It's too early and it may seem a silly notion, but it may be time for all good people to rise up and band together in order to stop Johnny Depp from winning the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in Sweeney Todd. If anyone wants to launch a website to help amplify this feeling and (who knows?) maybe nip this one in the bud, I'll contribute $100 bucks...seriously. He's the one bad guy in the bunch who, I feel, really doesn't deserve to win. Surely others feel this way?

Okay, bad joke. But there's this guy who wrote earlier todayRead More

Though Walt Becker didn't write Wild Hogs, its early progress is similarly angled, with much 'ewww!' mileage eked from the ways in which William H. Macy's sensitive-guy nature sometimes make him seem 'gay,' plus a randy cop (Scrubs' John C. McGinley) who misreads the traveling male quartet's bond. Studio product once ridiculed homosexuals outright -- now it goes the more insidious route of milking the straight characters' 'hilarious' revulsion whenever they come in contact with or are mistaken for gay people." -- from Dennis Harvey's 2.24 Variety review.

Here's what Zodiac costar Jake Gyllenhaal said to Newsday's Lewis Beale yesterday regarding David Halbfinger's N.Y. Times article about Fincher's obsession with multiple takes (which Mark Ruffalo also commented upon in Devin Faraci's CHUD interview): "It is positive, whether or not I was willing to admit that at the time. It's like working with a great teacher or coach -- you hate them while you're doing it...Read More

That was San Francisco Chronicle writer Leah Garchik who passed along buzz about that recent screening of Francis Copppola's Youth Without Youth, and not Tom Luddy.

"I always call international the new south, " says House Party director Reginald Hudlin (also the current entertainment president of BET Networks). "In the old days, they told you black films don't travel down South. Now they say it's not going to travel overseas." -- from Michael Cieply's N.Y. Times piece about the legend of films with African-American casts, backdrops and storylines being weak overseas. It's a situation that "may" be changing, Cieply says.

During an on-stage interview at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade theatre last December, Alan Arkin said the job he wants more than anything else is to be in a big-studio franchise movie, the kind of film in which he'd have to gesture wildly in front of a green screen and go, "Look out, the thing is coming!"

I don't know if Arkin's winning of the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Little Miss Sunshine had anything to do with this, but his agent has gotten him what he wants -- the role of CONTROL in a big-screen version of Get SmartRead More

Termite art -- that 's the best term I've heard so far (taken from a recent review by the Village Voice's Nathan Lee) that summarizes the aesthetic essence of Zodiac. And when you talk to Robert Graysmith, the author of the two Zodiac books ("Zodiac" and "Zodiac Unmasked") that served as the basis of "Jamie" Vanderbilt's script, you get the idea that he's a kind of termite himself -- a relentless eater and chomper of information.

...Read More

The Bucket List's IMDB synopsis says it's about two terminally ill older guys -- Jack Nicholson, Morgan Freeman -- who "escape from a cancer ward and head off on a road trip with a wish list of to-dos before they die." I'm not going to make any negative assumptions because Rob Reiner is directing. Just because North, Ghosts of Mississippi, The Story of Us, Alex & Emma and Rumor Has it bit the dust is no reason to think rashly.

The problem, for me, is this: Nicholson looks too well-fed...Read More

This Radar Online report about the National Enquirer running fake Anna Nicole Smith body-bag photos is icky and surreal. If once a magazine indulges itself in running faked Photoshop images, very soon the editors will come to think little of running intrusive and sometime sloppily reported stories about celebrities; and from that to paying low-life sources and running photos of celebs in their out-of-shape bodies at the beach, and finally to general obnoxiousness and tackiness.

"An even greater challenge to both newspapers and broadcast networks is the growing power of the internet as a news distribution platform," reads an online summary for News War, a four-hour PBS Frontline special examining the political, cultural, legal, and economic forces challenging the news media today.

Jeff Fager, executive producer of 60 Minutes, says "we haven't seen the model for how broadcast journalism is going to end up on the Internet, but it has to go there. I mean, you don't see anybody between 20 and 30 getting their news from the evening news; ...Read More

Screengrab's "Ten Best Nude Scenes of '06" piece amounts to two goodies -- Gretchen Mol's outdoor nude scene in The Notorious Bettie Page and Sophia Myles in Art-School Confidential -- and eight so-sos.

Nine days ago this foreign-shores guy listed the 10 greatest speeches and monologues, and every last one was an AFI cliche that nobody wants to be reminded of ever again.

He even gets the Trainspotting speech wrong, which he excerpts as follows: "Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family, Choose a big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends... Choose your future. Choose life."

...Read More

The Permalink doesn't work but Screen Grab posted a short item yesterday about Francis Coppola having begun to screen Youth Without Youth. The low-budget, European-shot film "was shown to invited guests at Lucasfilm's headquarters in the Presidio" within the last couple of days, the copy reads. Here's the uh-oh part: "The filmmaker's invitation stressed that the movie, Coppola's first in 10 years, is intended to be particularly personal, in keeping with 'the great cinema of Europe and Japan that had first inspired me to become a filmmaker myself."

"The thing about America, is that it is without walls. You can get almost anywhere if you insist upon it. There are no credentials for [talk-show hosting]. There's no kind of credentials to be president! Except age and place of birth. It's kind of a low bar. I hope that next time people go to the polls they vote for the guy who can read rather than the guy they'd rather have a beer with." -- Real Time's Bill Maher talking to Time's Ana Marie Cox.

Wells response...Read More

Here's a podcast chat I did the day after the Oscars with The Envelope's Tom O'Neil. It won't make your underpants fly off, but it plays okay.

I haven't seen Chris Rock's I Think I Love My Wife (Fox Searchlight, 3.16), but there's a fundamental problem with the basic premise. Rock, who directed, co-wrote and stars, plays a bespectacled, suit-wearing husband (Gina Torres is the wife) who develops an extra- marital itch for a hot lady (Kerry Washington). The problem is that I don't believe Rock could get worked up about anything other than some matter that immediately affects the business fortunes of Chris Rock.

Some actors project empathy, vulnerability...a regular-guyness. At best, Rock projects the vibe of a whip-smart, slap-happy alien.

...Read More

A smart salute for Mark Ruffalo, an actor with a solid-gold attitude who shudders at the idea of ever going "waah, waah, waah" over anything. CHUD's Devin Faraci asked him about the tension that reportedly kicked in when fellow Zodiac costar Jake Gyllenhaalwas asked by director David Fincher to do dozens of takes for certain scenes. Here's an excerpt:

Ruffalo as Det. Dave Toschi in David Fincher's Zodiac

Faraci: "Some of your strongest scenes in the movie are with Jake Gyllenhaal. What's he like to work with?"

Ruffalo...Read More

Here's an Eddie Murphy observation from someone who was at the Kodak. I'm not trying to beat a dead horse -- it's just that this person doesn't agree with the descriptions about Murphy bolting in some kind of fuming, petulant fashion.

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A long ways down the road is The Long Play, a movie driven by the re-teaming of Martin Scorsese and Departed screen- writer William Monahan. Paramount Pictures is funding the development of the script, which reportedly follows two guys "through 40 years in the music business, from the early days of R&B to contemporary hip-hop."

What's that...the late '50s to the late '90s? No way...no way in hell. Two friends getting older, grayer and fatter as the years roll on and the music gets shittier...Read More

If you were studying Peter O'Toole just before Forest Whitaker was named the winner of the Best Actor Oscar, and then at the precise moment that it happens, it's clear O'Toole wanted to hear his own name very badly (who wouldn't?) and that he was pretty much primally shattered when he didn't. It's a look of "oh dear God, it's happened again."

O'Tooler recovers quickly and applauds Whitaker like a gentleman, but those facial spasms got to me. He wore that same haunted look in 1980 during the curtain call for a critically-despised Old Vic production of Read More

Hilary Clinton's main problem is that she appears too cautious, too calculating and over-scripted. If you ask me she's demonstrated this in an unmistakable way by having recently told CNN's Bill Schneider and Douglas Hyde that her favorite all-time movie is Casablanca.

Anyone who says Casablanca is their all-time favorite film is deliberately trying to sound bland and unsophisticated

What a totally softball, timid-ass thing to say...Casablanca...Read More

This is mildly disturbing only because the global-warming deniers and the reactionaries are going to use stories like this to justify careless consumption across the board. That said, Al Gore, no matter what his individual carbon footprint might be, needs to reconsider how such stories will affect the overall green effort. He probably needs to live in a much more spartan fashion. Besides, he'll lose weight that way.

A perfect confirmation about Eddie Murphy having left the Kodak auditorium after he didn't win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar has arrived by way of L.A. Times columnist Joel Stein, who spent last Sunday night hanging at the Hollywood Bowl parking lot with all the top celebrity limo drivers, one of them being Murphy's driver, Karlo Ateinza, who's been hauling Murphy around for the last seven years.

"Karlo wasn't having a great night because Murphy lost early," writes Stein. "I''m really sad. I feel sorry. He should have won it,' Karlo said. 'But Alan Arkin...Read More

Hollywood Interrupted's Mark Ebner riffing on last night's Oscar show & the continuing celebrity meltdown syndrome.

In a New Yorker piece called "The New Disorder," David Denby discusses the trend of dense, complex, interwoven plots in movies from Pulp Fiction to Babel.

"The Guillermo Arriaga-Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu films are hardly the sole topsy-turvy narratives out there," he notes. "In recent years, we've had movies, like Adaptation (written by the antic confabulator Charlie Kaufman), that are explicitly about the making of movies, and others, like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (also written by Kaufman), that move forward dramatically by going backward in time.

...Read More

"After the wonderfully imaginative Mexican movie Pan's Labyrinth chalked up three quick victories -- for art direction, makeup and cinematography -- it must have looked to most people like a major upset when it lost best foreign-language film to the German The Lives of Others," writes Newsweek's David Ansen.

"But the entire Academy doesn't vote in this category, only those members who have seen all five nominated films. Which means that closer to 500 people...Read More

Zodiac director David Fincher "is not a police-procedural-type guy. He's not a people-type guy. He's a mood ghoul. I don't think he can relate much to moral outrage. What occupies him is how to send you home antsy, unsure of what you've seen but sure it was worse than you think. He gives you the existential willies." -- from New York critic David Edelstein's just-up review.

"With a runtime of over two and a half hours, Zodiac super-charges every minute with a maximum of minutiae," writes Village Voice critic Nathan Lee. "Dizzyingly dense, intricate in the extreme and relentlessly swift, it's the most information-packed procedural since JFK, though far more restrained when it comes to theorizing.

"The screenplay, meticulously engineered by James Vanderbilt, has been adapted from a pair of books by Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), a cartoonist at the Chronicle...Read More

Defamer has posted a video of Clint Eastwood's wife Dina brushing something off his lap during Martin Scorsese's thank- you speech, and it's nothing. And to see it, you have to sit through the whole sequence -- Coppola/Lucas/Spielberg presenter jive, the big announcement, Scorsese kissing and hugging those near and dear, addressing the audience, thanking the Departed cast, etc.

Hollywood Wiretap's Pete Hammond offers his take on last night's Oscar show -- the ironies, surprises, whys and wherefores.

Every year comes the post-Oscar sourpuss reviews. But it didn't feel boring or torturous to me. You sit there and watch the damn thing and absorb the win-lose drama for just over three and a half hours, and then it's over and you figure who got the best scores and won the most money. I don't see the problem. Eat the chips and the dip and down a few beers.

Columnists always bitch...Read More

In Contention's Kris Tapley wants it understood that he wasn't with Eddie Murphy "to the last," even though the last Gurus of Gold listing shows him having voted for Murphy as his #1 choice. That chart, however, is dated 2.16.07, he tells me, so as of today it's ten days old. (All I did this morning was simply reference the last Gurus of Gold and Buzzmeter charts.) Kris's final In Contention calls, in which he predicted Arkin to win, is dated 2.23. He also claims he was the ...Read More

I'm all for rubbing salt in wounds, but I'm not entirely trusting that story about Eddie Murphy allegedly leaving the Kodak auditorium last night after he didn't win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. A reader named Michelle wrote about 100 minutes ago that she had heard KTLA movie guy Sam Rubin report about Murphy's abrupt departure this morning, but I talked to Rubin about 40 minutes ago and he said, "I didn't talk about that."

...Read More

"No one is expecting David Geffen to spend his days golfing, but there is a danger that if the coming election becomes his full-time hobby, his precision ruthlessness will distort the public process," writes N.Y. Times reporter David Carr. "After all, this is not a movie sale, a busted deal or a Don Henley album; this is about the duly elected leader of the United States.

"Geffen and Ron Burkle, another Los Angeles billionaire who is a staunch ally of the Clintons, have already fought for custody of the Los Angeles Times...Read More

Alan Arkin's triumph last night over Eddie Murphy "was one of only two times I actually cheered," Manhattan movie journalist Lewis Beale confided this morning. "The other was when The Lives of Others won [for Best Foreign Language Film]." Me too. I didn't exactly cheer when Arkin won -- I murmured a quiet little "thank God" to myself, feeling a huge sense of relief -- but I whoo-whoo'ed my ass off when Lives director-writer Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck bounded out of his seat. But I also clapped and grinned a lot. It was a great show.

...Read More

Here's the Big Moment..the Best Picture Oscar handout. It's going to be Little Miss Sunshine, I can feel it, it is....I think. And the Oscar goes to The Departed...deserved! No problem at all...my favorite fim, after all. But we all know it was a very close vote. A few votes either way. Anyway....good news.

The original Three Amigos -- Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg -- give the Best Director Oscar to Martin Scorsese for The Departed.

Reese Witherspoon steps out to present the Oscar for Best Actor. It would be gracious and divine if Peter O'Toole could upset and win. If only...if only, man. And the Oscar goes to Forest Whitaker for The Last King of Scotland. Fine. It's okay. And he's stammering again. And now he's got his groove on. Forest is better than okay. "Into the next lifetime!"

The Best Actress Oscar will go to....who might that be?....Helen Mirren for The Queen. Mirren gets a gold star for tributing everyone else -- her co-workers, her co-competitors. Classy lady, classy speech.

The Best Film Editing Oscar, presented by Kate Winslet, is supposed to go to Babel ( I don't mind if it goes to The Departed), and the Oscar goes to Thelma Schoonmaker for The Departed! A slight surprise! But a good one!

The Oscar for Best Song...great one-liner by John Travolta...."but that's enough about me"...and the Oscar goes to Meliissa Etheridge and her song, "I Need To Wake Up," from An Inconvenient Truth. She said it -- this is the generation that can wake up, stand up and make the necessary changes.

Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst announcing the winner of the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, and the winner -- there can be no doubt about this as we wait, can there?-- is Michael Arndt, the writer of Little Miss Sunshine.

Best Original Score Oscar goes to Gustavo Santaolalla for Babel. Screwed for the third or fourth time by Sasha Stone and Tom O'Neil!

Ennio Morricone....everyone loves you also.

Jerry Seinfeld announcing the Best Feature Documentary Oscar.."these incredibly depressing movies"...I missed the point of that "the deal is, you rip us off" joke...and the Oscar goes to An Inconvenient Truth! Not a surprise but a fluttery pleasure wave anyway. Al Gore's speech at the end was noble, perfect...what a guy. He's so much more tonight than he's ever been before. Al, everyone loves you, and everyone (even a sizable portion of the right-wing denial brigade) is on the team.

Jennifer Hudson has won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar! A great lady with great pipes! And she's giving a great speech. Good girl.

The Lives of Others has won Best Foreign Language Film! The astonishing has happened! And there's so much traffic on the server I can barely post anything.

The Best Visual Effects Oscar is supposed to go to....fantastic drug-use-reference joke by Robert Downey! The Visual FX Oscar is supposed to go to Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. And the Oscar goes to Pirates! Superb work done by all, and also by the great Bill Nighy as Davy Jones.

The Best Cinematography Oscar is going to go to Emmanuel Lubezki for Children of Men. Oh my goodness....it's gone to Guillermo Novarro for Pan's Labyrinth! What's going on here? "Chivo" was supposed to be a lock. Whatever...not a tragedy. Pan's Labyrinth was beautifully shot, but I don't get it. I'm not going to win the Oscar pool.

Sherry Lansing....fine. I'm hitting the head. I'm hungry anyway. Ellen and Clint...that's funny. The digital camera routine with Steven Spielberg....funny. Ellen si a great host. As good as Johnny Carson was in the old days...as good as Billy Crystal in the mid '90s.

That Wes Anderson American Express commercial is still brilliant, especially that moment when Wes starts to talk and suddenly we hear the sound of gunfire -- BLAM! -- and Wes hesitates for only a second and then keeps going.

Best Adapted Screenpay Oscar presented by Helen Mirren and Tom Hanks, and it goes to Wiliam Monahan for The Departed. Totally expected. The guy needs to cut down on the cheeseburgers and the onion rings and the vodka gimlets, but I really loved/love what he wrote. And he has a soothing gentle voice.

Why is Jack Nicholson's head shaved? Britney Spears empathy?

The Oscar for Costume Design goes to Milena Canonero for Marie Antoinette. Screwed again by Sasha Stone and Tom O Neil!~

The orchestra cutting off Al Gore as he got out his speech to announce...hilarious! This has been a very witty, very engaging, very nicely produced show thus far. Congrats to Laura Ziskin.

Okay, here we go....the Murphy-Arkin moment. Rachel Weisz at the podium going through the speech, and the tension is all but unbearable as the winner of the Best Supporting Actor Oscar hangs in the balance. Here we go, I can take it....the Oscar goes to Alan Arkin! Oh my God! There is a God, there is a God in heaven. Thanks to all the saints and angels. I will say nothing more. The win is the win is the win.The right thing has happened. The Movie Gods...

The Best Sound-Editing Oscar, presented by Steve Carell and Greg Kinnear, is supposed to go to Letters From Iwo Jima....and the Oscar goes to the Jima guy! Sasha Stone is forgiven. The Best Sound Mixing Oscar is supposed to go to Dreamgirls, and the Oscar goes to...Dreamgirls! I have nothing to say about this except that anyone following my recommendatons so far isn't doing half badly!

Wait a minute...the Best Animated Short Oscar was supposed to be won by The Little Matchgirl. The Danish Poet won instead. Blame Sasha Stone, blame Tom O'Neil...blame somebody! Well, at least West Bank Story won for Best Live Short. I was in the bathroom when Pan's Labyrinth won for Best Makeup, but I'm starting to feel The Lives of Others may be doomed. As far as its chance for winning the Best Foreign-Language Oscar, I mean. Sniff.

Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman handing out the Best Art Direction Oscar, which will go to Pan's Labyrinth..right? And the winner is Pan's Labyrinth! Does this mean anything as far as the Best Foreign Language Oscar is concerned?

The Oscar show has begun, and Errol Morris is a genius...okay? He's perfect, inspired, wonderfully gifted. I want to see the long version of his interiew montage. My first impressions of Ellen DeGeneres -- everyone's, I imagine -- are quite favorable. She's obviously a very bright and witty lady. And obviously likable. The jokes are quite blunt (as in "beyond candid"). Which is why she's very funny. Peter O'Toole...eight nominatons as of tonight, right? Well, you know what they say -- third time's the charm!" "Al Gore is here tonight. America did...Read More

The Steve Pond vs. Nikki Finke reporting war continues, the latest salvo being Pond's claim that he has "copies of every daily show breakdown starting from Monday of this week and the awards never moved," as Finke claimed in her response earlier this afternoon. "The Dreamgirls songs have not changed," writes Pond. "They were pre-recorded several days ago, all with the same arrangements that will be used tonight. There was never anything changed in reaction to any of her reports." That's enough of this, I think...let's just let it go.

Yeah, I'll be live-blogging during the show...sure. From a party. The host told me there'd be good wi-fi. Here's hoping.

"Hollywood is in a quandary....you have the feeling in many of my conversations that people feel married to the Clintons, but they're in love with Obama." -- Arianna Huffington speaking on a 2.22.07 National Public Radio report about the Clinton-vs.-Obama spat. As N.Y. Times columnist Maureen Dowd said to MSNBC's Tim Russert about the impact of her interview with David Geffen, Geffgen "gave voice to a lot of what a lot of Democratic contributors have been saying about Hilary, which is that she's polarizing, calculating and over-scripted."

The Oscar Night upsets I'd most like to see happen (other than Alan Arkin beating Eddie Murphy) are...well, anything. I'll take any and all shockers. Except Letters From Iwo Jima taking Best Picture Oscar. I'd really, really rather not see that happen. But generally speaking, if no one except for obstinate love wolves like like Kris Tapley have predicted it and it happens, great. Peter O'Toole taking the Best Actor Oscar from Forest Whitaker ...fine. The Lives of Others triumphing over Pan's Labyrinth in the Best Foreign Language Film category.

Mark Bakalor of Oscar Central has posted his final Oscar calls. The word around the campfire is that year after year, Bakalor's calls are unusually accurate. And he has The Departed up for Best Picture. Ditto Scott Feinberg.

Peter Rainer, an extremely perceptive and respected film critic, has written an L.A. Times love sonnet to Eddie Murphy. Why would anyone on Rainer's level do this? What kind of editors would want such a piece at this stage of the game?

Ghost Rider, #1 again, will have about $19,421,000 by this evening, off 57% from last weekend. Business for The Number 23 significantly dropped from Friday to Saturday (i.e., indicating cruddy word-of-mouth), so figure $15.533,000 for late tonight. The Bridge to Tarabithia (or whatever it's called) is #3 with $13,655,000, off 39% from last weekend. Reno 911 is #4 with $10,646,000. Eddie Murphy's Norbit is fifth with $9,954,000, off 41%. Music and Lyrics, off 43%, is sixth with $7.964,000. Breach is #7 with $6,159,000. Daddy's Little Girls is at $4,.950,000 -- off 50%. The Read More

The box-office champ next weekend is going to be Walt Becker's Wild Hogs, a.k.a., Easy Rider with pot bellies (John Travolta, Tim Allen, William H. Macy, Martin Lawrence). General interest is 75, definite interest is 41 and first choice is 9 (as of last Thursday). Figure $30, maybe $35 million.

The likely #2 film among new 3.2.07 openers, Craig Brewer's thoroughly satisfying and self-aware Black Snake Moan, is at 51, 26 and 2...not much.

You won't find a greater aesthetic gulf next weekend than the one over Zodiac...Read More

Wells to readers saying I should stop wiggling around and stick to my guns about predicting the Best Picture Oscar...fuck that. This is a crazy year, nothing is adding up, nobody knows anything and if the wind changes or I pick up a fresh scent or hint of some turn, I'm going to listen to that and re-calculate accordingly. Stating once again: my final, final call is for Little MIss Sunshine to win the Big Prize. And that's really and truly it. No more changing my mind unless some new, wild-ass revelation hits me this afternoon.

Deadline Hollywood Daily's Nikki Finke has responded to The Envelope's Steve Pond's saying some of her Oscar show spoiler calls are wrong by saying she was right when she reported them but that some bits have been changed or dropped at the last minute, partly in response to her having spoiled them in her column. She goes over every forecast, bit by bit...here it is.

"A rash of recent Oscar winners have been rewarded for playing real people, from Ray Charles to Truman Capote to June Carter Cash," reads the NPR promo copy for Pete Hammond's just-posted aural report. "Are the acting categories turning into best imitation of a real celebrity life?" Obviously. The Academy clearly prefers handing out awards to actors playing real-life people, i.e., those whom viewers know quite well for their voices and tics and body language. Hammond suggests the creation of a new Oscar category -- Best Celebrity Impersonation.

Hold on...more Steve Pond swat-downs of Nikki Finke's previously posted Oscar show spoilers. The Envelope's Tom O'Neil has just spoken to Pond and been told that "a lot of her stuff is either misleading or wrong."

Wrongo #1: Finke "claims that each of the Dreamgirls will sing each others' songs -- that's misleading," says Pond. "All I can really say is that the number is very collaborative, but if you love Beyonce singing 'Listen' or Jennifer Hudson singing 'Love You, I Do,' you're not going to be disappointed."

Wrongo #2...Read More

The hell with it: I'm switching my Best Picture prediction to Little Miss Sunshine.

An older friend told me this morning "it'll probably be The Departed," pointing the tendency of older Academy members to shy away from comedies in choosing Best Picture winners plus the lack of Sunshine Best Director and Editing noms, blah blah.

...Read More

If the Best Picture choice of the majority is going to be/has been about selecting the film with the most accessible emotional current (i.e., one that fulfills and satisfies by affirming some commonly-shared realization about life as Academy members know it), then Little Miss Sunshine is going to win the Best Picture Oscar tonight. "If," I say...

We all know that the statistics are against it with Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris...Read More

Little Miss Sunshine won the Spirit Award for Best Picture yesterday, and with that an extra-special hooray for Academy-snubbed producers Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa, who ought to take the stage tonight at the Oscar and when LMS wins Best Picture. Sunshine helmers Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris also won for Best Director, and Sunshine author Michael Arndt won for Best First Screenplay.

Little Miss Sunshine screenwriter Michael Arndt prior to yesterday afternoon's Spirit Awards -- Saturday, 2.24.07, 1:15 pm

Sunshine producers Albert Berger, Ron Yerxa

The wi-fi in the big Spirit Awards tent was twitchy -- worked, didn't work, sorta worked -- so I threw up my hands after 40 minutes or so of futzing around. And then it was party time at Shutters for two, two and a half hours, and then a 90-minute horizontal...forget it. I blew it, slacked off, dropped the ball and, from a filing perspective, basically shined my Hollywood Elsewhere responsibilities.

The Lives of Others director-writer Florian von Henckel Donnersmarck fielding questions in the rear press tent at the Spirit Awards -- Saturday, 2.24.07, 3:25 pm

But a 20-gun salute to Read More

I'm not revealing anything if you're watching the Spirit Awards on IFC, but it's 3:36 pm -- the show's been running for 90 minutes -- and the winners so far that I admire and care about a lot are (a) Little Miss Sunshine's Alan Arkin, Best Supporting Male; (b) Michael Arndt, Best First Screenplay, Little Miss Sunshine; (c) Frances McDormand, Best Supporting Female for Friends With Money; Shareeka Epps, Best Female Lead for Half Nelson; Florian von Henckel Donnersmarck, director-writer of The Lives of Others, winner of the Spirit Award for Best Foreign Film; and Read More

I'm heading over to Santa Monica and the Spirit Awards tent around 11 ayem or so, Stand-up, stroll-around schmooze time happens between 12 noon and 2 pm, which is when the show goes on the air on IFC channel (5 pm eastern). There's also some kind of live webcast thing going on via www.ifc.com.

I'm bringing the laptop with a hope that some kind of wi-fi will be available. The Bagger says...Read More

"The first, flat-out great film of 2007, David Fincher's spine-tingling Zodiac is a 158-minute, decades-spanning movie about one of America's most notorious serial killers," writes Boston Herald critic James Verniere. "This is the GoodFellas of psycho-killer thrillers.

"A remarkably accomplished, measured and mature procedural, Zodiacis to Se7en -- Fincher's 1995 breakthrough effort -- what the real-life case is to Dirty Harry, Don Siegel's great, lurid 1971 classic, featuring a Zodiac-like killer played by Andy Robinson.

"In many ways, Zodiac is Se7en...Read More

When shooting on Zodiac finally ended, director David Fincher "found himself sifting through the digital equivalent of 1.3 million feet of film, enough footage to fill two features," writes EW's Benjamin Svetkey in the current issue. "After months of slicing and dicing, he emerged from the editing room with a cut of Zodiac that ran a tick over three hours.

"Even he knew it was too long, so the movie's original fall 2006 release was pushed to January, then to March, to give Fincher time to make more trims."

...Read More

"Many of Nikki Finke's spoilers are accurate, but some are not," writes Envelope contributor Steve Pond declared last night. "Don't believe what she says about all acting awards being pushed to the last third of the show." The Best Supporting Actor and Actress awards, he means.

"Were you ever raped by Eddie Murphy or what? He must have done some kind of personal bad to you. Having said that, boy, do I ever agree with you. That guy is a world-class arrogant prick. If he wins this he'll be impossible to live with. He also does not deserve it. Its a shallow bullshit performance that is meritorious only for his musical and dancing talents. I said Arkin weeks ago." -- e-mail received this morning from a director friend who's obviously not to be trusted despite first-hand experience.

"[Oscar voters] tell the pollster, you or whomever, that they are voting for the serious gravitas-filled downer, Babel. But, mark my words, they are secretly voting for the pic that is their guilty pleasure, either Sunshine or Departed.'" -- posted by a N.Y. Times reader named Judy in response to a "Bagger" piece. Something about the conciseness and sense of certainty in this remark has given me pause. I'm suddenly thinking I might be wrong in predicting Babel to win. I need to think this over.

"Oh. she's an inninvala, invala...an invalid...it's practically like living alone."

Film Stew's Brent Buckalew (is that a nom de plume?) complains about a "horde of internet diarists and fanboys pounding on their keyboards in protest" about this year's Oscar nominees, and urges "enough already, give it a rest." Not a bad rant, but it's been posted about two or three weeks too late.

In Contention's Kris Tapley is predicting that Letters From Iwo Jima will take the Best Picture Oscar. A little voice was telling me this might happen about two or three weeks ago, but I told it to be quiet. I was actually a little ruder than that.

I know that as much as I admired Letters when I saw it in Manhattan in December, and as moved as I was by Ken Watanabe's lead performance, I haven't put the Warner Bros. screener into my DVD player since it arrived. On the other hand, I've watched

"If Little Miss Sunshine beats The Departed, I expect Martin Scorsese to pull out a machine-gun and fire randomly into the voting members as they run screaming for the exits. And he'd be within his rights, too." -- from John Patterson's 2.23 well-founded Guardian rant, called "Oscar's Greatest Crimes."

"Little Miss Sunshine hit so big because it isn't afraid to mix laughs and darkness. It's hip enough for the urban elites but not so hip that it's sailing over the heads of regular paying customers. It's a very sophisticated, equal-opportunity entertainer." -- observation from Lewis Beale's New York Newsday piece about why LMS went over as well as it did.

The 9% Rotten Tomatoes rating that The Number 23 has gotten so far matches Norbit's (i.e., also at 9%). I missed the Number 23 screening on 2.15; the 9%, paradoxically, makes me want to rush down and see it at the 4 pm show. A perverse impulse, to be sure.

David Fincher's Zodiac (Paramount, 3.2) got two rave reviews today -- from Variety's Todd McCarthy and the Holly- wood Reporter's Michael Rechtshaffen -- and it opens a week from Friday, and yet the brainiacs at Metacritic don't even have it in their database.

HE's final Oscar calls, and thank God I won't have to tap out these names and movies in tandem ever again in this context after Sunday :

Best Picture: Babel (personal favorite: The Departed);

Best Director: Martin Scorsese, The Departed (LOCK);

Best Actor: Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland (LOCK) (although my personal preference: is for Leonardo DiCaprio in The Departed / sentimental favorite: Peter O'Toole in Becket...sorry, Venus;

Best Actress: Helen Mirren, The Queen (LOCK);

Best Supporting Actor: Alan ArkinRead More

Praise God a bit more: critic David Ehrenstein confirmed on the Criterion forums a week and a half ago that Criterion will be issuing a DVD of Lindsay Anderson's If...., which I'm been pushing for since the turn of the century, sometime in June. If... isn't mentioned on the Criteron Co. site, but Ehrenstein said he's written the notes and that they're putting it out -- good enough for me.

A '60s rebellion allegory that brilliantly captures the rage and excitement of a revolution in poetic fantasy terms, If......Read More

An agreeably spirited piece by Radar Online's Shana Ting Lipton about the zen of Hollywood party crashing. It's not really about crashing the Vanity Fair party at Morton's, though, except for the tip about dressing like a fire marshall with a tuxedo underneath.

It's mainly about Rex Reginald, "the self-styled 'King of the Party Crashers' who claims that his story outline and party-crashing handbook...Read More

Nikki Finke is also revealing that the Oscar telecast will kick off with "an inspired piece of CGI trickery." Shocker! The Oscar show has been opening with inspired pieces of CGI trickery for years, since the Billy Crystal hosting days in the mid '90s. Wait...has there been a year since '97 when it hasn't opened with inspired pieces of CGI trickery?

Sticking to form, host Ellen DeGeneres will reportedly be placed into various scenes (presumably those from Best Picture nominees). Obviously Ellen will be CG'd into royal robes of The Queen...Read More

Another Nikki Finke Oscar-show spoiler: Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, 60ish graybeards all, will jointly present the Best Director Oscar to Martin Scorsese.

Deadline Hollywood Daily's Nikki Finke is reporting Seven Oscar-Night Spoilers, the biggest one being that the Best Supporting Actor and Actress awards won't be presented in the early portion of the show, as they always have. Instead, no acting awards will be given out until the last third of the telecast. The Academy is doing this, Finke understands, because Oscar viewership starts out strong and then wanes, and the only real cliffhanger is Eddie Murphy vs. Alan Arkin.

Please, Movie Gods...please...Read More

The best thing in N.Y. Times guy David Carr's Oscar prediction chart [click on "Juicy Subplots & Other Picks"] is the roundabout suggestion that if and when Little Miss Sunshine wins Best Picture, that the officially nominated producers -- David T. Friendly, Peter Saraf and Marc Turtletaub -- plus the film's actual hands-on, Michael Arndt-hiring, Jonathan Dayton-and-Valerie Faris-hiring producers who weren't nominated because of the Academy's clumsy and insensitive rule-of-three -- Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa...

In a last-ditch attempt to squeeze intrigue out of a dying Oscar season, Rotten Tomatoes has put up an interactive feature called "The Best of the Best Pictures," a list of 78 Best Picture Oscar winners ranked by how well-reviewed they are -- not at the time of their release but (mostly) based on what today's critics have written. The worst reviewed is Cecil B. Demille's The Greatest Show on Earth. The all-time best reviewed is Francis Copola's The Godfather; the second best is Elia Kazan's On The Waterfront.

"I know less and less about who I am, or who anyone else is."

The problem isn't that Warner Bros. marketers waited too long to start emphasizing Leonardo DiCaprio's Best Actor performance in The Departed in trade ads. (It was the problem but no longer, I mean.) The problem is that The Envelope's Tom O'Neil, composing this comparative piece of art for an article he wrote about Leo's once-upon-a-time Oscar hopes, didn't properly tweak the November trade ad so it looks as sharply focused as the December one.

I realize that FORA is an acronym for something, but I don't know what. (Federation of Ravenous Alpha-Dogs?) Obviously it's a web TV thing. They sent me an excerpt of Little Miss Sunshine screenwriter Michael Arndt talking about how how and why he was briefly fired off the project. No, wait...there's an entire program of Arndt talking about everything. You just have to click on it. It's free to watch. (Apparently.)

In an interview with USA Today's Anthony Breznican, the reigning Oscar Night ladies -- producer Laura Ziskin and host Ellen DeGeneres -- are a study in opposite attitudes and sensibilities. DeGeneres is a brainy, free-associative, improvisational wit. Ziskin wants to be hip and alpha-like, but she sounds like an affluent ooh-lah-lah control freak who's terrified (or at the very least alarmed) by spontaneity.

...Read More

Washington Times film critic Gary Arnold trumpets the virtues of the Paul Greengrass's United 93 -- good move -- but in the same piece calls The Departed "terminally wretched," praises Doug McGrath's Infamous as "far and away the superior biopic about Truman Capote" and describes Inconvenient Truth avatar Al Gore as "an alarmist pseudo-authority." I used to admire Arnold when he was the critic for the Washington Post back in the '70s and '80s. I don't know what happened.

Mediabistro.com on all the people I didn't talk with or take pictures of at last night's Radar magazine party at the Standard. I mostly stood around and talked about new scripts with a couple of very cool enterprisers, and otherwise tried to smile and not scowl until 9:30 pm or so.