Priceless.

When 4,3,2 played the New York Film Festival it split the art-snob audience. Keith Ulrich criticized the film’s essential “hollowness,” while Ed Gonzalez offered respectful applause.

Now, a couple of big dogs have weighed in with their raves. And if you had any question as to how this film won so many awards, check out these notices. Manhola Dargis trotted out a string of superlatives:

It’s a pitiless, violent story that in its telling becomes a haunting and haunted intellectual and aesthetic achievement.

And declared that the total vision of the film is so affecting that she dusted off her copy of Against Interpretation to say that any reductivist explanation of what 4,3,2 “means” does violence to the experience and impact of the film:

I’ve read more than once that the film is not about abortion (or even an abortion) but, rather, totalitarianism, a take that brings to mind Susan Sontag’s observation that “interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.”

J. Hoberman employed similar plaudits:

The story of two college girls negotiating the treacherous currents of a drab police state to secure an illegal abortion, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is a movie one watches in a state of mounting dread. Romanian writer-director Cristian Mungiu’s brilliantly discomfiting second feature is one long premonition of disaster.

So if Lake of Fire didn’t sear your eyes (not likely, since the domestic gross of that documentary wouldn’t be enough to pay a parking ticket), and if seeing Right-to-Lifers flood the Metro this week reminded you that the abortion dialogue of the ‘80s and ‘90s is obsolete, read some subtitles next weekend.

4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days opens at the EStreetCinema on Feb. 1.

Only one thing to add: Mitt Romney needs at least a “silver or gold” coming out of Florida to keep his candidacy strong. He said so himself:

“I think the first two spots coming out of Florida will have a good shot at becoming the nominee, I think it would be hard if I came in third, fourth or fifth to consider it a successful campaign beyond that,” Romney said. “But I’m expecting to come in no. 1. If I don’t get no. 1, I expect no. 2, and therefore I’ll continue.”

This is a pretty confident statement for Romney. Many polls have him up, but only within the margin. The biggest unknown is how the early voting/absentee will shake out. Polling on this is unreliable, and Rudy has had an early voting push on the ground in FL for weeks. Initial numbers show that early/absentee turnout will be higher than ever this go-round. 

Here’s what is maybe a little different: a couple of hours after the surgery, then-new mayor Giuliani arrived to visit. He sat with the couple, asked compassionately about their wounds, promised them that the shooters would be caught. He gave them his private phone number and asked them to call anytime he could do anything for them. He spoke to the doctors and told them that the couple’s recovery was vital to the recovery of New York’s civic self-image. He called every day that the couple remained in hospital to check on their recovery.

I have no idea how Rudy’s Florida strategy will pan out. I admit it isn’t looking good. But this story from early in Rudy’s time as Mayor offers us a different perspective of the tough-on-crime prosecutor that so often drew the ire of the New York Times. 

Heath Ledger Dead at 28
The enormously talented actor has died from what appears to be a drug overdose. The official cause of death will be determined by an autopsy on Wednesday, but suicide is not immediately evident. He will be missed.

Thompson Drops Out of Race
No word on an endorsement at this time.

Huckabee Cash-Poor, Drops Press Support
Despite a win in Iowa, Mike Huckabee continues to have cash problems and has recently stopped providing constant transportation to the press corps. He continues to campaign in Feb 5 states, but it rumored to pull out of Florida if the polls do not turn more favorable soon.

Louisiana Caucuses, No One Notices
Ambinder says “it’s Romney’s to lose.”

Oscar Nominations Announced, Cohens, PTA, Reitman All Get Nods
It is going to be an Oscar season full of hard calls. Someone call John McCain.

You don’t like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag. In fact, if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we’d tell ‘em what to do with the pole; that’s what we’d do.

I will leave it to others in the media to respond to Hitchens’ specific criticism of their coverage, and instead focus on his statements regarding the broader implications of Huckabee’s pandering. As Hitchens points out, the flag at issue is not the political flag of the Confederacy, but rather the battle flag, which is his opinion is “the most militant symbolic form that secession and slavery ever took.” Whether or not you agree with the severity of this statement, the Confederate battle flag has taken on a cultural association with racism and hate. To ignore or deny this fact is either pitifully naive, or perniciously insensitive.

Huckabee’s statements on the flag fall, in my opinion, in one or the other category. Hitch reminds us of an episode in Arkansas history that the good Governor seems to have forgotten:

And what is the point of the “outside the state” slur? Wasn’t this exactly what Gov. Orval Faubus of Arkansas used to say, as if to make it seem that all was hunky-dory in his own tight little dominion until them goddam “outside agitators” arrived? In the end, as Gov. Huckabee may or may not recall, the 101^st Airborne Division, most of them “outsiders” not from Arkansas, had to be sent by a Republican president to integrate the schools of Little Rock. That was a lot of trouble and expense that the big-mouth rednecks put us all to, but it was worth it. It’s insufferable to hear this glib idiot make a mockery of it now in order to try to get the Klan vote in South Carolina.

Certainly the governor is not criticizing the actions of President Eisenhower when he forced Little Rock schools to integrate? Were he in the governor’s mansion at the time, would he have told the President “what to do with the pole?” If the media decides to pay attention to this and actually question Gov. Huckabee on what exactly he meant, he will likely try to wink, smile, and make a joke about how they do things in “rough and tumble” Arkansas. This ought not stand. Governor Huckabee has, by his statements, empowered those who seek to hold onto the racism and hatred the Confederate battle flag symbolizes. In charity, he probably didn’t mean to…most incessant panderers do not. But a simple “I didn’t mean it” won’t cut it this time. The Governor should withdraw his statement and clarify his position on civil rights. His comments has far broader implications than just the internal arguments of South Carolina.

Read Hitch’s entire piece here.

Read it all here.