrative, but also a feverish entertainment, a passionate, at times overwrought melodrama gaudy with violent actions and emotions. The sober, mournful piety that has characterized a lot of the other fictional features about Iraq — documentaries are another matter — is almost entirely missing from “Stop-Loss,” which is being distributed by Paramount’s youth-friendly label MTV Films. Not that the movie is unsentimental — far from it — but its messy, chaotic welter of feeling has a tang of authenticity. Instead of high-minded indignation or sorrow, it runs on earthier fuel: sweat, blood, beer, testosterone, loud music and an ideologically indeterminate, freewheeling sense of rage.

I was particularly encouraged by this bit, because it rings true:

[The young soldiers'] teasing is raucous and rude, and it is clear from the start that they are neither saints nor monsters, but rather the impure products of American pop culture. With exaggerated bravado, they sing “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American),” Toby Keith’s anthem of 9/11 payback, which threatens righteous whuppings for America’s enemies: “And it feels like the whole wide world is raining down on you.” [e.a.]

One of Nikki Finke’s sources gives his unvarnished battled-hardened showbiz opinion:

“No one wants to see Iraq war movies. No matter what we put out there in terms of great cast or trailers, people were completely turned off. It’s a function of the marketplace not being ready to address this conflict in a dramatic way because the war itself is something that’s unresolved yet. It’s a shame because it’s a good movie that’s just ahead of its time.”

Back to the drawing board. Meanwhile, it would be nice if Hollywood would entertain us.

The picture doesn’t need words.

But the NYT’s Alessandra Stanley has her exceedingly dull version of color commentary, if you’re interested.

For politicians, “The View,” on ABC, is a halfway house in between a CNN interrogation and the razzing of “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.” The five women mix spirited debate of what they call “hot topics” with vivid description of hot flashes. The talk show is neither totally serious nor completely frivolous, but it is an estrogen-intense zone. For a male guest, the hardest part is navigating the diverse and somewhat prickly personalities who sit on either side.

Mr. Obama, who has run the gamut of news shows in recent weeks to defuse the ado over his relationship with Mr. Wright, had no trouble finding longwinded words to demarcate his allegiance to his longtime pastor. “Had the Reverend not retired and had he not acknowledged that what he had said had deeply offended people and were inappropriate and mischaracterized what I believe is the greatness of this country, for all its flaws,” he said, “then I wouldn’t have felt comfortable staying there at the church.”

I was much more taken with Obama’s clever remark of the day:

Barack Obama publicly alluded to the various calls for the Democratic race to be over soon, telling a Pittsburgh crowd today that the Democratic race was like “a good movie that lasted about a half an hour too long.”

And then I heard Clinton’s rejoinder:

“I like long movies.”

Cut and thrust.

Before I even got a chance to post about Stuff White People Like, I find out that the blogger behind it got a $300K book deal. Not bad.

It is only fitting that Kurt Andersen, the godfather of attitude, was instrumental in helping bring the blog to the attention of the publisher.

Kudos to everyone involved—it looks like a winner, though the price tag was pretty steep, as noted in the New York Times story:

It will be difficult for the publisher to make a profit, said Sara Nelson, editor of Publishers Weekly. Doing some back-of-the-envelope math, she figured Random House would have to sell about 75,000 copies, a total that would likely land the book on best-seller lists, to earn back its $300,000 advance.

I’ll try to revisit this later, to see what happens. This one makes my nose twitch. It smells like a winner.

It’s sassy and its target couldn’t be any safer: white people! We love to laugh at ourselves. And we could all use some laughter about race.

Curiously, though, the publicist sees the book somewhat differently:

The publishing house is not worried about any accusations about the book being racist because it’s not really about white people, Ms. Fillon said.

Come again [e.a.]?

“A lot of different people are relating to this,” she said. “It exposes pop culture in general on a level everyone can relate to no matter what their race is.” 

More, please.  Even if it is too MOR for some:

Racist or not [surely not!  ---ed.], others are not such fans. The site’s satire does not hit the scathing heights of irony, but wallows in the simple scorched-earth attack of snarkiness, said Jon Winokur, the author of “The Big Book of Irony.”

“Snarkiness is contempt before investigation,” he said. “It’s just a pose that rejects everything in its path, and that’s what I take this to be.”

Putting contempt before investigation—that sounds like a great tagline. I may just have to adopt it.