Most Recent Posts

The battle over how to avoid the looming cuts and tax increases known as the fiscal cliff is a frustrating one for the Tea Party. The movement is still a force within the GOP, even as its popularity has fallen over the past two years.

But in the current debate, there have been no big rallies in Washington, and Tea Party members in Congress seem resigned to the fact that any eventual deal will be one they won't like — and that they'll have little influence over.

Ryan Rhodes, who heads the Iowa Tea Party, doesn't see anything to feel good about as he watches Washington from afar.

"Well, frankly, the way that Republicans are getting beat, and beat essentially from a media perspective ... It's starting to get kind of embarrassing," he says.

It's All Politics

DeMint's Exit Creates Political Ripples, Raises Questions For Tea Party

When it comes to the economy, consumers and business owners have very different takes right now. Consumers are feeling positive, but the mood among businesses is at recession levels.

In a word, business owners are bummed.

"What we've found is that a lot of that optimism is not there right now," says Dennis Jacobe, chief economist for Gallup, which polled these small business types just after the election.

A third of businesses surveyed said they plan to cut back on spending in the next year. One in five say they'll be reducing staff. That's the highest percentage of business owners planning layoffs since the survey started a decade ago.

Jacobe says a big reason is the fiscal cliff — those automatic tax hikes and spending cuts that will take effect starting next month if Congress doesn't act to change it.

"Small business owners face some of the things that are in the fiscal cliff right now — in terms of as they set up their payroll for next year," Jacobe says. "There are a bunch of things that business owners have to think about as we're so close to the new year that the fiscal cliff brings home to them."

Take Ray Gaster, president of a lumber company in Savannah, Ga., where the housing market is rebounding. Gaster had planned to hire three more workers to his staff of 31.

"Right now, we put some hiring decisions on hold because of the uncertainty up in Washington, D.C., and we're not sure what kind of effect that's going to have on housing and the general economy," Gaster says.

Based on Beth Raymer's memoir, Lay the Favorite has a cheeky, double-meaning title that sets up the story and the irreverent tone with impressive efficiency; the reference is both to the gambling practice of betting for the favorite and to the heroine's generous sexual proclivities.

Gambling and sex are the twin elixirs of Sin City, of course, but mixed together they can create an unstable alchemy subject to the ups and downs of hot streaks and cold decks. Raymer's willingness — puppy-dog eagerness, even — to throw herself in the hands of volatile fate and fickle men makes her a great adventurer on the Strip. And Rebecca Hall, best known for playing the uptight Vicky to Scarlett Johansson's more libertine Cristina in Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona, uncorks a performance as bubbly as pink champagne.

So why is Lay the Favorite such a terrible drag?

Perhaps the best point of comparison is Striptease, the famous calamity starring Demi Moore as a Miami stripper who gets caught up in a custody battle and a thicket of political corruption. Adapted from a comic thriller by Carl Hiaasen, South Florida's day-glo answer to Elmore Leonard, the film missed the fizzy, beach-friendly fun of Hiaasen's work, and wound up playing the comedy and the suspense at half-speed. It couldn't keep up with its own protagonist.

Lay the Favorite feels like Striptease revisited, a listless comedy built around a vivacious protagonist. Director Stephen Frears, whose varied and distinguished filmography includes Dangerous Liaisons and High Fidelity, can't seem to decide what movie he's trying to make here. He delves into the world of high-stakes gambling, but not far enough. He dabbles in wacky farce, but lets it subside into thin romantic comedy. The film has a neither-here-nor-there quality that suggests a lack of commitment to the material — or worse, a lack of real directorial interest.

After logging some time as a private dancer in Florida, Beth (Hall) informs her father with starry eyes that she's leaving town to pursue her dream: to be a cocktail waitress at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The saddest part of her modest ambition is that it's unachievable in the short term, since the waitresses are unionized and she'd have to wait around for one of the ancient ones to retire. With no prospects, she and her dog won't be able to afford even their fleabag motel for long.

Enlarge Frank Masi/Radius, TWC

Tulip (Catherine Zeta-Jones), a veteran in the world of Vegas sports gambling, doesn't appreciate the ingenue's increasing admiration of her husband.

British actor, writer and bon vivant Stephen Fry has loved the music of Richard Wagner since he first heard it played on his father's gramophone.

"It released forces within me," he explains early on in Wagner & Me, an exuberant and deeply personal documentary about the allure and the legacy of the German composer's work.

But as a Jew with family members who were killed in the death camps, Fry has some difficulty squaring his passion for magisterial works like Der Ring des Nibelungen and Tristan und Isolde with the anti-Semitism of the man who composed them — and, even more significantly, with the way these inherently stirring creations were co-opted by Hitler and the Nazi regime.

In Wagner & Me, directed by Patrick McGrady, Fry wrestles with a number of essentially unanswerable questions: What happens when great art springs from a mind that also gave quarter to reprehensible ideology? And is it OK to love music whose beauty and power has been harnessed, even tangentially, in the service of human evil?

Those questions don't sit lightly on Fry's affably broad shoulders. But somehow, without soft-pedaling the nastier angles of Wagner's life and legacy, Wagner & Me lands on the side of joy and defiance — broadly speaking, Fry decides not to let the terrorists win.

Dressed in an assortment of cheerful stripey tops and brightly colored trousers (generally topped with a respectful sport jacket), Fry guides us through a picture that's half bio-documentary, half breathless fan letter. The combination works, not least because Fry makes such a charming and thoughtful guide.

His tour begins at what he calls the Stratford-upon-Avon, the mecca, the Graceland for Wagner enthusiasts: the Bayreuth Festival Theater, an efficient, no-frills opera house that Wagner himself designed and built as the ideal performance spot. Fry appears to be almost beside himself with delight during a behind-the-scenes tour, as he watches wig-makers combing out fake period tresses and costumers fitting robust Valkyries for their stage outfits.

Enlarge First Run Features

Fry also visits the holy of Wagnerian holies — the Bayreuth Festival Theater, built by the composer to showcase his works.