Apologies to my tens of fans who have been left with next to nothing to read for the past week or two. I’ve hit a bad run of Writer’s Block and have been unfairly ignoring the website for a while. But I’ll make it up to y’all with a daily double of IHPT fun.

First up on the chopping block is Milk, which nabbed a couple of Oscars (including a completely bullshit win for Sean Penn. That Oscar belonged to Mickey Rourke.) and has been pretty well received. I, of course, haven’t seen it, but Peter Travers gave it four stars, so you know it must be good.

You can hit up the original review here, and my opinions below:

Maybe you don’t know a damn thing about gay activist Harvey Milk.

Well, that was a harsh opening. Did somebody piss in Peter’s Fruit Loops?

Maybe you ought to know that President-elect Barack Obama isn’t the only community organizer who went on to make a difference.

Maybe. I mean, I certainly couldn’t have gotten that idea from him being on roughly every third cover of Rolling Stone for the past two years, right? But on another note, has Obama actually made a difference yet? Especially considering that this review was published November 27?
Maybe thoughtful filmmaking, no matter how incendiary and intimate, isn’t worth squat at an infantilized multiplex.

Yes, I suppose people don’t like to be talked-down to, like when they read a review that opens with “Maybe you don’t know a damn thing about gay activist Harvey Milk.” I find it funny how people get all up in arms about movies like Beverly Hills Chihuahua and Paul Blart making hundreds of millions of dollars because they’re poor little “thoughtful” movie could only make $42 million. There’s probably some kind of moral lesson about our society there, if we really see a $22 million profit as a bad thing.

Stop me now.

Oh Peter, if only…

There’s really no maybe about Milk, directed with a poet’s eye by Gus Van Sant from a richly detailed script by Big Love writer Dustin Lance Black.

What, exactly, does “no maybe” acually mean? Is he saying that there are no questions asked about it, or that everything in it is purely black and white? An interesting idea. I’m also comletely lost on what an “poet’s eye” has to do with directing. I suppose the sound mixing was also done with a dancer’s ear.

It’s a total triumph, brimming with humor, heart, sexual heat, political provocation and a crying need to stir things up, just like Harvey did. If there’s a better movie around this year, with more bristling purpose, I sure as hell haven’t seen it.

If there is a more shameless lumping together of worthless platitudes in the hopes that one of them will make it to the poster/trailer around this year, I sure as hell haven’t seen it.

San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be voted into office in America, was shot dead in 1978, along with Mayor George Moscone, in City Hall. Dan White, a troubled politico who had served with Harvey on the city’s board of supervisors, pumped five bullets into Harvey. The crusader for gay rights in San Francisco, and the nation, was 48.

So, you’ve already established that we don’t know a damn thing about Harvey Milk, as though it were unforgivable crime of ignorance, and then you give us his life story in three sentences. Can we at least get a spoiler alert?

That Harvey’s questing spirit not only lives but soars in this movie is a gift from Sean Penn, who plays him for real instead of for show.

No, he doesn’t play him for real. Sean Penn took this role because he was paid to do it, and he knew that it would get him an Oscar during a political year. It’s a movie. A piece of pop culture entertainment. Acting in a $20 million production can only be seen as doing something for show. The only way I’ve seen Penn actually stand up for Gay Rights is by him telling people to see his movie.

Penn uses makeup to lengthen his nose and look more like Harvey. He adopts a New York accent to get Harvey’s inflections.

No way. An actor actually made an effort to look and sound like the character he was playing? AMAZING!

But the physical transformation is nothing compared to the way Penn gets at the core of the man, finding the source of his joy and pain.

Okay…yeah…pursuit with certain anti-discrimination statutes in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I’m just going to leave this one alone.

He disappears into Harvey with the artistry of an acting virtuoso.

You’re really not going to make this one easy on me are you?

There’s one word for Penn’s performance: phenomenal.

Or, you know, the 112 words you used praising Penn before the word phenomenal, which was the same word you used to describe Penn’s Oscar opponent Frank Langella in Frost/Nixon.

If you want to hate on this movie, bring it on.

I’m starting to get a little confused here. Why is he being so defensive of a movie that got everywhelmingly positive reviews? (for the sake of clarification, I’m hating only on Peter Travers’ review, not on the movie itself. I would have seen it if I wasn’t broke and single without a lot of movie-going friends)

To those who say Milk is hagiography, I say Harvey is my kind of saint: a New York Jew with a screwed-up past, a lively sex life and a goal to bring the gay movement out of the shadows even if he had to be a media whore to do it.

A Gay Jewish Saint? Well, now I’ve heard everything. And I’m absolutely not surprised that Peter Travers’ sees a media whore as his kind of saint. That one was more obvious than Clay Aiken.

Milk begins with Harvey’s 1972 arrival in San Francisco with his lover, Scott Smith (James Franco, warmly funny and touching). That’s right, Spicoli macks on the son of the Green Goblin.

Quick vote: Does Peter Travers seem to enjoy that image just a little too much?

Milk is entertaining and playfully erotic in ways that reflect life instead of political agenda.

Is there actually a way that playful eroticism can reflect political agenda? Oh wait…

But Josh Brolin is simply astounding as Dan White, revealing the inner torment of a man at odds with his own emotions. Sporting the calendar-ready look of a good Catholic husband and father, Dan is both repulsed by and attracted to Harvey and his gay agenda.

What? You promised that there were no maybes. Now there’s a character with inner turmoil and questionable motives. I’ll just go see Blart. There’s a movie with no maybes.

Penn makes Harvey so vivid and spoiling to be heard that you want to introduce him to people. John McCain, meet a real maverick.

Again, this review came out on November 28. Was there really any need for a John McCain dig?
And that’s it for Milk. I’ll finally be breaking out of the Oscar movie mold with another edition of IHPT later tonight. Stay tuned.