Posterwire.com is announcing that The Weinstein Company is running a movie-poster design contest to create a poster for Factory Girl -- not with the idea of putting the winning entry in theatres, mind. I guess that means this is basically a meaningless chickenshit idea, but at least there's ample precedent. "No major film studio has ever run a contest to design a movie poster where the winning entry was used as the domestic theatrical one-sheet for a film key art ad campaign," the site explains."

And yet the one-sheet that the Weinsteiners are going...Read More

Luke Ford has provided terrific coverage of Tuesday night's (12.12.06) discussion between N.Y. Times writers Sharon Waxman and Laura Holson and L.A. Times writers Patrick Goldstein and John Horn about who's got the edge in covering Hollywood -- the N.Y. Times, the L.A. Times or industry bloggers? (The chat was titled "L.A. vs. New York: Who's Got the Scoop on Hollywood?") Variety film editor Dana Harris moderated.

Ford has provided a sound file (very good listening) but here are some choice quotes (provided by Ford): (a) Goldstein: "The Envelope is about attracting Oscar advertising [and] Oscar prognostication is...Read More

We all know that anyone looking to see Dreamgirls at one of the platform engagements in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, et. al., starting on 12.15 will have to plunk down $25 bucks a pop. And in advance, actually, because advance sales are going pretty well, according to this N.Y. Daily News story by Van Pereira and Nicole Bode. "It's supposed to be the best film of the year," says Howard Goldberg, a Hell's Kitchen businessman. "I would pay $25 dollars for this."

Thanks to reader Tommy Matolla for sending along a photo of the just-departed Peter Boyle as campaign manager Marvin Lucas in Michael Ritchie's The Candidate (1972) -- my all-time favorite Boyle performance. When I heard of his passing this morning I thought immediately of how superbly on-target he was as the guy who managed, manipulated and mind-fucked Bill McKay (Robert Redford) in his California campaign for the U.S. Senate.

Well-mannered and nicely dressed in a trimmed beard and glasses, Lucas was a sly politico with a cynical heart and a whatever-works attitude, and Boyle's air of...Read More

Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men "has not one or two but three of the most spectacular shots ever conceived by a filmmaker," writes MCN's Pablo Villaca. "And the best thing is the film is more than technically marvelous; it tells a touching story full of significance. I fell deeply in love with this movie.

"But it's also rich enough that it allows its fans to defend it from a more rational, cold and detached point of view as well. And if I'm going to succeed on making a case for why it's the best film...Read More

Jennifer Holliday, 46, the original "Effie" in the Broadway production of Dreamgirls, is whining to L.A. Times writer Greg Braxton that she isn't getting enough coattail action off the forthcoming movie version, and that there's too little respect/acknowledgment from the filmmakers and publicists behind the Dreamamount film. Gee, that's tough.

There's a reason that Holliday, 200 pounds lighter than she was during the original play's run, sounds like only a slightly tamer version of the well-known handful she was 25 years ago. She's older and presumably wiser, but let's face it -- leopards don't change...Read More

"My saddest moment in a movie theatre came a month ago, when I screened All About Eve to a bunch of acquaintances, one of whom came up to me at the end. 'What happened?' she asked.

"'Well,' I replied, 'Anne Baxter got the award, and Bette Davis sat there all steamed up, and George...'

"'No,' she said, tapping her foot, 'what happened to movies like that? Movies with four great parts for women and lines you want to quote? Where did they go?'

"No idea, but they sure as hell aren't coming back." -- from Anthony Lane's dispirited sum-up...Read More

Nikki Finke today passed along a Miami New Times story about Oliver Stone's Ixtlan production company and four individuals agreeing to pay $6,322.20 to "resolve allegations of violations of the Cuban embargo" between February 2002 and May 2003, which is when Stone shot Looking For Fidel, his HBO documentary about Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. Finke's story starts with the word "busted!" A $6322 fine? Whoooo....

Here we go with another Barack Obama thing, but this one's really good -- trust me. It ran, according to N.Y. Times political blogger Lisa Tozzi, "just before the start of the Monday Night Football matchup between the Chicago Bears and the St. Louis Rams on ESPN."

Todd Field's Little Children has scored its first Best Picture win of the season from the San Francisco Film Critics Circle, although United 93's Paul Greengrass took the Best Director prize. (Definitely a momentum thing happening here, but will Academy members give a hoot? I'd love to see enough of a turnaround by the "too-sooners" to change the odds, but does anyone see this happening?)

Borat's Sacha Baron Cohen was anointed Best Actor, Helen Mirren won the Best Actress prize (again) for her performance in The Queen, Little Children's Jackie Earle Haley scored a second Best...Read More

"The producers of Happy Feet have Andrew Sarris' bladder to thank for their movie winning the New York Film Critics Circle's prize for Best Animated Feature," says a N.Y. Post "Page Six" item that doesn't credit Bilge Ebiri's nerve.com story as the source. "Sarris, of the New York Observer, was in the men's room during the vote yesterday that gave the prize to the penguin musical, narrowly defeating Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly. Back from the toilet, Sarris said he meant to pick Scanner, thus making it the winner -- but his choice was discounted because the result had already been announced."...Read More

N.Y. Times Oscar columnist David Carr (a.k.a. "the Bagger") has written a pretty amusing account of last night's premiere and after-party for The Good Shepherd, including a zero-energy, zero-connection interview with director Robert De Niro.

Carr quotes Universal publicist Michael Moses ("a fast-talking...exec with amazingly animated hands") saying that "this is a real movie...it's not something you'd see on television. Maybe we should have put a song-and-dance number into it -- I hear those are quite popular -- but after 9/11, people are very much interested in the C.I.A. We are really, really proud of the...Read More

I'm late to the party, but the Alliance of Women Journalists has announced the nominees for its 2006 EDA (Excellent Dynamic Activism) Awards, including citations for Best Depiction of Nudity or Sexuality, which presumably means the least exploitative of women and/or the most honest or natural. The five films that made the grade are Babel, Borat, Little Children, The Notorious Bettie Page and Sherrybaby.

Any predictions on how soon we're going to read a Variety announcement about a forthcoming animated Horny Manatee movie, complete with a quest-for-the-perfect-sexual-partner plotline written by Judd Apatow or Sacha Baron Cohen along with expectations of stars (Julia Roberts? Gregg Kinnear?) voicing Manatee dialogue (not to mention groans)?

I'm referring to N.Y. Times writer Jacques Steinberg's report that by Monday afternoon (12.11) "hornymanatee.com -- created by Conan O'Brien's staff and featuring images of such supposedly forbidden acts as 'Manatee-on-Manatee' sex (using characters in costumes) -- had received approximately 3 million hits, according to NBC. Meanwhile...Read More

"There's nothing worse than seeing a sex scene where someone's got a T-shirt on because its unrealistic, so I think that if you're going to do it, do it." -- Factory Girl star Sienna Miller talking to the U.K. Mirror's John Hiscock about "one the most explicit sex scenes ever seen in a mainstream movie." Really? I don't recall anything as steamy as Hiscock describes in the cut I saw last August. Perhaps it's one of the recently-shot scenes?

N.Y. Times DVD columnist Dave Kehr notes that "the extended version of Bugsy that Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is releasing today adds 15 minutes of material, restoring what most of its participants saw as the finished version of the film before it was reportedly recut by Mike Medavoy, then the chairman of TriStar Pictures."

(This may be incorrect: Bugsy screenwriter James Toback told me this morning that Medavoy declared that an early cut was "too long", but he didn't seize the print and have it recut in defiance of director Barry Levinson or producer-star...Read More

Jared Leto "played a junkie in Requiem for a Dream. And I was a junkie so I know what a amazing job he did. If the Academy was comprised of junkies, he would have won an Oscar." -- from Brent Bolthouse's remarks as he gave Leto a Hollywood Life Breakthrough of the Year Awards last Sunday night...two and a half days ago!...passed along by The Envelope's "Styles & Scenes" columnist Elizabeth Snead.

"No one in Hollywood since Greta Garbo has had more mysterious allure than Sasha Stone, editor of Oscarwatch.com. In fact, let me shamelessly declare myself right here and now to be the self-appointed president of the Sasha Stone Fan Club. Not only is she a brilliant cyber-editor, but one of the savviest observers of the Oscar scene and, as every online Oscar nut knows, a great, gracious gal beloved by all who know her.

"But it's hard to know her, frankly. She's not a brazen, bugle-blasting self-promoter like me. As a result of her classy reserve...Read More

"Happy Feet is going to beat Cars for the Oscar, if not the boxoffice. Why? Because [director] George Miller is an artist, just as [Cars maestro] John Lasseter is, but Miller is a respected live-action director working in a new medium, innovating, in fact, and he has fashioned a classic feel-good topical story. Cars, despite its boxoffice dominance, is not the best of all the fabulous Pixar movies. It's wonderful, but it's not the best." -- from Anne Thompson's 12.11 entry on Risky Biz blog.

The Broadcast Film Critics nominations have covered all the bases -- too many, as usual, as far as the ten Best Picture noms are concerned. (Why not twelve? why not fifteen? Spread it around.) But their choices are tasteful and well-considered, for the most part. Seven nominations each for Babel (but no Best Director nom for Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu), The Departed, Little Miss Sunshine and Dreamgirls... plus both a Best Picture and a Best Foreign Film nomination for Letters From Iwo Jima. What, they couldn't decide? I guess they're just trying to up the odds of Clint coming away with a prize.

I've been meaning to link to Anne Thompson's 12.8 "Risky Business" column about Blood Diamond but the title -- "Diamond is rough, for a bigger purpose" -- made me delay reading it because it suggested a softball approach. Then I realized after reading it that it's largely (if not entirely) about Anne buffing her relationship with Blood producer Paula Weinstein. That's fine. I buff also; everyone does. But all the buffing in the world can't change the fact that Blood Diamond is over. Too many withering reviews and a truly weak opening-weekend tally. The Best Actor headwind for Leonardo DiCaprio is...Read More

Schlubby-looking guy: "Face it -- Martin Scorsese's going to get robbed again."

Balding, open-shirt-tailed older guy: "Are you nuts? Consider this: Robert Altman died with one less Best Director Oscar than Kevin Costner. The Academy won't let that happen to Marty."

-- a snippet from "Chatter: The Oscar Race" in this week's issue of New York magazine ("A Year in Culture").

"With so many titles showing long before their theatrical release, studio representatives were insistent that print journalists (anyone outside the online fanboy community, that is) keep their reviews to themselves. Suffice to say that Craig Brewer's Black Snake Moan, in which an aging black man (Samuel L. Jackson) chains a white girl (Christina Ricci) to a radiator to cure her of promiscuity, is as outrageous as advance word indicates. Those who viewed “Hustle and Flow as little more than an exploitation flick cloaked in Sundance pedigree will have more new evidence than they know what to do with come February." -- Austin...Read More

I sat down early this afternoon for a small round-table discussion with Letters From Iwo Jima star Ken Watanabe. Watanabe isn't so much a smoothie as smoothly mannered, and very much the gentleman. He listens quietly and carefully to questions, and maintains good eye contact when replying. He occasionally uses dramatic pauses and deft body language to emphasize emotions. He was assisted by two translators, but his English sounded pretty good to me.

Letters From Iwo Jima star Ken Watanabe -- Monday, 12.11.06, 12:55 pm -- 18th floor of Manhattan's Waldorf Astoria Hotel.

He plays a...Read More

If I were the presiding judge in the Nicole Ritchie driving-the- wrong-way-on-the-134 case, that dumb cooze would get 90 days in jail followed by a 60-day forced rehab under lock and key. No discussion ...that's it. If I'd been in L.A. I could have been been on the 134 and had a head-on collision; ditto one of my sons. I don't care if I sound like a right-winger -- she's dangerous trash, a menace, a public enemy.

I would normally rewrite this just to rewrite it, but it's pretty good on its own. Bilge Ebiri has quickly thrown together a piece about this morning's New York Film Critics Circle voting -- complete with catty Rex Reed comments, an Andrew Sarris bathroom break that almost threw the whole thing into chaos, and what happens when the Almodovar mob faces off against the 3-hour-Roumanian-art-film lovers."

(l.) Rex Reed, (r.) Leah Rosen

Here's a great description of what happened after the vote for Best Picture, which resulted in the prize going to Paul Greengrass's...Read More

She tried and failed to be Lois Lane and needs to do something else fast...something fairly strong...if not piercing then at least provocative..to restore her industry cred. And so Kate Bosworth has bought the movie rights to Catherine Hanahan's Lost Girls and Love Hotels (Pengnuin) -- a nocturnal Lost in Translation without a Bill Murray figure and/or an absentee husband, plus a lot sexier and more dangerous and not that many laughs (if any)...ache-y-breaky Tokyo nihilism and (I'm told) a fair amount of bleak-steamy hotel-room sex.

On her My Space page, Hanrahan has written...Read More

Whitaker-Mirren, Whitaker-Mirren, Whitaker- Mirren, Whitaker-Mirren, Whitaker-Mirren, Whitaker-Mirren...okay, all right, I get it.

I'm just wondering if all those brave adults who refused to see United 93 when it opened last April -- the "too soon!" crowd -- might be inclined to give it a whirl on DVD now that it's won the Best Picture prize from the New York Film Critics Circle. You know what? Naaaah.

Director Paul Greengrass during the shooting of United 93

Does this award put United 93 into the running for one of the five slots in the Best Picture Oscar noms? As much as I'd like to see this happen, my sense is that it...Read More

Voting for the 2006 New York Film Critics Circle winners is taking place right now. Keep tabs on the NYFCC website for updates, which will be posted one by one as they're decided upon. So far, as of 11:14 am, the Best Supporting Actor award has gone to Jackie Earl Haley for Little Children and the Best Supporting Actress award has been nabbed by Jennifer Hudson for Dreamgirls. Previously: Best Screenplay award has gone to Peter Morgan for The Queen, the Best Cinematographer award has been given to Guillermo Navarro for his work on Pan's Labyrinth, and the Best Animated Feature award...Read More

In Richard Eyre and Patrick Marber's Notes on a Scandal (Fox Searchlight, 12.27), "the riveting interplay between Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett draws blood with every scene, thanks to a precision-honed script and Eyre's equally incisive direction," writes Variety's Justin Chang.

"Zoe Heller's compelling 2003 novel unraveled the sordid tale of a schoolteacher's affair with one of her young pupils, taking the form of a coolly perceptive and bitingly funny diary written by a close friend. The book's subversive achievement was to project the diarist's own gaze back upon herself, turning a salacious tabloid tale into a subtle and revelatory act...Read More

"We've come to be consumed by a 24-hour, slash-and-burn, negative ad, bickering, small-minded politics that doesn't move us forward. Sometimes one side is up and the other side is down. But there's no sense that they are coming together in a common-sense, practical, nonideological way to solve the problems that we face." -- Sen. Barack Obama speaking today in Manchester, New Hampshire, as reported by the N.Y. Times' Adam Nagourney.

"To me, The Departed and The Good Shepherd are masterpieces. The Departed is such a fast-paced demon of a movie, with its hilariously nasty dialogue and tough, smart performances, that I kept checking my watch because I didn't want it to ever end. And the Robert De Niro-directed The Good Shepherd is The Godfather of CIA movies, a tense epic of business and family. It sets a new standard for cloak and dagger. But the film of the year, if not the decade, is United 93. Every American should see it. It was one of the most moving experiences I’ve ever had in...Read More

I've admired screenwriter Eric Roth for a good ten or so years (and doubly so since The Insider), and I think he knows that. So when we sat down today at Manhattan's Regency Hotel (Park and 61st) to talk about The Good Shepherd, which he'd heard I'm not a big fan of, things were a wee bit tense (for Roth, certainly) but soon after relaxed because he's brilliant and amiable and a great guy to shoot the shit with, so we both just...settled in.

The Good Shepherd screenwriter Eric Roth -- Sunday, 12.10.06, 2:15 pm

"The birth of the CIA and the life journey of one of its founding operatives is a fascinating subject, [but] one that is done only lukewarm justice in The Good Shepherd," writes Variety's Todd McCarthy. I can guess what the HE readership is thinking as they read this -- give us rude, disturbing, irreverent, provocative or even gross....but please, please not lukewarm.

"Robert De Niro's second film as a director adopts a methodical approach and deliberate pace," McCarthy continues, "in attempting to grasp an almost forbiddingly intricate subject, with a result that is not boring, exactly,...Read More

I respect the years of work, immense care and herculean effort that went into the making of Robert De Niro and Eric Roth's The Good Shepherd, and I admire the unity of tone and mood that the film provides. In no way is it muddled or slapdash. But it's not very stimulating. I think it's fair to use the world "lulling." I don't want to use the word "dull" because it's always somewhat interesting, and sometimes mildly absorbing. But "somewhat interesting" and $1.75 will get you a bus ticket.

It's a film with a vision, all right, and made by an above-average...Read More

More significant wins have been handed to United 93, The Last King of Scotland's Forrest Whitaker, The Queen's Helen Mirren, Departed directors Martin Scorsese and Guillermo del Toro, and for Little Miss Sunshine screenwriter Michael Arndt.

The Washington, DC Area Film Critics Association (WAFCA) has announced winners of its 2006 awards, and the harrowing Universal-released, Paul Greengrass-directed drama was named Best Film, Whitaker was named Best Actor, Mirren was named Best Actress, Scorsese for Best Director and Arndt for Best Original Screenplay.

Blood Diamond's Djimon Hounsou was named Best Supporting Actor and Dreamgirls' Jennifer Hudson won for Best Supporting Actress. Jason...Read More

Get ready for the inevitable Letters From Iwo Jima backlash. Clint Eastwood's film having won Best Picture trophies from two high-profile orgs -- one reputable, one not so much -- provides incentive for those who respected/ admired it but didn't think it was greatest thing since sliced bread to go on the attack. As CHUD's Devin Faraci wrote earlier today, "If Letters From Iwo Jima is setting up a sweep, I'm going to hug a hand grenade."

The Clint-rules faction prevailed in the Los Angeles Film Critics Association voting earlier today, resulting in the org's Best Picture prize going to Letters From Iwo Jima -- a very deserving choice. This is the second such tribute handed to Clint Eastwood's Japanese-language Iwo Jima drama following the National Board of Review's Best Picture honoring two or three days ago.

The big winners beside this were Stephen Frears' The Queen and Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris' Little Miss Sunshine. The former captured four awards and one runner-up prize, including a Best Actress trophy for Helen...Read More

The Boston Society of Film Critics met earlier today and gave Martin Scorsese's The Departed their Best Picture prize, with Scorsese named as Best Director. And -- this is awesome -- Paul Greengrass's United 93 was named first runner-up. Total agreement! I wasn't expecting United 93 to rank as a last-minute punch-through -- I thought it had done a fade. United 93 also placed as one of the American Film Institute's just-announced top ten.

The Beantown guys also chose The Last King of Scotland's Forest Whitaker for Best Actor (with Half Nelson's Ryan Gosling named runner-up)....Read More

Weekend estimates for Apocalypto have slightly downscaled -- Mel Gibson's film is now projected to come in at $14,531,000. Happy Feet is expected to finish at $13,661, The Holiday with 12,854,000, Casino Royale with $9,119,000, Blood Diamond with a slightly higher figure of $8,375,000 (still a tank), Unaccompanied Minors with $6,008,000, Deja Vu with $6,005,000 and The Nativity Story with $5,111,000.

"The AFI, for my money, has great taste. Their choices are often the best reviewed films of the year but they also include films that made a mark, whether or not they got stellar reviews overall. The most significant thing about them is that in the beginning, they used to do the awards thing with nominations (and acting categories) but that seemed to add to the overall awards orgy and [so] hey stopped their practice. Now they name a top ten and that's it. You can see that all five best picture nominees are on this list." -- Oscarwatch's Sasha Stone on...Read More

The Los Angeles Film Critics Association meets today sometime around midday and will announce its decisions by 5 pm or so....perhaps earlier. The New York Film Critics Circle will gather at 9 ayem Monday morning. In years past a NYFCC webmaster has posted the winners in tandem as they've been decided upon...which I've always loved. I'm arranging to record a chat with NYFCC chairman Marshall Fine tomorrow afternoon around 2.

The great Kirk Douglas turned 90 today, and instead of the usual sentiments -- "It's been a wonderful life...I love my grandchildren...I'm looking forward to many more happy years" -- he's released a rabble-rousing statement about a crying need for GenY to do something about the "mess" we're living in. Damn straight. (The Reeler's Stu VanAirsdale passed this along.)

Cymfony, an independent market analytics firm, has released figures from an extensive study showing that Blu-ray is lagging far behind HD DVD in positive opinion, says this Dark Horizons sum-up. According to Yahoo, the report distinctly cites that unlike many studies in this field, Cymfony's was not sponsored by any manufacturer or other organization affiliated with either of the formats. It claims that "the buzz for HD DVD is 46 % greater than that for Blu-ray, and that's among both high-def early adopters and the gaming community."

To New Yorker film critic Anthony Lane, writing about Neal Gabler's "Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination" (Knopf; $35), the most striking aspect of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs "is the macabre punch...the poisoned apple rolling from the outstretched hand, the witch transfigured from a snotty Joan Crawford figure to something yet more disturbing.

"As for the sight of the threatened girl haring through the forest, pursued by a posse of swirling leaves, with the branches clawing at her clothes, it possesses not just the sharp-toothed, half-Teutonic atmosphere that Disney could...Read More

The reason Flags of Our Fathers failed "was because the genre was tapped out. First, Hollywood paid tribute to the men who died at Normandy [via Saving Private Ryan]. Then it paid tribute to the men who died at Pearl Harbor [via Michael Bay's film]. Then it made a side trip to Iraq with Three Kings and Jarhead.

"But by the time Clint Eastwood got around to paying tribute to the men who fell on Iwo Jima, movie audiences were getting emotionally worn out by all this patriotic gore. Moreover, the young people who go to movie theatres today are [having] a...Read More

When it's time to cut jobs to make way for fresh hires, why do so many companies always whack people right before the holidays? Because they want them off the payroll before the new year begins for...what, tax reasons? I've seen this happen again and again, and it's absolutely heartless. Not only did Hollywood Reporter management decide to slash five employees earlier this week, but they've also cancelled their annual holiday party. Nice people!

Nobody knows anything about tomorrow's Los Angeles Film Critics Association voting, the results of which should be known by 5 pm or so. Nonetheless, I have a couple of hunches. LAFCA's Best Picture winners are occasionally contrarian in one of two ways -- they try and help out the proverbial little guy (i.e., a highly regarded "critics film" that has had trouble at the box-office or received insufficient support from its distributor), or they simply honor the cinematic merits of a film with an almost perverse disregard for the herd mentality, even if the winner has a shortcoming or two.

If...Read More

N.Y. Times writer David Halbfinger writing about Grace Is Gone, "a tiny, taut and" -- the filmmakers hope -- "affecting entry" in the dramatic competition at next month's Sundance Film Festival. Directed and written by James C. Strouse (whose first script was Lonesome Jim, which Steve Buscemi directed), it stars John Cusack as a man whose wife is killed in battle in Iraq, leaving him the task of breaking the news to their two young daughters.

"I really think it can be deadly to have an agenda in telling fiction," Strouse says. "I wanted to connect...Read More

Mel Gibson's Apocalypto is being projected to win the weekend with $14,913,000 as of Sunday evening....a little over $6 grand a print. The tracking indicated less, and while the 14 % negative rating may have hurt some, it didn't hurt much. The weekend's big loser is Ed Zwick's Blood Diamond, a fifth-place finisher expected to tally $7,936,000, or a little over $4000 a print. For a movie that cost $80 to $100 million to shoot, less than $8 million on the first weekend means the game is basically over except for the Leonardo DiCaprio Best Actor heat.

Happy Feet will...Read More

Saturday morning's "Page Six" is running a lead story this morning about the Weinstein Co.'s last-minute decision not to open George Hickenlooper's Factory Girl in Manhattan, thus taking it out of consideration for local awards and ten-best lists. A day or two ago I got this message from a friend who's right in the thick of it: "The reality is the movie just isn't ready to see. We've shot 25 pages of new material and Harvey [Weinstein] is trying to rush the movie out and there just isn't enough time. There've been a few screenings but the film is in no...Read More

"Mel Gibson's Apocalypto. Just saw it. Actually paid. Good news: no Jews, lots of Mayans. No circumcisions but lots of other incisions. When Gibson directed and yelled 'cut,' a lot of guys in the cast took him literally." -- Marc Wallace, a loyal Manhattan reader,.

Phyllis Somerville arguably gives the best performance in Todd Field's Little Children. Her character -- May McGorvey, a scrappy, willful, care-worn mother of a convicted sex offender named Ronny (Jackie Earl Haley) -- is one of the few adults in the film (the title refers to a state of arrested adolescence among most of the characters) and seems the most earnest and grounded. What I really mean, I suppose, is that I saw her character as the only one I could really trust.

This is precisely what I said to Field during our chat at the...Read More

Your very first kneejerk reaction when you see this poster is (a) "Aaah, a horror film!...very intriguing," (b) "Face markings? Something aberrant about this...has Carrey lost it?", (c) "Uhm...yeah.... hmmm....well," or (d) fill in the blank.

Nothing looks sensational this weekend. Yesterday's numbers on Apocalypto (Touchstone, 12.8) were at 82, 24 and 12...although it still has a 14 % definitely-not-interested. It might eke out $10 million or so. Blood Diamond (Warner Bros.) is at 76, 28 and 14. It's played moderately well with some but the reviews are not there . A strong show of support by women probably means that Nancy Meyers' The Holiday (Columbia) will at least be competitive and may do better than indicated by Thursday's figures (i.e., 74, 29, 8). Unaccompanied Minors was at 59, 19 and 1...no business to speak of.

...Read More

"On Monday, millions will be waiting breathlessly for the results from the New York Film Critic Circle Awards," writes N.Y. Times Oscar guy David Carr (a.k.a. "the Bagger"). "Okay, that's patently not true, but dozens, at least, will be breathing heavily as they wait to find out what gives. The Bagger has done nothing by way of investigation, save talking to a friend who talked to some other friends who know some people. So, with a sampling error that approaches 100 percent, he can say with certain uncertainty that The Departed might sneak in.

"This year, some love the tidy achievement of...Read More

Having delighted over Bill Nighy's performance in David Hare's The Vertical Hour two nights ago at the Music Box, it suddenly hit me this morning that I haven't attempted to bring any Oscar- season favor whatsoever upon a fascinating Nighy performance that easily qualifies as Best Supporting Actor-level. No, not his older-husband-of-Cate Blanchett role in Notes From a Scandal (in which he's perfectly fine) -- I mean his gloppy squid-faced Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dean Man's Chest.

In this otherwise-despised film Nighy not only filled the shoes of the greatest movie villain to come...Read More

A tiny bit more than one out of three moviegoers -- 34% -- would avoid any movie Tom Cruise is starring in, according to a just-published Gallup poll. I knew the guy had high negatives but not that high. The actor with the next highest negative rating -- 18% -- is Angelina Jolie. What could that be about? People don't like her because she's too pretty, too rich, adopts orphans, makes noises "like an animal being killed" during lovemaking.... what? The third highest neg rating -- 15% -- was earned by Mel Gibson.

In Blood Diamond (Warner Bros., opening today), Leonardo DiCaprio "plays Danny Archer, a Rhodesian-born diamond smuggler who, having been orphaned during his native country's violent struggles in the 1970s, has spent most of his 30-some years crisscrossing the continent as a soldier of fortune and a merchant of misery. Tousled and tanned, with a long, slicing gait and a killer smile, Danny looks as if he were born for trouble of the sweetest kind.

"But Mr. DiCaprio, perhaps because he knows that much of the audience has already crawled into his pocket, plays the smuggler as...Read More

"The public narrative surrounding Apocalypto is almost all about [Mel] Gibson, and hardly at all about the movie," writes Salon's Andrew O'Hehir. "Can the demented Captain Ahab accomplishment of this film outweigh, in the hearts and minds of movie-biz insiders, Gibson's drunken anti-Semitic tirade or his general reputation as a religious fanatic and all-around nutjob?

"Well, having seen Apocalypto I have two things to tell you: Mel Gibson has serious issues with violence and masculinity, and if there's really 'Oscar buzz' around this picture, then everyone in Hollywood really is an idiot." (This is a reference to Sharon Waxman's piece...Read More

No disrespect to Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers, but Letters From Iwo Jima -- a sad elegiac portrait of the Japanese defenders of Iwo Jima during that horrific battle in early 1945 -- is a much better film. It's sadder, cleaner and more primal, for one thing, and the absence of all the cutting back-and-forth between the battle and the bond tour in Eastwood's earlier Iwo Jima visitation feels like a kind of blessing.

The sense of increased focus in this Japanese-language film is immediately apparent, yielding as it does a more earnest humanistic aura along with a...Read More

I realize that yesterday's National Board of Review awards were damaged goods from the get-go, given the org's idiosyncratic oddball rep and all. But the Letters From Iwo Jima Best Picture win was nonetheless a good thing, if for no other reason that the startle factor. That aside, I had four significant beefs with the hand-outs.

(a) The Best Supporting Actor trophy going to Blood Diamond's Djimon Hounsou felt like an especially deranged call. Honsou's acting in that film is emotionally excessive -- he has two emotional-outburst moments are flat-out idiotic. The worst is a scene in which he and Leo...Read More

"It's tough getting a fix on the Best Picture race," writes N.Y. Post film critic Lou Lumenick. "Everyone agrees that the much-hyped musical Dreamgirls (Dreamamount, 12.15) has the pole position. It's a huge crowd-pleaser, but already the chattering classes are starting to pick at it with the sort of griping that eventually left recent Oscar front-runners Brokeback Mountain and The Aviator gasping at the finish line.

"On the other hand, the Academy loves even flawed musicals like Chicago -- unless they're complete botches like The Phantom of the Opera, Rent and The Producers."

Rent was a complete botch? News to...Read More

Okay, so the Weinstein Co. is still screening Factory Girl this week after all -- today (Thursday, 12.7.06, 2:00 pm at Dolby 88 Screening Room) and Friday (1:00 pm at same location)...even though it doesn't matter as far as next Monday's New York Film Critics Circle voting is concerned because the film isn't opening in NYC on 12.29.

A Manhattan journalist is saying my chronology in yesterday's item was off: "What happened is that when the Factory Girl screening notice went out it stated that the film was only opening in Los Angeles, [and then] several NYFCC members pointed out that...Read More

Others may be interested in how "the great diva" Diana Ross is reacting -- or plans to react -- to Dreamgirls and/or questions about same from the media in the next few weeks, but I personally don't give a damn, no offense. What does Diana Ross do all day exactly? Question withdrawn -- I don't want to know.

"Hilarious and sad -- that's what the National Board of Review has become in the last several years," Fox 411's Roger Friedman has written in response to yesterday's announcement of the NBR Awards. "The hilarious part is because the movie studios hate it but keep it going so they have an award to tout in newspaper ads. The sad part is that the members don't know what they're doing, and no one respects them.

"When the NBRMP snubbed Dreamgirls, The Queen and several other excellent 2006 films Wednesday, they were finally revealed for what they are: bickering fans and not professional film...Read More

Giving credit where credit is due in light of the National Board of Review having today handed its Best Picture prize to Clint Eastwood's Letters From Iwo Jima: In Contention's Kris Tapley went way out on that limb a full week before David Poland did. And then Kris backed it up when Poland posted his little cock-tease blog entry last Saturday. And then Kris went crazy last night and predicted the damn thing for a win.

Clint Eastwood's Letters From Iwo Jima has won the National Board of Review's Best Picture of 2006 trophy, which comes as a surprise. Not a whopping one -- this is a very good and moving film -- but it nonetheless knocked me for a loop when I read it a few minutes ago. The NBR's Top Ten pics are Letters, Babel, Blood Diamond, The Departed, The Devil Wears Prada, Flags Of Our Fathers, The History Boys, Little Miss Sunshine, Notes on a Scandal and The Painted Veil.

Letters From Iwo Jima

The NRG's Best Director prize...Read More

The last-minute, going-totally-crazy efforts of the Weinstein Co. team to get additional shooting done on George Hickenlooper's Factory Girl (Weinstein Co., 12.29) only a few weeks ago and then hurriedly screen the film for all the year-end critics groups for possible awards consideration...the entire breathless bandwagon (Sienna Miller as Edie Sedgwick! Don't count us out! We're in the game!) has suddenly devolved into an east-coast farce.

"What?"

I'm speaking of an hours-old decision to suddenly cancel the just-scheduled New York press screenings in lieu of a decision by Weinstein Co. distribution honchos to bypass the...Read More

Chris Rule's "Scary Mary" -- a horror twist trailer mash given to 1964's Mary Poppins with Julie Andrews. Posted five or six weeks ago, I've only just seen it and so what? My one complaint is that Rule didn't find some way to make Dick Van Dyke's chimney sweep into some kind of fiendish monster also.

"One could make a fairly substantial list of things in Inland Empire, as in all David Lynch's work, that are inanely repellent or outright dumb. Jean-Luc Godard, Andy Warhol and Andrei Tarkovsky are other filmmakers who veer wildly between genius and utter puerile shit, sometimes from minute to minute within a given work. Of course this gets into the whole issue of how certain forms of stupidity, sloppiness and impatience sometimes act as protective covering for genius... but that, as they say, is another subject.

"If Inland Empire is good-or-great, it may not be so much good-or-great-in-itself, but as a continuing...Read More

Liam Neeson "is prepping for his role as Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg's film about the Great Emancipator," it says in Rush & Molloy's 12.6 column. "[In so doing] Neeson toured the New York Historical Society's exhibit 'New York Divided: Slavery and the Civil War' and attended a lecture by 'The Gettysburg Gospel' author Gabor Boritt."

Good heavens, hold on...Neeson was preparing for the same role when I spoke to him twice about it in August 2005 -- 16 friggin' months ago -- and there hasn't been any announcement since that Spielberg...Read More

Director Chris Kentis and producer Laura Lau made a big indie-level splash with Open Water, which was about a husband and wife stranded in the ocean and defenseless against sharks, who eventually eat them. And now in the latest example of "duh"-level associative thinking in corporate Hollywood, Warner Bros. has hired Kentis and Lau to write and direct Indianapolis, an adaptation of the Douglas Stanton book "In Harm's Way" about 900 sailors who went into the Phillipine Sea in July 1945 after their ship sank, leaving them stranded and defenseless against sharks.

Before rescuers arrived four...Read More

The return of former Disney production chief Nina Jacobson to active status -- she's now a DreamWorks-allied producer on the Universal lot -- is welcome news. Jacobson, HE readers will recall, was bizarrely whacked last summer -- bizarre as in out-of-the-blue and what-was-that-about? The guy who gave her the bad news, Disney distribution chief Dick Cook, won the all-time Superb Timing award for telling Jacobson just as her partner was giving birth in a hospital.

"Looking back at his five marriages, many lovers and his indifference to family life, he is aghast at his own cruelty at the same time that he is strangely unapologetic," writes N.Y. Times reviewer Stephen Holden about legendary Swedish director Ingmar Bergman as he appears in Marie Nyrerod's documentary Bergman Island (now at the Film Forum).

"I had a bad conscience until I discovered that having a bad conscience about something so gravely serious as leaving your children is an affectation, a way of achieving a little suffering that can't for a moment be equal...Read More

The trade review date for Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima is supposed to be either this Friday (12.8) or Monday (12.11). I don't see how delaying reactions serves anyone's purpose. The time is now, we're right in the thick of it, Letters opens two weeks from today... gentlemen, start your engines.

After all, MCN's David Poland started his last Saturday, right? The the cat was 80% out of the bag as of that moment, and it was totally out yesterday when Poland made Letters his #2 choice for the Best Picture competish in the latest Gurus of Gold...Read More

"Dramatically, the relentless pileup of atrocities [in Mel Gibson's Apocalypto] becomes self-defeating," Newsweek's David Ansen writes in this week's issue. "At a certain point -- was it the spear that went from the back of a running man's head through his mouth? The jaguar tearing another man's face to shreds? The snakes? The hornets? The hundreds of rotting corpses in the ravine? -- you become inured. Some may find the overkill exploitative, but there's nothing cynical about Gibson's obsession with blood and pain. The pathology is genuine.

"But for all the anthropological research that went into the movie, what is Apocalypto...Read More

"To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering, one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer, to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love, to be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy, therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness." -- from Woody Allen's Love and Death.

Yesterday I intended to discuss Sharon Waxman12.4 piece contending that Mel Gibson's Apocalypto has created some confusion and tension among Academy and DGA voters who had wanted to just ignore Gibson's film due to his anti-Semitic outburst last summer, but are now torn about this due to the film's alleged excellence, which they may feel obliged to honor with a nomination or two. I tried to get into it but I so radically disagreed with what she'd written that I felt tongue-tied on some level.

As I explained in last Friday's review, Apocalypto very...Read More

Howard Burns, editorial director of The Hollywood Reporter, unknown to probably 99% of HE's readership, has packed his bags and left the room. L.A. Observed wrote that he said to the staff at a meeting yesterday, "If I told you this was voluntary, I'd be lying." Burns was, in fact, whacked by THR publisher John Kilcullen for the same reason that lions who've moved in on a new lioness usually kill her cubs so make way for their own brood.

Publisher/editorial director Robert Dowling made Burns editor after Anita Busch resigned in May 2001. Several months ago Burns was named editorial...Read More

Patrick Goldstein's annual "early betting line" column about Best Picture contenders gives the best odds (4-1) to Dreamgirls. His only qualifier is that "its chances of a best picture victory depend on whether the academy, which has a soft spot for showbiz stories, will embrace a crowd-pleaser that isn't daring or original. In other words: Does the soul outweigh the schmaltz?"

Goldstein doesn't mention the well-known fact that there are some out there -- maybe a few, maybe a lot -- who are foursquare against Dreamgirls. A Manhattan publicist told me last night...Read More

"We realize it never goes away. Life is always going to be a battle. You expect it to get easy as you get older, and It doesn't. [And so the movie is about] how does he cope, how has he tried to put together new friends? He's starting out without his wife. He's full of grief. But [what he goes through and comes to] is like a rebirth. Certainly not the way he was in Rocky but an older, wiser guy." -- Sylvester Stallone talking to AP sports writer Dan Gelston about Rocky Balboa (MGM, 12.2).

Weinstein Co, publicist Liz Biber told me this morning that George Hickenlooper's Factory Girl(Weinstein Co., 12.29) will definitely screen "several" times this week for the benefit of New York and Los Angeles critics, as well as the Hollywood Foreign Press. (The National Board of Review saw it yesterday afternoon.) She said she'll be contacting everyone on both coasts today and giving them screening dates and times between now and Saturday.

This despite the last-minute, down-to-the-wire additional shooting last month and the re-editing and re-mixing that Hickenlooper finished only yesterday morning (with more tweaks to come over...Read More

I've been expecting to hear about bicoastal memorial tributes to Robert Altman, who passed just before Thanksgiving. Having attended DGA-sponsored tributes for Hal Ashby and Stanley Kubrick some two or three weeks after their deaths, I was presuming it would happen sometime this month.

But Altman's widow Kathryn Reed is calling the shots, and her husband's sudden departure (Picturehouse chief Bob Berney, the distributor of Altman's final film A Prairie Home Companion, told me last night that he and wife Jeanne Berney were partying with Altman into the wee hours only a few days before his final visit to the hospital)...Read More

Q: "The other thing that seems to be a constant in both [The Good Shepherd and A Bronx Tale] is the relationship between fathers and sons. And I wonder if it's something you think about a lot." A: "Yes." Q: "You have four sons." A: "I do." Q: "And your father [artist Robert De Niro Sr.] was a big influence on your life?" A: "Yes." Q: Do you consider this a political film? A: I don't know. I wouldn't say." Q: "You don't know or you wouldn't say?" A: "I don't know. I think people should see it the way they want." --...Read More

"Why should I feel like the minority when the majority of America is a size 12? Plus, a lot of singers don't sound the same when they lose weight. I have a little singer's pouch, and that's where the voice comes from, so you're all just going to have to get used to my jelly. Hey, somebody has to represent the big girls. Why not me?" -- Dreamgirls costar (and -- this is not a reach -- probable Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner) Jennifer Hudson, speaking to Sean Smith in Newsweek's 12.11 issue.

I'm also under embargo, but I just thought I'd say something about a movie I saw today. (Gee, what could that be?) I want to keep things oblique so I'll put it this way: it's a lot better than its first cousin. I mean, a lot better. I'm not sure if it'll rocket right up into Best-Picture-contender status, and "in the process kill off Babel, Little Children and World Trade Center once and for all and create a major dogfight between Little Miss Sunshine and The Pursuit of Happyness for the #5 slot," as a certain spitballer yesterday suggested it might...Read More

Todd Haynes' I'm Not There, about the life and legend of Bob Dylan, "explores different pockets of a man who refused to be categorized. I have always loved his music, but I'm terrified about this because I am besotted. I watch the press conference he gave in San Francisco in 1965, or whenever it was, and just think, 'I love you.'

"The worst thing an actor can do is fall in love with someone they're about to portray, but then I'm not playing him -- my character is called Jude. [The film is] a riff on...Read More

With the O'Toole bandwagon slowing to a stall (especially if he winds up staying in London), the Best Actor Oscar face-down is pretty much down to Leonardo DiCaprio (The Departed, Blood Diamond) vs. Will Smith (The Pursuit of Happyness) -- and it seems more and more likely to me that DiCaprio will take it.

The DiCaprio undersaga-metaphor is about a gifted kid-like actor finally surging into the realm of manhood and mature conviction, so a vote for Leo is a vote for a potential finally fulfulled. A vote for Smith is a vote for the...Read More

"Mel Gibson's self-financed passion project was originally budgeted through his Icon Productions at $64 million. Despite the twofold increase in shooting days, that initial figure has been whittled down to $50 million for public record. However, production execs who worked on and or regularly visited the set estimate Apocalypto's actual budget is closer to $75 million to $80 million." -- from Sheigh Crabtree's L.A. Times piece on the making of it.

This site has bonged the gong on Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's The Lives of Others several times, but yesterday's announcement that it won three top European Film Awards awards -- Best Picture, Best Actor (Ulrich Muhe) and Best Screenwriter (von Donnersmarck) -- brings it to the fore again.

This Sony Pictures Classics release has the current of greatness in it -- a subdued but passionate story, arresting specificity of observation and recreation in every last department, superb acting (Sebastian Koch and Martina Gedeck especially), ripe adult sexuality and a truly heartening finale.

Pedro...Read More

A nicely observed, soothingly written piece by L.A. Times writer Rachel Abramowitz about the frail Peter O'Toole and his Oscar-touted performance as Maurice in Roger Michell's Venus . It hits just the right tone, a slight underlayer of sadness suffused with the usual O'Toole-isms -- wit, pluck, offhanded charm.

Is O'Toole's Best Actor Oscar campaign, such as it is, going to be conducted from London? A few days ago I noted certain indications of concern. I tried to get a reading of the situation from Miramax publicity before writing anything, but they didn't want to...Read More

This BBC Radio TV spot -- a clip of Elvis Presley circa 1970 introducing his back-up band during a concert -- has been up about a month. It's almost perfect -- I especially like the bit when Keith Moon interrupts the shpiel. The one tiny wrongo is that brief clip of bassist Sheryl Crowe -- she's seen playing as he introduces her, but we don't hear any music.

Another Sundance '07 selection worth settling into is one I've seen (in rough form): Rod Lurie's Resurrecting the Champ. I'm not going to spill anything, but the script -- written by Lurie, Allison Burnett, Michael Bortman and Chris Gerolmo -- has a fascinating second-act turn. The nominal plot is about a youngish, not quite established sports reporter (Josh Hartnett) lucking into a big story when he discovers that a squealy-voiced homeless guy (Samuel L. Jackson) is actually a former heavyweight boxing champion previously thought to be dead. But the title doesn't mean what you might think. Alan Alda and Peter Coyote give tangy...

I didn't exactly take part in this morning's round-table interviews at the Waldorf Astoria this morning for The Good German (Warner Bros., 12.15); "sat in on" is more like it. I wasn't feeling the moxie for some reason. But at least I recorded a couple of lively, light-hearted interviews with George Clooney and Cate Blanchett. Amusing machine-gun stuff, some of it informative and even thoughtful.

After the sessions ended, in an 18th floor suite of the Waldorf Astoria -- Saturday, 12.2.06, 1:15 pm

You need to be on-your-toes to get a question in edgewise...Read More

I don't know if Nikki Finke's report that Mel Gibson's Apocalypto is tracking a little bit ahead of Ed Zwick's Blood Diamond and Nancy Meyers' The Holiday is "astonishing," as she puts it. Apparently the fans of Mel's The Passion of the Christ are favorably disposed on some level. Translation: they almost certainly haven't read or heard much about Apocalypto except for the bare bones stuff, but are thinking it might have some spiritually appealing current (wrong!) and are therefore grunting in the affirmative when the phone surveyor mentions the title and who directed it.

A strange call by Cate Blanchett (or her people) to back out of doing a photo shoot for the annual Vanity Fair Hollywood issue, as reported by Jossip. Strange because during the one- or two-day period when this issue first makes the rounds and (briefly) affects a certain percentage of industry types, a truly luscious high-style photo of an actress tends to underline and double-ratify her elegant X-factor intrigue rating.

If you're generally regarded as, say, an 8.2 on the desirability meter based on your own steam, appearing in the Vanity Fair Hollywood issue...Read More

So far, only three '07 Sundance movies have inspired any thoughts of mid-range tumescence: (a) Mike Cahill's King of California, about a relationship between an unstable dad (Michael Douglas) and his daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) -- the reasonbeing the hand of producers Alexander Payne and Michael London plus some encouraging buzz I heard about it last summer; (b) Jarrett Schaeffer 's Chapter 27, the long-gestating drama about what was happening in the head of Mark David Chapman (a bulked-up Jared Leto) in the days and hours leading up to his murder of John Lennon ; and (c) Brett Morgen's Read More