1. "Maher Audience a Real Pain": See also our "Clip of the Day."

["There was Bill Maher, chatting with his Friday, October 19th panel—L.A. Times and Time Magazine columnist Joel Stein, Hardball TV host Chris Matthews and Texas Democratic congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee—when the perils of doing one of television's few live programs reared its ugly head."]

["Writes Jay Weissberg in Variety: "Perhaps Eliade's investigations into Jungian theory and a nascent form of New Age spirituality also appealed, not to mention the excitement of getting back to the kind of artistic control only possible with low-budget filmmaking. Decamping to Romania (with a small section shot in Bulgaria), Coppola used mostly young local talent and had the Balkan nations stand in for Switzerland, Malta and even India. Unfortunately, the results are as phony as the back projection and lack the kind of Eastern European magical realism that would have made it resonate.""]

["Seventy miles east of New York City are two wine trails: the North Fork and Hamptons. Since the first commercial vineyard was planted on Long Island in 1973, the number of wine producers on the peninsula has grown to 50; and while 30 percent of the acreage is planted in Merlot, Long Islanders have ventured beyond the quintessential Chardonnay to embrace lesser-known varietals such as Lemberger and Tocia Friulano."]

["Festival hype is an especially tricky barometer to gage as it's based in a genuinely decent place; a want to promote something small and as yet unchampioned, usually with little regard for the backlash that's sure to come once people are paying $11 to see a film at the mall. Being first out of the gate is always tricky and being first isolated from the rest of the world only clouds things further. After playing Toronto and Telluride last month, Juno, emerged as the year's darling "indie" comedy, trumpeting the arrival of blogger cum stripper cum screenwriter Diablo Cody and a star-making performance from Ellen Page whose mostly known in the geek world for pretending to castrate Patrick Wilson in Hard Candy and running from the Juggernaut (bitch!) in X-Men 3. Even more telling, the film has been called this year's Little Miss Sunshine, which personally carried as much excitement as something being hailed as this year's Big Mac. "]

["While watching Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited (which I liked a lot), it occurred to me that there's a kind of dialectic working in Anderson's style."]

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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged.