I did a very good job of keeping myself ignorant about the Hancock movie, my knowledge coming solely from the excellent and funny trailer that sold me on the high concept of Will Smith as a dissolute Superman and Jason Bateman as the pr agent who tries to revive his bad public image. The trailer didn't even mention the other big star in the movie, who is a favorite of mine, and the sudden twist in the middle of the movie took me completely by surprise. It's been a long time since I've been that pleasantly surprised in a movie (mostly my own fault from reading too much entertainment press), so I wish I could've liked the movie more than I did, but the discordant pieces don't ever gel, and the movie mostly falls apart after a twist that should have made it much more interesting.

Bateman is very funny, the acting of the three leads is good (though the supporting cast doesn't provide a lot of support, and one wants to throttle every child actor who appears in the movie), the funny scenes from the trailer are funny, but not much else works. The directing and camerawork are appalling, two big set-piece action sequences in the middle and end of the movie don't work in the slightest, the writing was mediocre, and someone from the studio really should have done something about the weird and sudden tone-shifts and inconsistent characterization. It doesn't help that the main villain never read the Evil Overlord list. The movie never decides whether it's dark or light, and there's a racial dynamic that's never addressed. Slim complained about weird musical choices, too.

A quick Google search reveals that this was originally written as a very dark movie that got punched up to be more of a kids' movie, but the result kind of gets stuck in the middle without satisfying either goal. The movie is a very hard PG-13, and not appropriate for kids; apparently, the first two cuts were rated R. The seams painfully show where edits were made to satisfy the ratings board, but that really should have been anticipated much sooner and rewritten so the movie isn't standing on the PG-13/R line.

All of this is frustrating, because this easily could have been a much better movie if the script had been a bit more polished and if the director had been less intrusive.

An American Family Association search-and-replace function was a bit too aggressive when rewriting the story of Tyson Gay's record-setting 100-meter dash.

OK, this is just awesome. Someone spent a long time on that. Don't miss the disclaimers and waivers and privacy policy.

Not entirely thrilled with the slant, but I'm extensively quoted in the Chicago Tribune, and I even had another sentence in the quote in an earlier edition.

Also: lots of GTA coverage on blogs and in the news. The game of telephone is fascinating; the Times made a minor error in summarizing events, and the blog coverage repeating the Times summary confused all sorts of issues. It's not just the amateur gaming bloggers getting things wrong: a short piece on the Wired website had at least five errors in as many paragraphs.

With absolutely no evidence to back this up, I strongly suspect that an earlier draft of "Wall-E" had a much, much, darker ending, and that that ending got focus-tested and Disneyized out of the movie.

I can't blame them: the charming ending they have versus the Strangelovian ending I imagine it originally having probably makes a $200-million difference not including the merchandising and theme-park possibilities. But rewrite the last ten minutes to be more internally consistent with the satiric message of the movie, and it would be one of my all-time favorites. That said, even with the nod to commercialism, it's one of the best movies I've seen this year, was quite entertaining and even moving. I saw nods to bits of Star Wars, Titanic, Planet of the Apes, Silent Running, 2001, Matrix, Sleeping Beauty, City Lights, Terry Gilliam—and a lot of Idiocracy. Thumbs up. I'd be curious what my readers think of my theory of the ending.

Leaving New York Wednesday, it took me 40 minutes to get from Lexington to 9th Avenue going down 37th Street, which is supposed to be an express cross-town street. It was because movie trucks were blocking most of the street; they were filming on 38th Street.

But thumbs up on Chinese Mirch (28th & Lex), which is a wonderful, if New-York-priced Chinese-Indian fusion restaurant.

Press coverage has been interesting: the New York Times got a tiny detail wrong, and it's fascinating to see all of the other press coverage that is clearly getting its information from rewriting the Times story (and repeating the mistake, and often exacerbating it as in a game of telephone) rather than original reporting. Wired, in particular, botched the story, as has the Guardian.

I can't see the video (it was a phone interview anyway) , but here's a transcript. I discuss Exxon Shipping v. Baker, expected to come down today.

If you're here because you googled Theodore H. Frank after seeing press coverage of the Grand Theft Auto class action, you probably want to be at my other blog, Overlawyered, which has what you're looking for.

Slim, who makes a hobby out of talking people out of going to law school, and this guy, defending the plight of the third-tier law student, could have an interesting debate. But she would win, and it wouldn't be close.

I agree with Sulahry that once one gets down to #80 vs. #100, ranking amongst law schools matters little. But the gap between #22 and #2 is pretty large.

His big argument why it's alright to go to a lower-tier law school? He has a friend with phenomenal people skills who went to a lower-tier law school, got out, and started attracting business as a rainmaker because clients like him. And with all of that schmoozing, very little of which has to do with legal skills, he is making nearly $200,000 three years out of law school. Sulahry doesn't seem to realize that this refutes his own argument: if you have extraordinary people-skills before you go to law school, you can go to a mediocre law school and make almost as much as the bottom-of-the-class schmendrick from Harvard who's reviewing documents for Skadden.

It's probably accurate that someone who has extraordinary people-skills talent can succeed regardless of what law school he or she goes to. But someone with skills like that can succeed and make big money in sales or business without going to law school at all, so it's not an argument for saying that it's worthwhile to go to a #80 law school. Someone with entrepreneurial abilities like that shouldn't be spending three years of his or her life and $100,000 in loans to get the law-school credential. And someone without those entrepreneurial skills isn't going to be helped much by the credential.

Contrary to those who say Obama didn't contradict himself at all on Israel, Reuters quotes an Obama adviser saying Obama didn't mean what he said to AIPAC because he just didn't know what he was talking about:

Democrat Barack Obama misused a "code word" in Middle East politics when he said Jerusalem should be Israel's "undivided" capital but that does not mean he is naive on foreign policy, a top adviser said on Tuesday.

Rubin and Kaus aren't impressed, though one commenter just detects a pander.

Time to flip-flop on the status of Jerusalem after Wednesday's speech to AIPAC was criticized by the left-wingers who control today's Democratic Party? Approximately 24 hours. I'd be much more impressed if he told AIPAC he was going to split Jerusalem or CNN it would remain undivided, but that would require Obama to lower the pander quotient. Someone's going to be disappointed come January.

The headline is "Actress has a crush on Obama", but given that the senator is repeatedly writing lengthy e-mails to a high-school graduate half his age, perhaps it buries the lede that Obama has a crush on an actress?

Johansson is somewhat shocked that he keeps up their back-and-forth correspondence. “You’d imagine that someone like the senator who is constantly traveling and constantly ‘on’ — how can he return these personal e-mails?” she asks.

(Separately, I question the accuracy of this website, but, hey, it's on the Internet, so it must be true.)

(And welcome Kausfiles readers.)

Earlier on Obama.

Update: Obama denies.