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· We were just about to take back every negative thing we’ve said about this year’s Best Picture winner after reading this “Real Life Crash” item, but then we remembered that according to Paul…

Knights Ridder reporters say that Bush/Cheney’s authorization to Scooter Libby to declassify and divulge classified information about Iraq “fits a pattern of selective leaks of secret intelligence to further the administration’s political agenda.”

Scott McClellan today tried to justify the Adminstration’s actions:

Without specifically acknowledging Bush’s actions in the Libby case, White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters: “There were irresponsible and unfounded accusations being made against the administration suggesting that we had manipulated or misused that intelligence. We felt it was very much in the public interest that what information could be declassified be declassified.”

McClellan didn’t address why administration officials often declassified information that supported their allegations about Iraq but not intelligence that undercut their claims.

Here’s a question I’m not seeing answered. If Libby was authorized to disclose newly declassified information to Judith Miller, and if it was all on the up and up, why did Libby, Cheney and Bush let her do 85 days in jail for refusing to say she got the information from Libby?

And, as Digby says, if they wanted to declassify and disclose information favorable to their case for war in Iraq, why didn’t they call a press conference? Why did they give it to selected reporters? That’s not disclosure to the public, that’s a selective leak for partisan purposes.

After a brief breakthrough on Thursday, the Senate gave up on reaching agreement on immigration reform before its two-week recess. [Christian Science Monitor]

The immediate cause was procedural: Democratic leader Harry Reid refused to allow votes on amendments that Republicans said were necessary to complete the bill. So, all 54 Republicans and six Democrats voted to block a key vote on the bill.

But, in fact, the problem was political. Divisions over this bill run deep through both parties - and members on both sides of the aisle say the Senate needs more time to work though differences. And with massive pro-immigration demonstrations expected nationwide on Monday, Republican and Democratic lawmakers are keenly aware of the effect their votes could have in November’s elections. An immigration crackdown could mobilize millions of angry Hispanic voters. A more lenient approach could provoke a backlash from voters who oppose any form of amnesty.

Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley play crime kingpins who live in facing penthouses and carry on a bitter feud. Josh Hartnett arrives in New York and is mistaken for his friend Nick, who is of great interest to both crime bosses, who make demands and threaten his life. Lucy Liu is Nick’s neighbor, Bruce Willis is the killer Mr. Goodkat, and the whole movie is a put-on from the beginning. Since the rug of reality is jerked out from under us in the opening scenes, and the dialogue is too mannered to be taken seriously, all we’re left with is some juicy acting and the production design. Not enough.

Education: An American high school marching band will come to London after parents voted against a travel ban imposed because of fears over ‘trains blowing up’. [Guardian]

We’re having too much fun to get started on Snakes on a Plane backlash already, but if this ad is real (we don’t know if it is or not), we might be closer to the end of the love affair than we’d…

Sam Shepard plays a has-been cowboy star who walks off the set of a B western and seeks his past. Through his mother (Eva Marie Saint) he discovers that an old girl friend (Jessica Lange) bore him a son (Gabriel Mann), and he finds them in Butte, Montana, along with a daughter (Sarah Polley) he didn’t know about. It’s a journey of discovery in which the people he meets seem real enough, but his character remains undefined and childlike. Beautifully photographed, with some scenes that don’t even pretend to work, and others that have an unexpected sweetness. Finally just too preoccupied with its larger meanings to slow down and make the smaller ones convincing.

Three interlocking stories involving guns. Marcia Gay Hardin plays the mother of a teenager who shot and killed his Oregon high school classmates Forest Whitaker is the principal of a Chicago high school which guns have all but paralyzed. Donald Sutherland is a nice old man who runs a gun shop in Virginia. The movie isn’t strident, but sad. The director, Steven Bagatourian, doesn’t pound us with a message but simply asks, how do you lead a reasonable life in a world where a lot of your fellow citizens can and do walk around armed?

When he was 8, Steve promised Lisa that they would meet again on the fifth day of the fifth month of the fifth year of the new millennium, at a reunion of their class at Marilyn Hotchkiss’s Ballroom Dancing and Charm School. Now Steve (John Goodman) is 48, and he’s driving to the reunion when he has a crash. Robert Carlyle happens along, accompanies Steve in the ambulance, and promises to go to the reunion to look for Lisa. As a far better critic than I once wrote, there wasn’t a wet eye in the house. With Mary Steenburgen, Marisa Tomei, Donnie Wahlberg, David Paymer.

MNM cheated behind the referee’s back and Mercury rolled up London for a close nearfall. MNM went for the snapshot, but Kendrick broke up the move. London rolled through on Mercury for a very, very close nearfall. London rolled through a Boston Crab attempt by Mercury and scored a pin for the win. Afterwards, Mercury and Nitro were beside themselves as Melina tried to figure out what happened.

Three rich friends (Catherine Keener, Joan Cusack and Frances McDormand) are married, not entirely successfully, but despair for their friend played by Jennifer Aniston, who is “single, a pothead, and a maid.” The movie intercuts their marriages and their husbands (in order, they’re Jason Isaacs, Greg Germann and Simon McBurney). Meanwhile Aniston is fixed up with a fitness instructor (Scott Caan) who is a world-class louse, and cleans house for a slob (Bob Stephenson), who’s a sweetie-pie. The movie plays more like an idea than a story; Aniston’s two relationships supply most of the human interest.