Hullabaloo

 
Top Cop

by digby

Eric Holder as AG sounds like an excellent choice to me. Check out what Jerome Corsi had to say about him in Newsmax last June:



That was all meant as criticism of Holder, by the way.

According to Pete Williams on MSNBC, they vetted him with GOP Senators about the Marc Rich nonsense and he will be confirmed without a lot of drama. If he follows through on what he says above it would be good news.

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digby 11/18/2008 01:30:00 PM |

 
The Big Story

by digby

There is a lot about the incoming administration that's making me nervous. But this, which I think must be the overarching storyline of the next few years, is looking very, very good:





It's the tying together of these three issues as one that makes it so potent. They really are inextricable and making that explicit is going to give Obama far more power to move on them simultaneously.

This is very smart stuff. I hope he doesn't get so bogged down in the details that he loses the narrative thread. It's essential.

digby 11/18/2008 12:30:00 PM |

 
More Laying Of Landmines

by dday

Yesterday I mentioned all the internal challenges that President-elect Obama will be facing. Today's Washington Post reveals how Bush is trying to institutionalize those challenges.



I hope nobody thinks that this is about stopping Obama appointments. This is about getting civil service protections for hardcore conservative loyalists. In past transitions, this has been done to protect new rules or regulations that the outgoing President would like to see maintained, and that's true here as well. Recent rule changes in the Bureau of Land Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service will be harder to reverse with a champion inside the agency. But I hardly think it ends there. The same with all those career Justice Department officials whose political ideology was a factor in their hiring. And burrowing all of these officials at once will ultimately make it harder to root out the partisan career personnel who were hired into the civil service in the first place.

In a few years, we'll see some whistleblower on Hardball, talking gravely about corruption in the Obama Administration, and she'll be feted by the gasbags and made into a media darling. And nobody will notice the fact that she was hired by Monica Goodling.

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dday 11/18/2008 10:45:00 AM |

 
Redirecting The Hate

by digby

I was going to make note of this, but I see that Eric Boehlert is there ahead of me:



Not me. The Clintons simply drive some people crazy. It's a clinical diagnosis.

I heard someone on the radio yesterday talking about it as if she should be fired for the corruption in the State Department of the past few years (Blackwater etc.) Seriously.

I actually think Obama may be picking her for this purpose. She can absorb all the looney criticism from the right and the Village and he can go about his business above the fray. It's actually smart to give them someone else to hate. And if the Clintons are good at anything, it's being hated and successful at the same time. Indeed, they seem to thrive on it.

This works out for everyone.

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digby 11/18/2008 09:30:00 AM |

 
Holy Moly

by digby

This is from Newsweek, not Newsmax:



Fearing that Obama is the Antichrist isn't at all nuts. After all, he speaks in religious terms but he's pro-choice and anti gay-marriage. What more do you need to know?
digby 11/17/2008 09:30:00 PM |

 
Testing The Young President

by dday

A day after the Iraqi Cabinet approved a withdrawal agreement that would remove US forces entirely from the country by the end of 2011, the White House is trying to snooker the press by saying that they agreed only to "aspirational dates." There is nothing aspirational about this agreement. It is a firm deadline for withdrawal that wouldn't even allow for residual forces in the country.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is out there today claiming that no we can't leave on this kind of schedule. This is just the beginning of the pushbacks that we can expect to see from the military as we move into a new Administration.



This isn't some option thrown out at a briefing. This is a signed agreement between the US and Iraq that has very strict demands on withdrawal. Mullen is treating it like some war game scenario that he doesn't like. And he wants a word with Obama.



This lays the groundwork to undermine the agreement, and to push the President-elect in that effort. And by the way, the most likely outcome of this is to erode support in the Iraqi Parliament, which only trusts the US as an honest broker because of the presence of Obama. If the agreement is vacated there will be a very early showdown between militia and the occupying forces, which could prove deadly for US troops and embarrassing to the incoming President.

They have a word for this, I believe - sabotage. And this isn't the only area of military/national security issues where we might see something similar. While Obama and the military may be able to salvage a productive working relationship, we have examples like the Air Force general who is already pushing Obama on the missile defense boondoggle:



Note the framing in terms of how American interests will be "severely hurt" if the incoming President, who's totally ignorant about us big boys and our big toys, by the way, cancels this program. Indeed, the contractors and the military-industrial complex are already gearing up to push back hard if one dime of military spending is cut.



And now there's this Mullen incident, which is very reminiscent of how the JCS rolled Clinton in 1993 on the subject of gays in the military.

In yesterday's 60 Minutes interview, which had a lot of positive signs in it (including Obama's desire to keep moving forward on a new energy economy despite falling oil prices, to dismiss neo-Hooverist griping about deficit spending and instead use government to stimulate the economy, to overhaul the auto industry, and more), Obama was clear that he would have his national security team execute a drawdown policy in Iraq as soon as he entered office. Mullen is already laying down the marker that he disagrees. This tension will also spill over to the intelligence community, as has been ably covered here. One of the brightest moments in the interview was this exchange:



That is excellent news, and yet there's still the matter of implementation, and without new leadership at the top, expect similar Admiral Mullen-like scenarios as Obama attempts to climb out of the muck of the Bush Administration.



It's quite something when you see a headline like Democratic Pressure on Obama to Restore the Rule of Law. But this is not totally about Obama's instincts by themselves, but the need to fight against and, in some cases, clear out those who may have more loyalty to the status quo than following the orders of their new chief executive. This has historically been an issue for Democratic Presidents in the modern age, and in this incoming Administration it will be no different. If Obama thinks he can just use his own personality - or force of character - to stop the challenges from inside his own government, I wouldn't call him naive, but let's say he'd be shouldering a heavy burden. One that he plans to make heavier by seeding the government with even more Republicans at every level.

This is something that Obama needs to think about, IMO. A "Team of Rivals" government is a nice theory on paper, but Lincoln's era was quite different - the real "rivals" split off and formed their own government and seceded from the Union, and Lincoln's political foes were kind of thrown together by circumstance. Obama is doing this by choice, and he had better be prepared to be undermined at the highest levels. In many respects, it's already happening.

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dday 11/17/2008 07:30:00 PM |

 
Sticker Shock Doctrine

by digby

Jane Hamsher has an informative and interesting post up today about the proposed GM bailout. It's a complicated issue, but in the final analysis, Krugman simplifies it significantly for me merely by pointing to the big picture:


You simply can't wipe out a million jobs or more as we are just going into a terrible worldwide recession. It's like telling someone they have to go on a diet when they are in the middle of a heart attack. There has to be a bailout.

But there is something else going on, which I mentioned last week in this post --- the Republicans' reflexive political response is to take the opportunity to break the unions and it's a smart move on their part. Shock Doctrine all the way.

This is why you see this (from Marcy Wheeler):


She adds in this post:


McConnell has some political conflict, what with a bunch of auto plants in his state. And, in my view, the Republicans are making themselves a regional power for decades if they decide to run with the Deep South Republican Rump leadership on this. But I don't think they can help themselves. Breaking unions is in their DNA -- if they get the opportunity they will do it.

That's all political positioning. Judging from the gasbags today, the right has actually accepted that Chapter 11 will result in catastrophic national economic consequences. So, they are likely to support some kind of bailout. The negotiating point will be the breaking of the unions.

I think Tom Friedman probably set the parameters in his column last week. The Democrats, the unions and the executives are equally responsible for the problem and as punishment, the Democrats should be vilified, the executives should take their golden parachutes and spend some time at their vacation homes before landing new jobs and the unions should be punished by ceasing to exist and leaving their members to fend for themselves in a terrible economy. After all, it's really their fault the Big Three are failing, right?

Uhm ,no. Here's Kathy G on whether or not those fat, lazy, spoiled union members really are less productive:

And, in the big scheme things, I think we can all agree that well paid, secure employees make for a stable society. The problem with the Big Three has far less to do with their employees than it does with their management --- and a capitalistic ethos that requires a myopic obsession with quarterly profits over long term investment. The union members just make the cars they're told to make. It's not their fault if Americans insisted on buying behemoth gas guzzlers and the auto executives insisted on giving them to them knowing full well a day of reckoning was coming.

Update: Kevin Drum
, commenting on another (very interesting) question also observes that union busting in in the conservative DNA. It's a defining characteristic.

digby 11/17/2008 06:30:00 PM |

 
One Party State

by digby

The minute I read this, this morning, I knew the fix was in. Corporate whore Tom Carper giving Holy Joe a good public scolding could be nothing more than kabuki. A deal had been reached and Joe was going to keep his gavel. They'd slap him with some kind of superficial "sanction" and maybe he'd apologize, but that's the end of that. That appears to be the case.

But then readers of this blog know that I never thought for a minute that he'd lose it. The current fetish for bipartisanship makes "party discipline" oxymoronic.

Speaking of which, Tweety referred to this on his show earlier and it is an interesting insight into just how far the administration plans to go with this bipartisanship and how they hope to keep everyone on the same page. Evidently, it's all about Obama's personal abilities:



It sounds like he really means to have a real bipartisan government from top to bottom. Combined with the Republican operatives the Bush administration salted throughout the civil service, there will be many, many Republicans still running things, so the villagers should be able to relax a little bit and enjoy their holidays. (Too bad for all you Democrats who thought you'd be getting jobs in a Democratic government, though. Maybe when the Republicans take over again, they'll hire you as a gesture of similar good will. They're very fair that way.)

Obama is going to have his hands full if he expects to keep Republicans in line purely by "force of character," however. I'm not sure what that means exactly, but it sounds exhausting.

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digby 11/17/2008 05:00:00 PM |

 
Terrorist Sissies

by digby

FYI, PropH8 protesters are terrorists. (Actually, wingnuts trying to be funny is an official act of terrorism, in my view...)


Michelle Malkin is following this horrific tale of thuggish gays with the same zeal she pursued the shocking Jamil Hussein non-story, while "reasonable" conservatives call it the "sissy hissy fit" telling gay people they could get more flies with honey than with vinegar.



When it comes to social justice, it's always the same old story:



Amen.

Update: Oh, and gays (and their secular "friends") are fascists, too:



How do you stop such terrorist fascists? They are trying to destroy your life.

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digby 11/17/2008 04:00:00 PM |

 
Odd

by digby

Tweety and other gasbags, including Christopher Hitchens(an extremely thoughtful critic as always) are all wringing their hands about Obama's possible choice of Clinton as Secretary of State because he promised change and this is so not it. He's destroying his mandate before our very eyes.

In other news, Obama is also known to be considering keeping Bush administration cabinet member Robert Gates as secretary of defense, and former secretary of State and war architect Colin Powell is breathlessly mentioned being on the short list for a number of posts. This strikes everyone as being a perfect example of how Obama is bringing change to Washington.

I know the Republicans are busily trying to airbrush George W. Bush out of history, but the people who served him actually did serve more recently than any Democrat. Keeping them in the cabinet or inviting them back is not actually change unless you think Obama's message of change actually meant "keeping Republicans in charge."

Clearly, the political establishment assumes that's the only possible definition, but I'm not sure that's what the people meant when they voted for change. (A fair number of them may have even voted for a change back to the good economic times under Democrat Bill Clinton.)

digby 11/17/2008 02:30:00 PM |

 
OK, We'll Stop Printing Money Now

by dday

The White House is saying that they may not use all of the bailout money before January 20 and that they will offer about $350 billion of it to President-elect Obama, in a magnanimous gesture, for him to use it as he sees fit. How gracious! The Bush Administration has only drawn $4 TRILLION dollars out of the Treasury and they're letting Obama handle the rest!



There's a chart at the link if you want to see for yourself everything you've bought this year. By the way it hasn't done the trick yet.

I think at this point, stripping Henry Paulson of his authority to spend more cash, with Ben Bernanke thrown in for good measure, isn't an option but a duty. And Chuck Grassley's call for the newly minted oversight board to investigate conflicts of interest among all the Goldman Sachs execs serving as the ladlers of corporate cash during the bailout is absolutely warranted. However, this oversight is coming at the END of the process, not the beginning. With four trillion already passed out, it's not like putting the brakes on the giveaways is going to make much of a difference today. This is not to say we shouldn't be investigating and scrutinizing what amounts to theft, as well as building a new regulatory structure for the future (yes, listen to Eliot Spitzer on this one - setting aside his personal life he's probably the most knowledgeable person in America about what needs to be done).

And there's, of course, a double-edged sword to all the newfound vigor on the right, from Grassley and James Inhofe and others, to watch the Treasury Department, after leaving the barn door open to the tune of four trillion. This is but a prelude to the wave of fiscal austerity that we're going to be hearing 24-7 from those who will claim we just can't afford health care and investments in alternative energy and infrastructure and early childhood education. We actually need some immediate relief right now, for state and local governments and the unemployed, and my concern is that this retrospective shock at the bailout price tag from Republicans will be used as an excuse to deny that, sending us into the downward spiral we saw in 1930 and 1931, when too much dithering and not enough action created an even bigger economic hole.

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dday 11/17/2008 01:00:00 PM |

 
New New Deal

by digby



digby 11/17/2008 11:50:00 AM |

 
Shoulda Become A Republican

by digby

Damn, wingnut welfare is awesome:


And don't forget that he's working on a country music record contract too. I think his first album is going to be called "There's A Sucker Born Every Minute: Songs by Sam The Con Man."

digby 11/17/2008 10:00:00 AM |

 
Dead Revolutionaries

by digby

There are many reasons to be grateful that John McCain didn't win the election, but his reliance on and trust in this economic evildoer has to be at the top of the list:



Complicated events such as this economic meltdown can't ever be attributed to just one person. But there are those who stand out above all others for their pride in their error and and their arrogant unwillingness to take responsibility for what they did.

Phil Gramm was one of the Generals of the Republican Revolution and the economic prophet of the free market fundamentalists. Like neocons such as Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, he and fellow travellers like Dick Armey and Newt Gingrich have been completely discredited and should be allowed nowhere near power again as long as they live.

It was only 14 years ago that Dick Armey wrote this in the Heritage Foundation's Policy Review, on the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Road To Serfdom:



That worked out.

digby 11/17/2008 07:00:00 AM |

 
Sunday Reruns

by digby

Josh Marshall points out how bizarre it is that the Sunday morning shows are still featuring many more Republicans, even though the whole government is about to be run by Democrats. But, it's even weirder than that. All the gasbags are already obsessed with the next election --- they can't stop talking about the great Republican comeback of 2012. I've heard of withdrawal pains but this is ridiculous.

But then again, it only takes one real liberal to set the Republicans straight. Steve Benen reports:





Don't fuck with the shrill one.

And is it possible to even dream that Will's embarrassing trope, which has only been acceptable up to this point in the outer recesses of wingnutville, will be as vigorously rebutted by every Democrat? After the last few years I think it's fair to say that they can be successful at saying black is white and up is down if nobody says anything... at least for just long enough to make things infinitely worse.

Ht to fdl

digby 11/16/2008 08:00:00 PM |

 
Non-negotiable

by digby

Greenwald and Talk Left have been sounding some small alarms about Obama's intelligence advisor John Brennan and it's definitely something to keep a close eye on. I've speculated before that the intelligence community is going to put a lot of pressure on the new administration to endorse some form of torture and pledge to "get their backs" if they are caught. And if they don't get their way, they can cause a lot of trouble.

Greenwald's post today points out that Brennan has said that he doesn't believe in waterboarding, which is good. And he thinks there should be more debate about all this, which is also good. But there is plenty of evidence that he's in favor of rendition, warrantless wiretapping and although he's obviously not comfortable with the way that the Bush administration went about this business, as Greenwald points out in his addendum:



I'm not trying to get ahead of myself. But Brennan is being talked up as the replacement for Michael McConnell and that's potentially problematic. If Obama comes out and explicitly says that there will be no more use of the techniques Greenwald lists, or anything else that can be construed as torture, and makes sure that his subordinates know he means exactly that, then I'm not quite as worried about the effects of this on foreign policy. But if he tries to split the baby or compromise on it, then he will automatically lose a huge portion of his moral authority both at home and abroad.

They could just go back to secretly torturing and spying as the government did in the past, but after all this --- and the political ramifications if it got out --- let's hope not. And anyway, that's not what the intelligence types want. They want immunity for torture (excuse me, "enhanced interrogation") and they want it to be public. I don't think there's any going back.

Torture is not negotiable and it can't be redefined or "smoothed out" or anything else. This one is a bright line. I give Obama the benefit of the doubt at this point, of course --- nothing's been announced. But I'm nervous. The institutional pressure is going to be acute and I'm not reassured by the presence of people like John Brennan. The fact that he isn't as bad as Dick Cheney just isn't good enough.

digby 11/16/2008 05:30:00 PM |

 
Taser Update

by digby

Just a little note to let you all know that the latest development in taser nation is to allow average citizens to carry tasers. For self-defense. Or maybe just to keep the kids in line.

Here's a recent typical incident:



Wouldn't it be great if parents and teachers could do that? And why shouldn't they? It's not like they leave any marks or anything...

Police departments are very happy with them:



I suspect the police would get a 100% compliance rate if they put a gun to citizens' heads and threatened to pull the trigger. They'd probably only have to kill a few people before we got very clear on how important it is to immediately comply when a police officer gives us an order (and hope to hell we understand what they want of us or that they aren't in a bad mood.) And since they are already killing people with tasers anyway, maybe this is the more efficient way to go.

I still think the best, safest, way to use this taser technology is to figure out how to implant electrodes in every person so that they can be dropped to the ground writhing in pain whenever they do things that those in authority feel are problematic. That way the authority figures can remain "safe" when they are torturing citizens into compliance, which is what this ostensibly is all about. After all, it doesn't last for more than minute or so and after it's all over the person knows exactly what they did wrong and won't do it again. That's what liberty is all about.

Update: And there's some news on "shockwave" which will be a fantastic advance in the control of political dissent.

Update I: Here's a story about Antioch police officers being sued by a San Francisco police inspector --- for tasering her. Maybe if all the authority figures start tasering each other we might get some insight into why this is so wrong. It certainly isn't obvious to them in the abstract why they shouldn't be allowed to zap citizens with 50,000 volts for any reason at all.

And by the way --- volunteering to be tasered doesn't prove anything. It's the freedom, stupid.

Update III: Oh, and one thing that's really, rally cool about tasers is that you can use them on animals both for fun ---- and to save time. It's no biggie. After all, it doesn't kill them and doesn't leave any marks. In fact, tasers are tested on pigs to see how much pain they can tolerate.

Imagine how great it will be when Americans can buy these things down at WalMart! I feel safer already.

digby 11/16/2008 02:30:00 PM |

 
Simply The Best

by digby

Condi Rice gave an "exit interview" with the NY Times today and made this observation:



And what they are also learning is that America's particular democratic system is bizarre. In all the democratization around the globe in the last century not one country has adopted our system of government. You'd think that would be cause for some reflection. I suspect that all this talk overseas about caucuses and primaries basically comes down to ..."what the hell?"

digby 11/16/2008 12:30:00 PM |

 
Losin' It

by digby

The good news is that this country elected an African American Democrat. The bad news is that it seems to have inspired an uptick in threats and violent rhetoric:

That's true. They may be threats because he is a socialist, muslim, terrorist -- or just because he's allegedly "the most liberal senator." Republicans have made it quite clear what should be done with Americans who they deem to be such:



In the post those three were randomly from, Dave Niewert cataloged dozens of examples of eliminationist rhetoric during the Bush administration through 2007. Think about that. Even when they were riding high in popularity and in charge of the entire government, many of them were angry and violent in their rhetoric toward liberals. Now that they have destroyed the economy and are completely out of power and as popular as dirt, it's only natural that people who think like this are going to be potentially dangerous. It's not like they haven't signaled their intentions.



More here:



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digby 11/16/2008 10:00:00 AM |

 
Saturday Night At The Movies


Of second childishness and mere oblivion

By Dennis Hartley





Time - He's waiting in the wings
He speaks of senseless things
His script is you and me boys

-David Bowie

“Did you see their faces?†my friend stage-whispered to me as we shuffled up the aisle toward the movie theater’s exit. “Yes,†I answered, staring glumly at my shoes, “I did.†He was referring to the ashen-faced patrons with the thousand-yard stares who remained pinned to their seats, following a Sunday matinee showing of Synecdoche, New York. “Well,†I deadpanned, in a half-hearted attempt to lighten the mood, “Should we just go outside now and throw ourselves under the nearest bus?†My friend appeared to actually be weighing the pros and cons for a moment. “What do you say we grab some pizza instead?†he finally countered. We decided on the pizza. After all, it was only a movie.

Well, technically, it was only a movie about a theatre director whose life is only a play. Or was it? Who were all these players, strutting and fretting about their two hours upon the movie screen? Were they just a Fig Newton of someone’s overactive imagination? And why didn’t the “play†in the film ever have an audience? Maybe we should ask the guy who wrote and directed it (I just happen to have Charlie Kaufman right here, under my desk on Floor 7 ½). Mr. Kaufman, what was that you once said about third acts?


Oh. You’re not helping (I’ve got a review to write here, and deadline is fast approaching). If you are just joining us (and wondering when the hell the review is going to start) we’re talking about screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, who, with his stubbornly insistent anti-multiplex sensibility and a resultant propensity for penning feverishly bizarre, densely oblique narratives (Being John Malkovich, Human Nature, Human Nature, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind) has become a hot property in cult/art house filmdom, and The Guy Everybody Wants To Work With (For Scale). Now someone has gone and given Kaufman a director’s chair, and the result is the most simultaneously brilliant and maddeningly indecipherable character study since (dare I say it?) Berlin Alexanderplatz (though the running time is 13 hours shorter).

First, let’s get something out of the way, regarding the film’s unpronounceable, Spell-check challenged title. “Synecdoche†is Kaufman’s cryptic non-de-plume for Schenectady, a real town in upstate New York. Even though I briefly lived in the Albany-Schenectady-Troy area, I’m afraid I cannot shed any light on the significance of the title (maybe Kaufman couldn’t come up with a clever misspelling for Massapequa?). Okay, I’m being a wee bit facetious; according to the dictionary, it means:


Get it? Got it. Good. Er-let’s move on to the synopsis portion of this “reviewâ€, shall we?

Philip Seymour Hoffman eats up the screen five ways from Sunday as Caden Cotard, a struggling regional theatre director from Schenectady who gets a shot at moving downstate to mount his magnum opus on the Great White Way after scoring a coveted “genius grant†from the MacArthur Foundation. Obsessed with “keeping it realâ€, Caden ambitiously leases a huge Manhattan warehouse, and literally constructs a theatrical version of his life, replete with life-sized reproductions of the places he has lived and a large ensemble cast to portray himself and all the people he has known. Lest you begin to assume this is “Rocky on Broadwayâ€, keep two things in mind: a) This was written by Charlie Kaufman, and b) Something that John Lennon once observed- “Genius is pain.â€

Caden has his fair share of pain, both physical and emotional. He suffers from a strange, undiagnosed malady that is systematically destroying his autonomic functions. His first wife (Catherine Keener) has left him (with their daughter in tow) to pursue a career as an artist in Germany, where her literally myopic paintings (so small that they require special magnifying goggles for viewing) have won her great accolades. Caden has remarried, to one of his leading ladies (Michelle Williams), but things aren’t going so hot in that relationship either. His therapist (Hope Davis) is too preoccupied with marketing her self-help books and becoming the next Dr. Phil to offer any real substantive help. The only woman in his life that seems to understand him is his personal assistant (Samantha Morton) with whom he develops a complex, long-standing (mostly) platonic relationship.

As dark as this film is, Kaufman seems to be having some fun with the Chinese Box aspect of Caden’s completely self-referential, decades-long production. The very concept of an ongoing stage piece, presented in “real timeâ€, as a metaphor for someone’s ongoing life brings up an awful lot of existential questions, like, how do you “rehearse†reality? Don’t you have to be psychic in order to do that? Kaufman’s narrative idea recalls some of Andy Warhol’s experiments, like his 1963 film, Sleep, a five hour epic depicting someone, um, sleeping for five hours. Some people called it genius, others a snore (heh).

Synecdoche, New York may or may not be a work of genius, but it is anything but a snore, thanks to a brilliant cast. It goes without saying (and I’ve said it here many times before) that Hoffman is one of the most amazing actors of his generation. The ensemble includes an embarrassment of riches in the actress department; in addition to the aforementioned, Emily Watson, Dianne Wiest, Jennifer Jason Leigh bring their formidable skills to the table as well. If you’re like me, you may not completely comprehend the whys and wherefores of all that commences during the course of this astounding 2-hour mindfuck, but you’re gonna love the pizza afterward (…in fair round belly with good capon lined).

All the world’s a you-know-what: The Truman Show, Pleasantville , Dogville, Stranger Than Fiction, The Singing Detective, Pennies from Heaven , The Stunt Man, American Splendor, A Double Life, Living in Oblivion, Finding Neverland ,