Taut, economical and fast-moving, Roger Donaldson's The Bank Job (Lionsgate, 3.7) is the best heist film I've seen in a long while. I don't want to blow a gasket over this thing because it's just a good British popcorn film, but entertainments of this sort -- tight, tough, well-honed -- are few and far between.

I'm starting to think it's Donaldson's best film since (no exaggeration) No Way Out. And by my sights it's the first quality film that Jason Statham's ever made. Sometimes I think he's the new Steve McQueen...Read More

Audiences don't go to period costume dramas about famous people for absolute historical accuracy, but most of us, I think, want something that feels genuinely "of the period." As with any film, we don't want to feel as if actors are pretending to be characters or that the illusion we're watching wouldn't have happened without gaffers and lights and costumes and cameras and microphones. We want (most of us, anyway) to believe in a real-deal immersion -- an organic sense that we're literally visiting the past by way of Hollywood panache and a souped-up time-machine.

The Other Boleyn Girl...Read More

A fantastic five-week Film Forum series celebrating the 90th anniversary of United Artists -- March 28th to May 1st. I own 75% of these films on DVD; the likelihood that they'll look better at the FF (even with the promise of new prints) than they do on my Sony flat-screen is not high. But I love the thought of under-30s catching and enjoying Kiss Me Deadly or Red River or Night of the Hunter or Manhattan or Tom Jones or Orphans of the Storm or Douglas Fairbanks' Robin Hood...

The source of yesterday's rumor about a DVD of Ken Russell's The Devils coming out in May was Warner Home Video's own online/business website, which is called WHV Direct. The information, however, was a "mistake," according to WHV exec publicity director Ronnee Sass. She explained that right now "there are absolutely no plans to put out The Devils in '08," although the title may make an appearance down the road.

That "easy" $25 million that Semi-Pro was expected to earn yesterday has swollen into $40 million-plus, in the view of Fantasy Moguls' Steve Mason.

"When I began reviewing and seeing everything, I was warned by a veteran critic that for every movie that would inspire me, nine would drain my soul. I thought, 'He just doesn't like movies as much as I do.'

"Some 6,000 screenings later, I'd say he had the ratio about right. But those exceptions -- that Pulp Fiction, that Raiders of the Lost Ark, that No Country for Old Men -- kept my glass half-full and the passion alive." -- from a farewell piece by N.Y. Daily News critic Jack Mathews...

A new HD Iron Man trailer is up at MySpace's Trailer Park.

Michelle Obama "often refers to what she calls the 'fear bomb' that was used against her husband in his [2004] Senate race, as rivals questioned whether someone with his name could be elected," wrote NBC's Mike Memoli earlier today from Canton, Ohio.

"Today she acknowledged that it is happening again in his presidential race, and said it's an example of why America can't wait for a leader like him to be elected.

...Read More

An excellent early '70s Walter Matthau double-bill at the Aero on Thursday, March 6th -- Don Siegel's Charley Varrick and Joseph Sargent's The Taking of Pelham 123.

original Pelham lobby poster

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No important reason for running this Burn After Reading shot of costars George Clooney and Frances McDormand. I was recently sent those John Malkovich-attacking-Richard Jenkins-with- an-axe photos from a guy with IMDB Pro, but I liked this one better. I read the Coen Brothers' script several months ago and had a good time with it. The movie I directed and saw in my head as I read it was very sharp and funny. It'll debut at the Cannes Film Festival on 5.14.08 and open theatrically in the US on 9.26.08.

If I could make every last clear-plastic takeout container disappear from the face of the earth by waving my hand, I would do that. Is there anyone who doesn't hate these things? Who doesn't wince at that sharp loud sound that happens when you try to compress or scrunch them into a garbage can? Who doesn't find them generally irritating and pointless and just awful? Styrofoam sandwich-and-potato-salad containers are nearly as bad, but at least they aren't so noisy.

There's been a quiet unconfirmed leak that Warner Home Video is finally releasing Ken Russell's The Devils ('71) on DVD on May 20th. Update: Warner Bros. video spokesperson Carl Samrock told me around 6 pm that there are "no plans to release The Devils per WHV."

A cult favorite that conveys a very dark and weird vibe, The Devils is a brilliant but extremely perverse historical fantasy about medieval political persecution that starred Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave.

I was told earlier this afternoon that the DVD would run 111 minutes...Read More

"We were kind of in a slump until I was dancing on the show. My poll numbers skyrocketed after that. Everybody saw me bust a move on Ellen, that's all it took." -- Sen. Barack Obama to Ellen Degeneres on her show today (which was taped yesterday?). Here's the original dancing clip from last October. The guy can cut a rug. Gotta give him that.

The independent entity known as New Line Cinema since the late '60s is, in a sense, no more. The curtain came down today on the company that Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne built and ran for four decades when Time Warner announced that it will become a unit of Warners, maintaining separate development, production, marketing, distribution and business affairs operations.

Okay, but hasn't New Line been operating as an independent unit of WB ever since its owner, Turner Broadcasting System, merged with Time Warner in 1996? What's going to be different in a specific, physical managerial way?

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Esquire's Jozen Cummings posted a story yesterday morning about how HBO's decision to put out "episodes on demand" of The Wire is leading to plot spoilers getting around. (Any spoiler whiners out there who don't know what he's referring to should stop reading this item right now.)

Michael K. Williams, a.k.a. "Omar Little" in HBO's The Wire

"In about two weeks, The Wire...Read More

Whatever happened to Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret, a drama shot in 2005 with Anna Paquin, Matt Damon and Mark Ruffalo in the lead roles? Produced by Scott Rudin and Sydney Pollack and exec produced by Anthony Minghella, it's said to be still in the cutting room with plans to get it out sometime this year. A CHUD article posted today by Jeremy Smith sifts through various quotes, reports and indications.

Matt Damon, Anna Pacquin in Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret

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Which Semi-Pro review do you trust? The semi-dismissive one called "Only Half Bad" by the Village Voice's Robert Wilonsky or the friendly valentine written by Variety's Joe Leydon? Or does the truth of it lie somewhere in between?

Paul Newman (l.) in George Roy Hil's Slap Shot

"Semi-Pro's much better than Blades of Glory," writes Wilonsky, "which wasn't nearly as good as Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, which was a little better than Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, which was almost as funny as Old SchoolRead More

A big tracking bump for Will Ferrell's Semi-Pro since Tuesday's numbers were posted: it was previously running at a modest 67,35 and 8, but today it's running at 73, 40 and 23. The young-male first choice figure is about 30. Definitely the weekend's #1 film with an easy $25 million, and it's just another dumb Gorilla Nation sports comedy....right?

The Other Boleyn Girl was at 49, 33 and 7 on Tuesday, but it's now 56, 33 and 13...Read More

San Francisco Chronicle film critic Mick LaSalle ran a brave piece last Sunday. He admitted he hadn't seen Blade Runner, To Kill a Mockingbird, Young Frankenstein, 2001: A Space Odyssey and An Affair to Remember, and then declared he'd watched all five on DVD and then reviewed them. He half-panned Young Frankenstein and almost totally shredded 2001, admitting "there's something to be said for the movie's adventurous subject matter and its vision of the future" but nonetheless calling it "virtually unwatchable, a boring, impenetrable experience that I'm glad to finally have behind me."

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Please re-read this William F. Buckley review of The Lives of Others, posted on the National Review site on 5.23.07. I've never felt so close to Buckley over my entire life as I did reading this just now. I need to face the fact that on levels I chose not to consider before, Buckley was a kind of beautiful man in addition to being a beautiful writer.

DVD Beaver screen captures from the theatrical version of Criterion's new 4-disc Last Emperor box set, which hit DVD stores yesterday. As usual, an excellent assessment of the visual quality of this and past versions is provided.

McCain: "I am told that Senator Obama would come back to Iraq if al-Qaida established a base [there]. I have some news. Al-Qaida is in Iraq. It's called 'al-Qaida in Iraq."

Obama: "I have some news for John McCain. There was no such thing as al-Qaida in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade Iraq. They took their eye off the people who were responsible for 9/11 and that would be al-Qaida in Afghanistan, that is stronger now than at any time since 2001."

There's a new story/photo album piece by USA Today's Suzie Woz (a.k.a., Susan Wloszczyna) about Richard Kelly's The Box, and the plot details she's revealed make it sound like the basic Richard Matheson story (which is more or less "The Monkey's Paw" with variations) has been heavily collateralized.

It takes place in 1976, for one thing. (Why?) James Marsden's character works for NASA and has co-workers who wear plaid pants. Marsden is working on the Viking mission to Mars. (Who gives a shit about NASA space missions? The Box...Read More

The bottom line concerning Gavin O'Connor's all-but-abandoned Pride and Glory -- a New Line film that co-chairman and co-CEO Bob Shaye doesn't like and has decided not to distribute this year, bumping it into '09 -- is that the film might have a chance to come out this year if and when Shaye and co-honcho Michael Lynne get the boot from their owner-bosses at Warner Bros.

DHD's Nikki Finke reported yesterday...Read More

L.A. Times columnist Patrick Goldstein has assembled the smartest and most creative suggestions for how to fix the Oscar show that I've read anywhere. I've listed a few, but it can all be boiled down to three words -- fire Gil Cates. He's too old to get with the 21st Century program and needs to be put out to pasture -- simple. Bring in a producer who's younger and fresher and more alive-in-the-moment. Somebody in their 60s, I mean.

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"The [Oscar telecast] ratings are going to drop a bit more each year because the Oscar show reflects the cares and passions of industry-ites (filmmakers, distributors, academy members, press, web savants) who at least pretend to care about movies that emotionally engage or arouse or deliver insights about the human experience.

"Unfortunately, this is pretty much what the Gorilla Nation people in the malls -- the ones who just want to watch stuff like Transformers or the Hannah Montana concert movie and who basically prefer films that provide surface thrills or happy-pill highs...Read More

MCN's David Poland voted for a grand total of 7 correct Oscar calls in the final Gurus of Gold chart. Out of 21 categories, that is. (MCN doesn't include doc short, live action short or animated short.) Poland also missed 4 of the top 8 categories including such no-brainers as Best Picture and Original Screenplay. He went with Tony Gilroy and Michael Clayton instead of Diablo Cody and No Country for Old Men.

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"There will be plenty of eulogies from people who knew William F. Buckley better than I did -- and certainly from those who agreed with him more than I did," Time's Joe Klein has written. "But he was an honest man, an actual conservative -- who, in the end, was quietly appalled by George W. Bush's radicalism, in Iraq and when it came to the federal budget.

"He was a lovely writer, of course. His book, The Unmaking of a Mayor...Read More

Sarah Silverman's "I'm f---ing Matt Damon" video was inspired stuff, and then came Jimmy Kimmel's "I'm f---ing Ben Affleck," a tit-for-tat that was even more hilarious. But that's enough, I think.

Meaning that "I'm f---ing Seth Rogen", a video in the exact same vein that may have been the creative brainchild of Zack and Miri Make a Porno costar Elizabeth Banks (and not director Kevin Smith...Read More

It's commonly known that Valkyrie director Bryan Singer had wanted to direct the long-in-development Harvey Milk biopic called The Mayor of Castro Street for producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, based on a revised script by Chris McQuarrie. But as Variety's Anne Thompson reported two or three weeks ago, that project has been abandoned. Zadan and/or Meron confirmed this during a producer's panel at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, Thompson has told me.

Now comes an item in the Portland-area publication Willamette Week that Gus Van Sant...Read More

In a 2.26 N.Y. Times opinion piece called "Mr. Nader's Unforgivable Wrong," Ron Klain reminds that "the Ralph Nader presidential vote in the 2000 election was larger than the Gore-Bush margin of difference -- not just in Florida, but also in New Hampshire -- is grating and significant.

"So let's just put it this way, as neutrally as possible: while there are several reasons why Al Gore was not sworn in on Jan. 20, 2001, one of them certainly is because Ralph Nader...Read More

He's not a Barack-star in debates -- he's shown that time and again. But he was cool, comprehensive, explicit, sharp and unflappable tonight, and that means he won. But there's one thing Hillary said tonight that I really quite liked. When Tim Russert asked her to name President Vladimir Putin's successor in Russia (whose name is Dmitri A. Medvedev), she said it was "um, Med-medvedova, whatever." My Hillary hate evaporated when she said that. I laughed, liked her smile.

But I also love the new 2.27 Maureen Dowd column...Read More

I missed Christine Jeffs' Sunshine Cleaning when I was at Sundance, but I heard almost nothing about it afterward. People were apparently underwhelmed. But now, four weeks after the festival's end, Variety's Winter Miller and Anne Thompson are reporting that it's been picked up by Overture Films for roughly $2 million. Sunshine Cleaning was "deemed a tough sell for its gory subject matter," they comment, and it was also considered a "hard sell at Sundance because the filmmakers were trying to recoup their cost, which insiders say was about $7 million."

Politico's Jeffrey Ressner is reporting that Alex Gibney, director of the Oscar-winning doc Taxi to the Dark Side, is now making a documentary about the Jack Abramoff scandal, which will involve a close look at GOP presidential candidate John McCain's role in investigating the affair. The film, currently titled Casino Jack and the United States of Money, will "come out later this year."

Director George Hickenlooper has informed, meanwhile, that he's developing a dramatic feature about the Abramoff scandal called Bagman. He says he's partnered with producer George Zakk (a ...Read More

Fox 411's Roger Friedman reported this morning that "several sources" have told him that Steven Spielberg's reps "and the folks at the Cannes Film Festival are in negotiations to bring Paramount's highly anticipated Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull to Cannes for its official worldwide premiere in May.

"The star-studded event easily would be the centerpiece of the festival, akin to the premiere last year of Ocean's Thirteen. I'm told that Spielberg, perhaps producer George Lucas and stars Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett, Shia LeBeouf, Karen Allen...Read More

Thank God the last Clinton-Obama debate is about to happen. 12 minutes from now. A few days and no more listening to that raspy cackly witch-voice. No more looking into those cold steely eyes, or having to discern the real calculation behind those repulsively phony emotional offerings. I realize Barack has to act cool and unruffled like Ronald Reagan in the final debate with Jimmy Carter, but oh, how I would love to see some kind of serious slapdown between them, like that thing they got into in South Carolina.

Now that it's all over....the winners! "Five Envelope pundits tied for nailing seven predix out of those eight Oscar races: Pete Hammond (The Envelope), Dave Karger (Entertainment Weekly), Mark Olsen (The Envelope), Sasha Stone (AwardsDaily.com) and Jeffrey Wells (Hollywood-Elsewhere.com).

"Of the pundits who voted in all 24 categories, Hammond rules with 17 correct predix, followed by a score of 16 achieved by Edward Douglas (Comingsoon.net) and Jack Mathews (New York Daily News). Those who got 15 right included ...Read More

Denzel Washington's shaved head and goatee look, evident on last Sunday's Oscar show, is for Tony Scott's The Taking of Pelham 123, a remake of the 1974 Joseph Sargent film.

Washington apparently has Walter Mattthau's subway administrator role, which he probably wanted as a swing move away from his American Gangster heroin dealer. But I'd rather see him play the Robert Shaw role, which John Travolta has in actuality.

...Read More

Charlie Bartlett, which opened weakly last weekend, is a smart teen dramedy about an enterprising kid (Anton Yelchin) who peddles prescription drugs and dispenses psychiatric advice on the side. It's about the spirit of entrepeurialism in the vein of Risky Business, Rushmore and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, which is to say it's about a young lad shuffling around with the style and attitude of a likable sociopath.

Anton Yelchin, Robert Downey, Jr. in Charlie Bartlett

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Among this weekend's openers, The Other Boleyn Girl (being all-media screened tonight) is at 49, 33 and 7...but first-choice is in the teens with women so business could be decent. Penelope is at 52, 25 and 5....fair. Will Ferrell's Semi-Pro is polling at 67,35 and 8...modest

The biggest hit of the March 7th weekend will unquestionably be 10,000 BC....73, 29 and 13...pretty good, very male. Roger Donaldson's The Bank Job is running at 28, 26 and 1. College Road Trip is now .76, 25 and 4. On March 14th comes Doomsday...Read More

In an imaginary e-mail interview with Semi-Pro star Will Ferrell, Hoboken-based illusionist Dave Lozo, 30, pretends to criticize Ferrell for making the same movie over and over. The irony is that it hits on truths that would never be addressed, much less answered, in a genuine chat with Ferrell. Are made-up interviews preferable? Of course not, but they do seem to get down to things that real interviews sidestep.

"It seems that all your movies are the same and you have very little range as an actor, yet people continue to go to see your movies," Lozo says. "In Read More

"She was a great-looking chick and whatever was in her eyes, it sure wasn't love. Was I smart? No, I was dumb. With a capital D. Wow, was I dead wrong! I had no idea what was ahead of me. You try to figure a dame out."

Mind Games, an Oliver Peoples sunglass ad shot as a film noir satire in luscious monochrome, is an agreeable two-minute hoot. It's also the classiest looking plot-driven film that Robert Evans has ever physically acted in. (Voicing his Comedy Central animated series Kid Notorious doesn't count, and neither does ...Read More

In this Envelope/'Wire Image photo of Sean Penn and model Petra Nemcova at at Elton John's Oscar bash, the caption reads that Nemcova told reporters that Penn "is on the advisory board of my charity." A comment follows that "we can just imagine what kind of charity advice Sean's giving her." That's what's known as a none-too-subtle allusion. If I had written the caption, I would have said "we can just imagine the sounds of animal howling and crashing-over furniture and the sharp cry of under-garments being brutally ripped apart."

The Oscar telecast audience last night was the lowest rated in history. A lousy 32 million viewers tuned in, which is a huge disaster considering that 95.5 million sports fans watched the Super Bowl earlier this month.

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I got upset about Roy Scheider being ignored in the Oscar telecast's death montage (i.e., "in Memoriam"), and Us magazine has gotten riled about Brad Renfro being left out as well. But what about Ulrich Muhe, who gave one of the 21st Century's greatest performances in The Lives of Others, which is hands down one of the century's greatest films? He died of stomach cancer last July, and the Academy blew him off also.

An Academy spokesperson told Us...Read More

Finally...where has this video been hiding? I first ran something about it 10 days ago or whatever.

"My favorite movie of the year was the one about the heartless con man who's obsessed with finding oil. Its called No End In Sight." -- Bill Maher on the Huffington Post.

Barack Obama is in front of Hillary Clinton, 56 to 39, in a USA Today national poll. And is beating her 54 to 38 in a N.Y. Times/CBS poll. And edging her 50 to 46 in Texas, according to a CNN poll. (Change from 2.18 poll -- Obama up two points, Clinton down four.) And columnist Robert Novak is asking today...

Due respect, but Tina Fey's pro-Hillary bit 36 hours ago on Saturday Night Live was not cool. Not at this stage of the game. Not with Hillary's latest race-baiting maneuver. She's now on the HE shit list and will stay there until she writes or directs or appears in a really good film. I'm sure she'll be fine with this. That said, her riff about how it's good to be a bitch because they get things done (or a mean nun because they make you learn things) is pretty good stuff.

"Change" is obviously a big theme in the political landscape right now, and there are definite signs over the last couple of years that things have been changing profoundly in terms of Oscar winners also, or more precisely in terms of the makeup of Academy voters. It's the most interesting thought I've heard all day about last night's show, and it came out of a chat I had a few minutes ago with Pete Hammond. Here it is.

The Envelope's Tom O'Neil has complained that last night's Oscar winners were the darkest and creepiest ever. "Six [Oscars] went to pix about a wacko serial killer (No Country) or a psycho oil baron with murder on his mind (There Will Be Blood). Together they won picture, director, adapted screenplay, actor and supporting actor.

"The other two categories went to, well, somewhat lighter fare: a film about a drug-addicted chanteuse (La Vie en Rose) and a pregnant teen with a bad 'tude (Juno)."

O'Neil was also on the Bill O'Reilly ...Read More

An hour ago I heard the best explanation (or at least the best partial explanation) as to why the Julie Christie momentum bandwagon stalled and gave way to Marion Cotillard's winning the Best Actress Oscar. (And I'm not getting into this topic as a complaint -- I've long worshipped Cotillard's La Vie en Rose performance as Edith Piaf.) I'll give the person who told me credit for this when I hear from him and he says it's cool, but until then here it is non-attributed.

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This is it, the absolute ethical nadir of the Hillary Clinton campaign so far. To my mind sending out that 2006 photo of Barack Obama dressed in Somali garb during a visit to that country is scummy and reprehensible almost beyond measure. It is a a classic race-baiting tactic obviously aimed at latently racist rubes from Texas and Ohio who say they're still on the fence.

Reacting to a headline on the Drudge Report (still up as I write this...Read More

A friend from Boston wrote this morning to say that she "didn't see a single one of the nominated movies this year. The only one in the whole bunch that I saw was Once, and it was fun to see them win best song. A lot of people I talked to only saw Juno and none of the others. What percentage of people do you think are like me and didn't see any of those movies?

"Too many seem to have too much violence, too many downer stories. We want to see something uplifting. I love Tilda Swinton...Read More

Eleven observations & thoughts from the Oscar telecast (and one from the Spirit Awards), now that I'm catching my breath and have a few moments to tap something out:

(1) Joel and Ethan Coen...Read More

Variety critic Robert Koehler wrote a while back to ask if Marion Cotillard's Best Actress win is a first for a French actress or not. Is it? Koehler believes either way that it's the first time that the same actress has won the French (i.e., Cesar) and American Oscars in this category.

Joel and Ethan Coen have won the Best Director Oscar for No Country for Old Men. Appropriately. Modest, thankful, self-effacing. Loved Frances McDormand's "yeah, yeah!" expression as they walk off stage.

And here's a shaved-head Denzel Washington (for what role?) handing out the Best Picture Oscar for No Country for Old Men. No Clayton or Juno surprises. All according to general expectations. This is producer Scott Rudin's moment, all right. A happy man, "thank you so much." And it's over, dude. Three hours, 17 minutes.

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It can't not be Daniel Day Lewis for Best Actor. No disputes or challenges (except from Tom O'Neil). And the Oscar goes to DDL, who kneels before Helen Mirren, the presenter, as he arrives at the podium. "This sprang like a golden sapling out of the mad beautiful head of Paul Thomas Anderson," he says. "Thank you, Paul."

Diablo Cody's win for her Best Original Juno Screenplay was mostly expected. A moving moment because she dropped whatever it is she's been carrying around for the last few months. She mentioned her parents, teared up, delivered. Good for her. Eight to ten years of fat checks -- originals, adaptations, punch-ups -- are all but assured.

The winner of the Best Documentary Feature Oscar is a surprise. All along I was hearing No End in Sight, No End in Sight, No End in Sight. Hooray for Alex Gibney's Taxi to Dark Side, which won, but it's a surprise is all. Nobody I know called this. That I can think of.

The Best Original Score Oscar should go to Atonement...and it does!

The Oscar for Best Cinematography ( a word that Cameron Diaz can barely pronounce) goes to There Will Be Blood's Robert Elswit. This is a surprise. I'm sorry, but the cinematography of Roger Deakins in The Assassination of Jesse James loses? On top of his work in No Country? That doesn't feel right. At all. I loved Elswit's work but...I don't know. Conflicted.

There's no doubt about the Oscar winner for Best Song. Once's Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova are the champs...of course! Deserved, fated, ordained. Stewart's line about Glen -- "Wow, that guy is so arrogant!" -- is hilarious.

Penelope Cruz presents the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar to...does anyone care? The Academy didn't even nominate the best film in this category, and I haven't discerned any real enthusiasm for the nominees that made the cut. It will probably be The Counterfeiters. And the Oscar goes to...The Counterfeiters. Enthusiasm in the room is muted. I'll rent it down the road.

The third Oscar of the night for The Bourne Ultimatum, this one for editing. Because of the velocity, speed, number of cuts per minute, etc. It's a beautifully edited film. A honor well deserved.

The Best Actress Oscar presented by Forrest Whitaker. Marion Cotillard! Great! Amazing! Julie Christie almost had it. I don't know what happened but this was the right call. The Real Geezer vote didn't materialize as expected. Tom O'Neil or whomever it was who claimed that the Julie Christie thing was the Evolving Big Turn has some explaining to do.

Jonah Hill and Seth Rogen (not Judi Dench or Halle Berry) handing out the Best Sound Editing and Sound Mixing Oscars. The Bourne Ultimatum wins the Best Sound Editing Oscar. (HE reader Zay Tonday who predicted No Country to win today at 02:41 PM was wrong! Big mouth!) The Best Sound Mixing Oscar goes to The Bourne Ultimatum again. Mildly surprising. Somewhat.

The Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar, presented by James McAvoy and Josh Brolin, is presented to Joel and Ethan Coen for No Country for Old Men. They're going to win Best Director also (of course), and of course Best Picture. (Right?) Three Oscars for sure. Those dark horse notions about Clayton or Juno...forget 'em. I think.

Alan Arkin handing out the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Cate Blanchett should get it for I'm Not There, but I'll be at peace with Michael Clayton's Tilda Swinton taking it. And Swinton wins! As predicted over the last four or five days! She didn't expect it, obviously. Beautiful acceptance speech. Unexpectedly moving. Tony Gilroy's eyes were watering over.

The Best Best Live-Action Oscar should go The Substitute, which I've seen and praised. But the Oscar has gone to Le Mozart de Pickpockets, the most sentimental of the bunch. Sap sentiment! The Best Animated Short Oscar should go to I Met The Walrus, I believe, and the winner is...Peter and the Wolf! I give up.

Javier Bardem, naturally, universally expected, wins the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for No Country for Old Men. Loved his expression when he heard his name called. He was on edge, wasn't sure. I loved his Spanish-spoken words for his mom, which a friend just translated.

Sweeney Todd wins Best Art Direction Oscar, which I had on my sheet. Deserved. Dante Ferreti's soft, delicate Italian accent.

Dwayne Johnson delivering the Best Visual Effects Oscar, which moves me not. The cool effects are the ones you don't notice. The team behind The Golden Compass, the bomb that rocked New Line Cinema, wins. Who cares? Nobody. Not me anyway. I hate blatant CGI.

Late start with live-blog (indecision at the liquor store), but the makeup Oscar going to the La Vie En Rose guys is a favorable indication of Marion Cotillard winning Best Actress....no?

I've never understood the difference between sound editing and sound mixing, even if someone writes in and explains it all in Jack-and-Jill terms, like I'm an idiot. I'll certainly never understand things in a way that will help me decide which No Country For Old Men sound nomination to mark on my ballot -- Skip Lievsay for Sound Editing, or Lievsay, Craig Berkey, Greg Orloff and Peter Kurland for Sound Mixing. And don't tell me I'm slow or stupid. Nobody understand this stuff.

Among Nikki Finke's list of tips about the content of tonight's Oscar show: "Queen Latifah, one of the scheduled presenters, had a family emergency and had to drop out."

That's an uptick in my book. I respect the fact that downmarket award presenters tend to raise viewership levels, but Queen Latifah fans are probably among that broad sector of the public that wouldn't watch There Will Be Blood at the point of a knife so who needs' em?

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"The Oscars maintain the capacity to surprise," N.Y. Times Oscar blogger David Carr reminded this morning. "This year it is writ that No Country will win best picture, that Javier Bardem is a lock for best supporting actor and that Daniel Day-Lewis's name will be announced when they open the envelope for best actor. But chances are, at least one of those things won't happen.

"Two years ago we were all humming the Brokeback Mountain music at the end of the show when Jack Nicholson surprised everyone, including himself, by saying the word Crash...Read More

I checked the entertainment and movies section of today's New York Post for my piece about how the revolutionary Best Picture lineup of 1967 (the story of which is richly told in Mark Harris's just-published Pictures at a Revolution) to no avail.

I assumed they'd killed it because it was too dense or thinky or whatever. (I tried to write it like a borough guy but there's a limit to such contortions.) Then my editor wrote back and said no, it's in the paper -- in the Opinion section.

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The Academy Awards represent "the self-assessment of a self-interested, self-involved professional clique," writes N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott. "It can be argued that, over the past decade or so, this roughly 6,000-member [Academy of Motion Pictures] has become more discerning, more willing to confer its blessings on quasi-independent, medium-budget films instead of the lumbering, middlebrow prestige productions it used to favor.

"Nowadays the main divisions of the studios -- Columbia, Paramount, Universal and the rest -- specialize in big-ticket entertainment aimed at a global audience. Their art-house subdivisions -- the Miramaxes, Searchlights and Vantages -- have ...Read More

There was grumbling and shoulder-shrugging at the Spirit Awards after-bash about Juno winning the best picture prize. Nobody dislikes it (myself included) but nobody I know thinks it aspires to greatness, much less achieves it. Over and over I heard "why?," "I don't get it," "Whatever," "I don't know...obviously people like it," "they were sucking up to Fox Searchlight," etc.

Juno's Ellen Page

No problems in this corner with Juno star Ellen Page winning the best actress award, or with Diablo Cody...Read More

The wi-fi in the backstage press tent at the Spirit Awards is so pathetically weak that it insults the name. If I could find a 28 k dial-up connection, I'd take it. I've taken some good photos and have many impressions to share (80 % of which will evaporate by tonight or tomorrow morning) but it might as well be 1987 for all the connectivity here. (Typed on the damn iPhone.)

NPR's Kim Masters and Pete Hammond talk about the unbridgable gulf between the savorers of Oscar-nominated films and performances (not to mention worshippers of 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days) and those enjoyed by Gorilla Nation.

I'm leaving now for the Film Independent Spirit Awards in Santa Monica. Well, within 15 or 20 minutes. They'll be broadcast on IFC Channel starting at 2 pm Pacific. I'll try to post reactions and photos as they happen.

Politico's Jeffrey Ressner is reporting that "a major documentary" about Sen. Barack Obama is being produced by Edward Norton's Class 5 Productions and directed by Amy Rice, sister of Andrew Rice, an Oklahoma state senator and U.S. Senate candidate.

Rice and Norton have shot "staggering amounts" of "revealing behind-the-scenes footage for the untitled project, which has been ongoing for roughly two years." One advantage these filmmakers enjoy, says Ressner, is "near-exclusive access," having "engaged directly with Obama and won his staff's trust in the year before he even announced his presidential candidacy."

...Read More

I love that the last-minute Oscar situation seems fluid and uncertain enough for odd and unlikely predictions to be advanced by serious people. One example of this is The Envelope's Tom O'Neil predicting a George Clooney Best Actor win for his performance in Michael Clayton. It won't happen but I love flirting with the possibility. Any Oscar win that surprises or freaks people out is "good" in my book.

Boiled down, O'Neil is making the Clooney call because, like me, he's impressed with the pro-Clayton, pro-Swinton, pro-Clooney sentiments voice by Real Geezer commentators ...Read More

Newsweek's David Ansen has joined those predicting a win for Michael Clayton's Tilda Swinton in the Best Supporting Actress category. He's not calling this a certainty as much as confessing he has a hunch along these lines, the rationale being that voting for Swinton is "a way [for Academy members] to honor a movie they like, and an uncompromising actor who's paid her dues in movies both far-out and mainstream."

Ansen informs, incidentally, the Cate Blanchett...

In a 2.23 Washington Post story, an anonymous Clinton campaign adviser tells reporters Anne Kornblut and Shailagh Murray that Barack Obama's 17-point Wisconsin victory last Tuesday "[has] started to sink in as a decisive blow, given that the state had been viewed weeks earlier as a level playing field."

"'The mathematical reality at that point became impossible to ignore...Read More

Vantage Point did about $7,963,000 last night with a projected weekend tally of $24.6 million, and it's a total piece of shit. (Doesn't matter, nobody reads reviews, America the Beautiful.) But three other openers have completely tanked. Be Kind Rewind will do about $4 million, Witless Protection will grab a pathetic $1.9 million, and poor Charlie Bartlett will only do about $1.6 million.

The Spiderwick Chronicles will come second in Sunday night with $12.7 million. Jumper will be third with $12 million even. Step Up will do about $9.2 million. Fool's Gold...Read More

"With the pressure to recognize big films declining, the Oscars' role in movies has become more like that of Oprah's Book Club in promoting literature: highlighting the obscure, unusual or unexpected.

"'The academy is more concerned with rewarding the best film now than they ever have been. They're less concerned with rewarding popular entertainment," says Sasha Stone, who runs the industry blog AwardsDaily.com.

"That trend expands the eternal disconnect between the tastes of the academy and the tastes of the public. Would even fans of last year's top box office-earner -- Spider-Man 3...Read More

I spoke earlier today about various Oscar matters with And The Winner Is blogger Scott Feinberg. Here's the file. (It didn't load for me -- it just kept buffering and buffering and buffering.)

As a sentimental gesture to one of the late Roy Scheider's best performances, this afternoon I bought an old DVD of William Freidkin's Sorcerer ('77). It looked much worse than expected. Released by Universal Home Video in November '98, the disc has muddy sound, a 1.33 to 1 aspect ratio that seems to trim out a fair amount of what was originally shot, and a crudely mastered appearance that's way too coarse and grainy. I saw Sorcerer at a good theatre when it first came out. The DVD is a desecration.

Some think Sorcerer...Read More

Mini-shakes at last night's Paramount Vantage party at STK for There Will Be Blood and (sort of) Into The Wild. At the moment this was taken (around 9:25 pm), original slurper Daniel Day Lewis and wife Rebecca Miller were standing about 45 or 50 feet away.

Collider's Steve Weintraub is reporting that Steven Spielberg has bailed out of directing the Trial of the Chicago 7 movie, but Deadline Hollywood Daily's Nikki Finke is reporting that Spielberg "has backed off setting an April start date...and won't finalize a new start date until the Screen Actors Guild and AMPTP agree on a deal," in part because he feels that Aaron Sorkin's script needs more work.

(l. to r.) Steven Spielberg, Abbie Hoffman, Sacha Baron Cohen, Will Smith

I called Spielberg spokesperson Marvin Levy...Read More

Baird Jones, an event-party guy, a Webster Hall art curator and a former freelance gossip columnist who worked for the N.Y. Daily News' Rush & Molloy in the mid '90s, was found dead last night. I knew and liked him a lot (I especially loved that N.Y. Yankees hat he always wore), and I'm very sorry for his close friends and family right now.

I last talked with Baird in December '07 at a party he invited me to that was somewhere in the west 20s. I don't get how a guy in his early 50s (a ...Read More

Kidding or half-serious, Paul Thomas Anderson let N.Y. Times Oscar blogger David Carr have it right between the eyes last night during a brief chat at a Paramount Vantage party (which I also attended) at a sprawling joint called STK or SKG or DMT....something along those lines.

Carr (a.k.a., "the Bagger") said something or other about the Best Picture candidates he likes, admitting that There Will Be Blood isn't quite at the top of his list, and Anderson said, "You know, you don't know a fucking thing about movies!"

Anderson then said There Will Be BloodRead More

Australian artist-hustler Vincent Fantauzzo has gotten PageSix.com to help raise the value of a just-completed Heath Ledger painting. Fatauzzo persuaded Ledger to pose not long before the 28 year-old actor accidentally died last month. (People sit for paintings these days? What for?) Ledger's hair is black because that was part of his appearance in Terry Gilliam's Dr. Parnassus, but why does he seem to be wearing dark body makeup, like he's playing a Sicilian gigolo in an early '60s film?

"Right now, at this point in history, it is more important to have our first black president than our first woman president," director Rod Lurie (Nothing But The Truth, Resurrecting The Champ) has written in a