Welcome to SUPER TUESDAY! If you follow the news reports, then you know that somewhere around sixty-six states are holding Presidential Primaries today. Now, it is true that that amounts to sixteen more states than we actually have in the union but Hell, that's why it's Super Tuesday. It's such a momentous occasion of American democracies that even imaginary states filled with nonexistent voters have been inspired to get in on the act.

Or something like that. Anyway, a lot of delegates are being quasi-selected today and apparently, this is the vote that will tell us whether or not John Kerry has this nomination wrapped up or if John Edwards is still a viable candidate. That's the official spin, of course. That's what you say if you want to pretend like there's any suspense left in this whole thing. The truth of the matter is that Kerry's had this thing wrapped up ever since the week after New Hampshire and Edwards hasn't been anywhere close to viable for nearly a month now.

The conventional wisdom seems to hold that Edwards is still running as an audition of sort for the chance to be Kerry's running mate which is as good an explanation as any. Still, I doubt Edwards will get the nod if just because it seems like the Democratic Party is pretty much giving up on even attempting to win over the South in a national election. Kerry, if he's smart, will go for a running mate who'll give him some leverage out in the west as that seems to be the only part of the country that can still swing back and forth between the two major parties. My own prediction is that Kerry will select Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico while Edwards returns to North Carolina and runs for Governor in the next election cycle. Assuming he's elected, Gov. Edwards will probably be one of the front runners the next time there's an open race for the Democratic Presidential nomination.

Of course, my last attempt to make a far-ranging political prediction had Kerry fading after Iowa and Edwards easily winning the Democratic nomination (and probably the White House, though I conveniently failed to mention that at the time...)

So, anyway, this is Super Tuesday and you'll have to excuse me if it feels like this day just got walloped in the face with a sack full of Kryptonite.

In other Super Tuesday news, I watched movies #3 and #4 of my vacation earlier. The first was a showing of In the Bedroom on Starz which I caught in the early morning hours. This is one of my favorite recent films, a movie which -- back in 2002 -- I felt deserved to win Best Picture even more than the 1st installment of Lord of the Rings. Upon subsequent viewings, the film's flaws have become more apparent to me. Those who complained that the film is 20 minutes or so too long, I hate to admit, we're right. There's a good deal that could have been cut, that would have made the film a little bit less ponderous. There are certain scenes -- the ones concerning Sissy Spacek and her little choir or any of the various old timers who deliver metaphorical speeches about lobsters -- that do verge on the pretentious, as if director/writer Todd Field didn't have faith in the film's simple story to sustain itself. That said, I still think it's a great film, a work of art that has been woefully underrated by many. And I still think it's a superior film to Fellowship of the Ring. The performances are still spot-on perfect. Tom Wilkinson is still the devastated heart and soul of the movie and no matter how many times I see the film, his final silence at the conclusion continues to be both brutally painful and eloquent. Marisa Tomei, Nick Stahl, William Mapother -- all of them bring this melodrama to a brilliant life. Ironically, when I first saw the film, I thought Sissy Spacek's performance was a bit overrated but now, every time I see it, I come to be more and more amazed with the depth of her talent. It really is a searing performance and her line at the film's conclusion -- "Did you do it?" -- Christ, it still puts me on the floor everything I hear it.

After In the Bedroom, I watched Apocalypse Now Redux on DVD. I'm not amongst those who thinks that this second version of Apocalypse Now is a flawless masterpiece. I think it still contains the same flaws that showed up in the first version. As my then-girlfriend August Jordan Fried (later to become the art historian August Davis) said when we saw it many years ago at the University of North Texas: "It's all a bit much, isn't it?" Still, Redux is a definite improvement on what was an impressive -- if heavily flawed -- work of art. Some of the new scenes -- I'm thinking of the morbidly comedic sequence with the playboy bunnies -- do seem like they belong in a different film. Francis Ford Coppola was right to cut them the first time. However, the French Plantation Scene -- though, at times, it seems to verge on self-parody -- does introduce a whole new level of meaning to the film and -- in the end -- it does strengthen the ultimate conclusion of the film. In the original version, the discovery of Marlon Brando's bloated, passive Kurtz is an amazing letdown because we discover him almost immediately after seeing scenes of epic, operatic destruction, after seeing most of the film's characters brutally slaughtered in brilliant technicolor, as if Viet Nam were some sort of Disney World where Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck are trying to kill you. After having our sense overwhelmed like that, the sudden appearance of Kurtz -- looking like "Uncle Fester" to again quote the lovely Ms. Davis -- is a let down. ("All of that for this!?" you wonder). In Redux, you have the sequence of the French Plantation before the appearance of Kurtz. It gives the viewer a chance to come down from the heightened sense of menace and violence that permeates through the film. As well, the French Plantation sequence is shot in such a way as to suggest that it truly is an encounter with a bunch of ghosts, a sudden vision of a glorious-past destroyed by war. It helps to establish, without a doubt, that this is not meant to be a realistic film, that this is meant to be some sort of fever dream of a meditation on war in general, as opposed to Viet Nam in specific. (The closest recent equivalent to this would be Terrance Malick's woefully misunderstood Thin Red Line.) Once you know that nothing is meant to be taken totally literally, it's a lot easier to accept the ultimate conclusion with Kurtz.  ¶ 2:27 PM