Bribery a la Carte.

Unbelievable. Nothing if not brazen, former GOP official Randy “Duke” Cunningham, who recently pled guilty to several bribery and fraud charges, actually kept a “bribe menu” with the varying prices it took to buy him off. “The card shows an escalating scale for bribes, starting at $140,000 and a luxury yacht for a $16 million Defense Department contract. Each additional $1 million in contract value required a $50,000 bribe. The rate dropped to $25,000 per additional million once the contract went above $20 million.” $140,000? Who do you think you are, Boss DeLay? C’mon, Duke, I could get a Ney or two Frists for that.

Audit to Silence.

“‘This audit was political retaliation by Tom DeLay’s cronies to intimidate us for blowing the whistle on DeLay’s abuses,’ McDonald said. ‘Enlisting the IRS to intimidate critics is a dirty trick reminiscent of Richard Nixon…It is not a crime to report a crime, as we did with DeLay.’” Texans for Public Justice, a non-profit organization critical of the DeLay ring’s hold over their home state, has been cleared of any wrongdoing in an IRS audit — one seemingly triggered, it was discovered after a FOIA request, by Boss DeLay’s minions. “The [instigating] lawmaker, House Ways and Means Committee member Sam Johnson (R-Tex.), was in turn responding to a complaint about the group…from Barnaby W. Zall, a Washington lawyer close to DeLay and his fundraising apparatus, according to IRS documents.“

When you play with fire…

“A behind-the-scenes reconstruction of the ports deal’s rapid evolution from obscurity to uproar shows how Bush was blindsided by the same emotion-laden politics of terrorism that he used to win elections in 2002 and 2004. It also raises anew questions of why the White House message machine, so sharply effective in the first term, seemingly has gone dull in the second.” As the Dubai Port World deal goes under 45-day review, the Post assesses the Dubya administration’s dismal PR performance during Dubaigate.

Armies of the Night.

As an afternoon chaser to a morning spent at the NY Comic-Con (I posted some pics over at Flickr), my brother, sister-in-law, and I took in the Russian cinema sensation of 2004, Timur Bekmambetov’s Night Watch. On one hand, it includes some really strange and arresting visual moments, and from very early on seems like a film in which pretty much anything can happen. But, frankly, I wasn’t feeling it. Even despite all the exposition in the early going, the movie makes very little sense, even by the laxer standards one accords fantasy films. And Night Watch wears out its welcome well before the end — To be honest, I kinda wish I’d just watched the two-and-a-half-minute version at the official site.

After a brief prologue describing the establishment of a centuries-old Truce between the Others, spectral forces of Light and Dark, Night Watch moves to the Moscow of twelve years ago, where a Ringo-haired Joe Flaherty look-alike named Anton (Konstantin Khabensky) seeks out a Love Potion #9 from an unsettling Russian crone. Soon, after consuming a concoction of blood, vodka, and lemonade, Anton flirts with the idea of causing a paranormal stillbirth in his now ex-girlfriend, which draws the attention of the Night Watch, a diplomatic police force of Others assigned (with their counterparts, the Day Watch) to ensure compliance with the Truce. Flash forward to the present, when Anton — as it turns out, himself an Other — has joined the Night Watch and now spends his days quaffing blood and chasing down vampires who kill without a license. (Did I mention this film was Russian? Even supernatural forces, it seems, rely on bureaucrats.)

Now that’s only the first twenty-five minutes or so — Night Watch takes several more baroque jags that involve, among other things, a prophecy of a Great Other precipitating a Last Battle between Good and Evil (Yes, this Film Demands a lot of Gratuitous Capitalization), a lovely Virgin and her ancient, unfortunate curse, an all-consuming vortex of bad mojo that rips rivets from planes and plunges them into your coffee, and a young child who draws the attention of a newly-minted vampire (at right). And, true, many of these new elements are introduced with clever visual flourishes — I particularly liked the aging secret, the spider-doll, and the world of the Gloom. But what is the Gloom, exactly, and how the heck does it work? What was the point of the Owl-woman? Why doesn’t the starving vampire chick feed on someone — anyone — else? Why did Der Evil Commissar give Anton the charmed necklace? And so on, so on. There’s something to be said for inscrutability at times, but Night Watch spends too much time making capital-R Rules only to break or ignore them in the later going.

Finally — and this is a more unforgivable sin — for a movie that occasionally moves at a bloody, visceral blur, Night Watch really drags at times. Given the thoroughly bizarre set-up and its fanboy grounding, I really wanted to like this film, but in all honesty I found my attention wavering within forty-five minutes (right about the time the Rammsteinish death metal accompanies the speeding Other-truck with the nifty gear-shift) and was kinda bored after an hour or so. There are some moody, memorable moments throughout, but they added up to a better trailer than they did a film. Apparently, the sequel Day Watch — is in the can, but I doubt I’ll revisit this particular world, or at least not without more vodka on hand.

Soprano Sings.

“Mr. Chase said the show has, on occasion, ‘indirectly heard’ from real-life mobsters. ‘After about four episodes,’ Mr. Chase said, ‘we heard, “You’re O.K.” With one caveat: “We got word about those barbecue scenes where Jim would wear shorts. A don does not wear shorts.”‘” On the eve of Sopranos Season 6 (the penultimate season, to be followed with an eight-episode coda), series creator David Chase and star James Gandolfini have a sit-down with the NYT.

States’ Rights (and Lefts.)

“In a year when fewer than one in 10 House seats appear to be in play, thanks to the power of incumbency and gerrymandered congressional districts, about half of the 36 gubernatorial contests appear to be competitive — many of them clear tossups eight months from Election Day.” Both the Post and the Times look at the political contest for 36 governorships in 2006, with the Dems poised to take back a majority of the states for the first time since 1990. “Historically, shifts in power in the 50 capitals have held long-term implications for both parties, and control of statehouses can give parties tangible organizational advantages during presidential elections.”