This is a story of hope and reality. First the hope from Bloomberg News 10 days ago with the very hopeful title of Oliver Stones' W May End Political Films' Drought:

``W.'' distributor Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. is betting the movie can break a box-office drought for political films. None of the five released in the weeks ahead of the Nov. 4 election has brought in more than half of the $55.3 million in sales generated by Walt Disney Co.'s ``Beverly Hills Chihuahua,'' the current box-office champ, since Oct. 3.

``A lot of eyes are on `W.,''' said Gitesh Pandya, editor of New York-based Box Office Guru LLC. ``There's certainly a lot of interest in it from the right and the left.'' The film ``has a shot at finding box-office success,'' he said.

The movie, which opens tomorrow, may take in about $34 million in its first four weeks in U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Los Angeles-based Cantor Fitzgerald LP's HSX Research, which tracks film performance.

Ah, the good old days. Remember way back when filmmaker Oliver Stone lamented about his even handed portrayal of George W. Bush in his disappointing new hit piece, W?

"I tried to be fair and balanced and compassionate," Stone said. "I don't take sides. I don't take political sides. I'm a dramatist, and this is the movie I've made."

Yes, that was way back on October 12th, barely a week ago.

Now however, it appears being fair and balanced means comparing the President to someone like, say, Adolf Hitler.

Entertainment Weekly's Joshua Rich reported on the weekend's box office returns for the latest releases on October 19 to let us all in on Hollywood's successes and failures, because, you know, Hollywood is important and all. We find that the Chihuahua movie is still going like gangbusters ($70 million in three weeks) and the horrid movie "Max Payne" led the weekend's receipts with $18 million. Oliver Stone's slamfest "W," though, earned a disappointing fourth place on its debut weekend.

So, what was EW's excuse for this disappointing finish? According to Rich, "W" is failing at the box office because of "tough economic times.” It’s curious, though, that people have spent $70 million on the Chihuahua movie in these same "tough economic times" -- and let us not forget that the latest Batman movie has made over $300 million. Still, the excuse for the fourth place finish for Stone's pseudo-biopic is "tough economic times," just the same.

But, Rich’s excuse is a claim that even Entertainment Weekly itself has recently disputed, at least as far as the box office goes. Only a few weeks ago, the weekend that right-wing comedy "An American Carol" debuted, the same Box Office Report column said that the "economy may be tanking, but the box office remains healthy, with probably the only year-on-year metric that's seen an uptick."

Finally a movie review that takes on Oliver Stone's "W." on its cinematic merits or rather the lack thereof.

Far from being "illustrated journalism" as Time's Richard Corliss lamented or "sunny and sympathetic" history as Newsweek's Alan Brinkley argued, it's simply an "old-fashioned train wreck," concluded Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow in his October 16 review.

The film critic -- who gave the film just one and a half stars -- cracked that the script sounded like recycled Maureen Dowd cartoons and scoffed at the "uneven pleasure" of seeing "first-rate" actors portraying political figures they "don't respect" (emphases mine):

Its shortcomings are remarkably similar to those of its major characters. Near the beginning, Donald Rumsfeld ( Scott Glenn) proclaims that he doesn't do "nuance." Neither, alas, does Stone.

Another celebrity uses the same tired line that Bush has trampled on the Constitution. This time it is Richard Lewis pontificating on the October 17 edition of "The View." Calling for Americans to get out and vote Lewis also blamed "fundamentalists" for America’s demise.

"The Constitution has been trampled the last eight years, period. This is not what this America is supposed to be for. I have friends if they’re pregnant and they don’t want to have a child, I go ‘oh God I respect that.’ It’s the reverse. It’s the- this country is a reasonably great country, about 85 percent, I’m just making that up. It’s the fundamentalists that are screwing this up. I think it’s the, I think it’s the- the comedy will mean nothing."

Earlier in the show, Joy Behar, bizarrely hypothesized that Republicans are "all blondes" "except for Sarah Palin" (Behar is obviously forgetting Laura Bush) The segment then led the panel to address the rumors that Elisabeth Hasselbeck is leaving "The View" for Fox News. Hasselbeck denied such rumors declaring "I certainly love my ladies here. I’m not going anywhere."

A Web ad for the Oliver Stone's latest political bio-pic "W." features actor Josh Brolin as the title character seated on a throne.

The porcelain variety.

Seated in a pose calling to mind Rodin's "The Thinker" statue, Brolin is shown holding chin in his left hand while seated on a toilet, trousers draped around his boots. The text in the promo image reads, "SITTING PRESIDENT: W. In Theaters Oct. 17."

I first noticed the ad in the sidebar of Dr. James Joyner's Outside the Beltway blog.

As we've noted here, Stone's film has either been both praised and panned in the MSM, both on the basis of the film's supposed objectivity.

Appearing on Tuesday's Late Show, Josh Brolin, who plays George W. Bush in Oliver Stone's 'W' movie set to open this weekend, blinked “Vote for Barack Obama.”

Picking up on a monologue joke earlier in the program by David Letterman about how Sarah Palin's blinking is conveying “coded messages,” immediately upon sitting down Brolin pointed to his face as he urged Letterman and viewers: “Watch this.”

He blinked several times, then asked: “You know what that is?” Brolin smugly answered his own question as he smiled and raised his fist in self-satisfaction to audience applause: “Vote for Barack Obama.”

The "Today" show has yet to promote the conservative satire An American Carol, that spoofs Michael Moore but they did find time to invite on Josh Brolin to plug Oliver Stone’s George W. Bush biopic W. on Tuesday's show. Co-anchor Matt Lauer interviewed Brolin, who plays the title character, and noted critics were expecting "a political hatchet job" of the President, to which Brolin, defended Stone as he claimed the controversy surrounding the director of such factually murky films like JFK and Nixon, was "hogwash."

However Brolin admitted that one of the reasons Stone tabbed him to play Dubya was because there was something sort of "mean" about the actor. And in describing how he perfected his Bush impression Brolin observed there was an "apish quality," about the 43rd president.

The following is the full segment as it occurred on the October 14, "Today" show:

As part of the promotion of his new Bush-bashing drama ‘W,’ director Oliver Stone appeared on Tuesday’s CBS Early Show and co-host Harry Smith gushed: "And there are so many interesting portrayals in this, we don't have time to go into them all...Stunning, stunning, stunning ...Phenomenal, phenomenal stuff." Smith even suggested that some people saw the movie as sympathetic to Bush, though not Smith himself: "People -- I was in a screening of this movie just yesterday. This person was walking out, 'my gosh it seemed so sympathetic.' I didn't feel that way, but your hearing that yourself I'm sure."

In response, Stone replied:

I hear it but I think there's a confusion between sympathy and empathy. Empathy means understanding, and as a dramatist it's my job to understand, to walk in the shoes of George W. Bush as best as I can...Sympathize, no. I do think he's hurt this country. I'm a Vietnam veteran. We should not have gone into the Iraq war. We were in three wars, not only Afghanistan and Iraq, but really the war on terror is a major war. You know, we've had an economic meltdown because of it, partly because of the overreach. And this country is in a very dire place and I'm not happy about it...But, you know, people voted for him.

Oliver Stone's "W." is "boring" cinema, not much more than "illustrated journalism," lamented Time's Richard Corliss in an October 13 review.:

Like its central character, it seems never to have questioned itself about its mission or even asked if it had one. For this normally crazy-brilliant auteur, the last and lasting W. has to be Why?

But perhaps Corliss's real beef is that President Bush and his administration were not melodramatically portrayed as Republic-destroying megalomaniacal despots (emphasis mine):

Liberal director and conspiracy theory-loving Oliver Stone was actually "fair" to President George W. Bush in his new film "W." Indeed, Stone is practically a "historian" when it comes to chronicling the life of the nation's 43rd president, that is if you ask Newsweek's Alan Brinkley. Of course when measured up against his prior films about American presidents, it's probably not that high a bar to clear.

From his October 11 movie review, "From Man to Mockery, and Back Again":

Through most of the undistinguished history of films about American presidents, concern for truth has been in short supply.

[...]

Oliver Stone, whose new film, "W.," is his third examination of a modern president, has aspired to be different.

Oh, it gets better. You see, "W." is "sunny and sympathetic":