Why Did James Baker Turn Bush Into Nixon? | Frank Rich
http://tinyurl.com/68nrs
“‘We’ve never seen anything like this, even the old Kennedy-Nixon classic great debate,’ said a breathless Chris Matthews on the ‘Today’ show as he touted a poll showing that John Kerry had won presidential debate No. 1 by as much as a 4-to-1 margin. But actually we have seen something like this – and at that first Kennedy-Nixon debate. The polls may have gyrated more violently this time around, but the scenario is identical: a campaign’s seemingly mundane decision about television theatrics has potentially changed the dynamic of a presidential election.”

Confessional Cinema | David Edelstein
http://slate.msn.com/id/2107903/
“Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation (Wellspring) is a memoir composed on film – —composed, you might say, over a 20-year span and then rubbed and buffed on a Macintosh computer with the program iMovie. My press kit heralds it as a revolution in the ‘audio-visual confessional’ – —which gives me, as a film critic, the heebie-jeebies. I mean, that’s all we need: more exhibitionists with ready access to cameras and editing software. […] But a masterpiece it is, of a mind-bending modern sort: This story of a 31-year-old man and his mentally-ill mother is right on the border between what shrinks call immature ‘acting out’ and mature artistic sublimation. ”