Earlier today yours truly, Awards Daily's Sasha Stone and Boxoffice.com's Phil Contrino recorded a final bitch-and-moan about last night's King's Speech triumph, and asked whether or not James Franco was actually baked or not and so on. (Contrino, an "experienced" observer, is all but certain he was.) Here's a stand-alone link. Oscar Poker will not be folding its tent. We'll continue to record every weekend.

The legendary Jane Russell passed earlier today at age 89. I spoke to her in July '97 for a People story about the death of Robert Mitchum ; she seemed like a bright, sharp and collected lady. Russell and Mitchum made His Kind of Woman and Macao together. Both were minor noirs, at best, but she and Mitchum had a vibe -- they seemed to really amuse and enjoy each other.

So my default image of Jane Russell isn't the big-boobed hottie-in-the-hayloft in The Outlaw or even her singing and...Read More

It doesn't seem like the Crimson Tide junket, held at the Marina del Rey Ritz Carlton, happened nearly 16 years ago. But it did. Sometimes you'll turn around and realize something that happened not that long ago happened a good while ago. A kid born in '95 could be six-foot-four and driving a Harley and writing screenplays and making big money as a model.

This Quentin Tarantino/Roger Avary riff about the gay subtext in Top Gun (from Sleep With Me, a 1994 relationship film) reminded me of a goof idea I...Read More

Sharply increased Oscar traffic last night caused Hollywood Elsewhere to slow to a crawl and then crash this morning. It was my fault, of course, and I'm apologizing up and down. The staffers at the recently merged Softlayer/Orbit-The Planet, HE's Texas-based server, failed to cope with the situation to my satisfaction. All they did was speak Martian Klaatu. And when the site crashed early this morning, they did nothing until I called up and hammered and brought hell. They could have simply re-booted the server but it took them forever to do this, and even now it's loading too slowly.

8:37 pm: And the Best Picture Oscar goes to The King's Speech. And that's all she wrote. Excuse me while I go outside and stare at traffic with a nauseated look on my face. A Best Picture decision has been made without a single major critics group having concurred. And yet The King's Speech did win four Oscars; ditto Inception. The Social Network won three, and Alice in Wonderland and The Fighter took two each.

I regret that my presence in this overlit Starbucks kept me from seeing the Best Picture montage, which everyone apparently loved.

Twitter pronouncement from Roger...Read More

I'd be extremely delighted to comment on everything that everyone else is commenting on, but I can't, you see. I just can't. Okay, won't. This is a very bad start, I realize. I'll work my way past it. A few minutes more of agonizing chit-chat and it'll finally be on. I know that if I was a nominee and some empty-vessel E!-head asked me if I'm nervous, I'd say, "Gee, I'd like to say but I can't." And he/she would ask, "You mean you might be a little bit nervous...?" And I'd say, "Naahh?" Excuse me? "Naaahh."

All the women in red are cool (Anne Hathaway, Penelope Cruz, Jennifer Lawrence, Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Judson) but I've been watching red-carpet activity for an hour now, and I'm feeling more and more sickly. Steve Huff: "If you really want to feel your soul slowly draining from your ears, just sit and blankly watch all Oscars pre-shows." This may sound like a form of heresy, but I'd rather watch coverage of the Libyan rebellion.

What did somebody say an hour ago? "There are Civil War re-enactments that are less predictable than the outcome of tonight's Oscar awards."

"Answering the Oscar red carpet query 'Who made your dress?' with 'Probably some underage Vietnamese guttersnipe' would be a nice change." -- Steven Weber on witsream.com/oscars (about an hour ago).

N.Y. Times columnist Maureen Dowd reported this morning that she recently "made the mistake of taking my eyes off the [high-speed] road for more than 1.5 seconds, which is the danger zone, according to technology experts at Ford headquarters." It is routine, of course, for actors at the wheel in movies to take their eyes off the road for three, four or even five seconds so they can convey meaningful eye contact with their front-seat passenger, especially if they're romantically involved with same. Nothing infuriates me more. Directors who allow or encourage actors to ignore the road for such periods need to...Read More

"The revolt in the Arab world is not merely against this or that resident dictator but a worldwide economic tyranny," journalist John Pilger wrote this morning. "A tyranny designed by the US Treasury and imposed by the US Agency for International Development, the IMF and World Bank, which have ensured that rich countries like Egypt are reduced to vast sweatshops, with half the population earning less than $2 a day.

"The people's triumph in Cairo was the first blow against what Benito Mussolini called corporatism, a word that appears in his definition of fascism.

I need to post something more than the usual ass confetti during this evening's Oscarcast liveblog. A journalist friend says, "I don't really care about what Sasha and Poland and Pete Hammond have to say...I'd rather hear something funny and searing." So (a) I'll trying to be my usual searing self but (b) will also aggregate the best comedian twitters -- Sarah Silverman, Steve Martin, Bill McCuddy, Chris Rock, Ricky Gervais, Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David, Patton Oswalt, etc. Along with samplings from witstream.com.

"It's not hard to see why films such as The King's Speech, The English Patient and Shakespeare in Love play so well in Peoria. They work as pure escapism, presenting American audiences with a world that seems at once reassuringly familiar (people speak English) and excitingly different (they like drinking tea and hate talking about their feelings). For two hours, they allow us to forget the messy anxieties of the present and wallow in an idealized, romantic past.

"The silver screen Britain is a courteous, orderly place. Women wear dresses. There is no crime. Everybody is white. The...Read More

With no reported change in AMPAS attitude/policy since yesterday, it appears as if Deadline's Michael Fleming's Oscar-covering press credential ban is being upheld. Nikki Finke revealed early yesterday afternoon that Deadline's press pass had been revoked over Finke having posted a spoiler-heavy rundown of the show's schedule.

"There's a long history of entertainment journalists besides us publishing multiple scoops about the show during the week leading up to the Academy Awards broadcast, including this year," Finke claimed. "But none of those news outlets were banned from coverage. True, until now, no media outlet has ever published so many scoops as...Read More

The au natural honesty of Spirit Award winner James Franco's press tent q & a was highly appealing. I described a similar vibe on 1.30 after Franco's appearance at the Santa Barbara Film Festival: "Zen and relaxed and articulate in a kind of shoulder-shrugging way...didn't try to turn on the charm or win anyone over...'I'm easy, I'll talk, sure...no worries.'"

Notice the tent material rippling and buckling from the almost gale-force winds. It was by far the chilliest, most assaultive, least physically pleasant Spirit Awards ceremony ever.

Yours truly at gallery viewing of Black Swan-inspired sculpture & paintings at Regen Projects on Almont, just south of Santa Monica Blvd., in West Hollywood -- Friday, 2.23, 6:35 pm.

Photo by Svetlana Cvetko

4:17 iPhone filing: Black Swan has won the Spirit Award for Best Feature. Four of the top five awards nabbed by Aronofsky/Portman/Libatique & Co.

4:09 iPhone filing: I was expecting Annette Bening to win the Best Actress Spirit Award for The Kids Are All Right, but nope -- Natalie Portman has won it for her work in Black Swan. The winner of Sunday night's Best Actress Oscar is so decided.

3:56 iPhone filing: Black Swan's Darren Aronofsky has just won the Spirit Award for Best Director. Affirmative!

3:47 pm: The Kids Are All Right's Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg have won the Spirit Award for Best Screenplay.

3:34 pm: I've been working off the laptop battery since 2:15 pm or thereabouts, and I've got about 20 minutes left. Thanks, Toshiba! I just plugged into an outlet and the laptop won't charge so I'm dead. I'll have to file from the iPhone. This plus the cold blustery winds buffeting the tent...forget it.

3:31 pm: I had to get some food and then answer nature's call. As I stepped back into the tent John Hawkes had just won the Best Supporting Actor...Read More

It's time to drive over to the Spirit Awards, which are back under that big old tent on that good old blacktop lot adjacent to the beach in Santa Monica. I'll try some filing-as-it-goes from my berth in the press tent...maybe. Okay, probably. It's nice that it's sunny outside. It always has been, each and every year. (In Santa Monica, that is.)

I unintentionally slipped into the annual QVC Red Carpet Style party last night at the Four Seasons. It was during last night's rainstorm, of course, so water was dripping everywhere, and the fake grass lawn was soaked. And you could tell right away that most of the guests were nice-but-don't-quite-get-it types. They included Kim and Kourtney Kardashian -- I rest my case. Notice the girl sticking her tongue out at me during my 360 shot.

Bilge Ebiri's idea about giving an Oscar to the year's best stunt will never fly. In Planet of the Apes jargon, the Oscars are supposed to be an orangutan or at least a chimpanzee thing -- certainly all of the categories represent orangutan or chimpanzee-level endeavor -- while stunts, no offense, are seen as gorilla-class. The chimps and 'tans would never stand for it.

But I've always felt that the stuntman who flew upwards and hung on during that "accident" in William Wyler's chariot-race sequence (around the 4:50 mark) in the 1959 Ben-Hur deserved an...Read More

At the Four Seasons last night GasLand producer Trish Adlesic told me about a significant quote having been removed from a 2.26 Wall Street Journal story about her film. Matt Pitzarella, a spokesman for gas producer Range Resources Corp., told the WSJ's Ben Casselman that "we have to stop blaming documentaries and take a look in the mirror." The quote appeared online but was yanked sometime in the early evening.

GasLand director Josh Fox

After speaking to GasLand director Josh Fox, HuffPost's Allison Rose Levy explained the gist in a story that went up around...Read More

This Roger Deakins quote is a few days old and has gotten around, but I'm posting it anyway because as "duhh" and after-the-fact as it may seem to some, it's a significant benchmark statement from a guy of his stature: "This year or next will see more or less the end of film. It's been a long time coming, really. Film has had a good run."

In a 2.25 Oscar Picks column, The New Yorker's Richard Brody recalls Pauline Kael's famous comment after the 1972 Presidential election: "I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don't know. They're outside my ken. But sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them." So it is, says Brody, with the people who've voted for The King's Speech for Best Picture: "I don't know anyone who feels that way about the movie, but plenty of them must be [out there].

"The Social Network...Read More

Comparing yesterday morning's jaunty, light-hearted who-is-Nikki Finke? piece on the Today show (scares people! blunt-spoken! extremely camera-averse!) to, say, Tad Friend's 10.12.09 New Yorker profile wouldn't be fair, I suppose. But they couldn't have blanded and dumbed it down much more than they did.

I've said before that I might understand Finke's motive for not wanting to have current photos of her getting out. Some of us are more accepting of the process of inevitable biological diminishment than others, and some less so. But nobody is over-the-moon about...Read More

"The fact of the matter is that this Oscar race is a wake-up call to what the awards really stand for...nothing. They get it wrong more than they get it right...FACT. In the past decade we have been spoiled by Oscar winners that didn't fit the usual Oscar cliche. It led many to think we were seeing the rebirth of the Oscars and 'could we finally respect their decisions'? If The Social Network, Inception or Black Swan wins then yes, the Oscars will have turned a new leaf. If The King's Speech or The Fighter wins then no, the Oscars are the Oscars."...Read More

Congrats to L.A. Times reporter Geoff Boucher (pronounced "booshay") for winning the press award at today's 48th Annual ICG Publicists Awards. It was just nice to have been nominated. Thanks to all concerned for honoring and having me. It was cool to watch and hear Jacqueline Bisset read my name off as one of the nominees.

The parking situation at the Beverly Hilton hotel was absurd. The huge multi-level concrete lot out back is closed so the small adjacent garage was filled very quickly, and then there was a ridiculous line for...Read More

Forbes guy Bill McCuddy says "it just dawned on me that The King's Speech is Leno and The Social Network is Letterman. Everyone agrees Letterman is smarter, hipper, cooler. But Leno is the bread-and-butter, audience-friendly guy."

McCuddy wrote this prior to going on CNN International to handicap Oscars and talk Harvey Weinstein's coup in getting The King's Speech a new PG -13 rating, which director Tom Hooper "has always seemed cool to when I asked him about it several times over the last few weeks." And yet the new rating, especially after Sunday night's Oscar win, should net Speech another $30 or $40...Read More

USA Today's Susan Wloszczyna (a.k.a. "Suzie Woz") today ran the umpteenth King's Speech vs. Social Network Oscar culture war story. I wouldn't have paid much attention (no offense) except that she said I was "among the most vehemently appalled" by the prospect of Speech beating Network, and also ran my quote about "comfort, contentment and middle-class Masterpiece Theatre milquetoast values [having] prevailed...kick me, shoot me, run me over with a double-decker bus."

The fact that it's 10:58 am means I have to get over to the Beverly Hilton right now for the 48th Annual ICG Publicists Awards, which "recognize excellence in movie and television showmanship and publicity." John Lasseter and Sylvester Stallone are the big name presenters. Tony Angellotti, veteran publicist Murray Weissman and Jerry Bruckheimer Films publicist Michael Singer are among the nominees for the Les Mason Lifetime Achievement Award. Press award nominees include L.A. Times reporter Geoff Boucher, EW's Jeff Jensen, Gold Derby's Tom O'Neil, TheWrap's Sharon Waxman and yours truly.

An unlikely quintet of critics -- Lou-Lou Lumenick, Drew McWeeny, Pete Hammond, Jolene Mendez and Ethan Alter -- are standing by Hall Pass, which otherwise has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 24%. I panned it in my Wednesday, 2.23 review.

You have to hand it to Cameron Diaz for having cornered the market in term of unabashed "this is who I am" talk-show rap. She has serious cojones. Intuition tells me Bad Teacher is going to be big. Side-issue: There are few things that I despise more than embed codes that go on for seventeen or eighteen lines. As far as I can discern the principal offender is brightcove.

Roadside Attractions, distributor of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Biutiful and Debra Granik's Winter's Bone, threw an exceptionally smooth, not-too-crowded, just-the-right-size party last night at Soho House. Hotshot attendees included Inarritu, Granik, Biutiful Best Actor nominee Javier Bardem, Fighter director David O. Russell, director Michael Mann, Inside Job co-dp Svetlana Cvetko, Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow, Hurt Locker producer-writer Mark Boal, Circumstance director-writer Maryam Keshavarz and costar Reza Sixo Safai.

At last night's Roadside/Soho House soiree (l. to r.): Biutiful star Javier Bardem, Inside Job co-dp Svetlana Cvetko, Deadline's Pete Hammond -- Thursday, 2.23, 9:20 pm.

Ten months ago The Playlist's Kevin Jagernauth reported about a possible 12.10 DVD release of Rick Schmidlin's four-hour reconstruction of Eric von Stroheim's Greed (1924). Irving Thalberg butchered the epic-length classic down to a 2 1/2 hour cut. So far Schmidlin's four-hour version has appeared on iTunes but not on a small disc.

I don't know why I'm posting this (an L.A. virus has begun to affect my brain?), but this and other similar tutus worn in Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan will be on display at L.A.'s Museum of Contemporary Art starting on 3.4.

I happened to glance at The Piers Morgan Show a little while ago, and I couldn't recognize the woman being interviewed. My first thought was Faye Dunaway but I discarded it a second later-- this lady has had "work" done, but her face doesn't have that extreme, over-stretched quality. Then I thought it was Alana Stewart Hamilton, Rod Stewart's ex. Wrong again. And then a title card appeared: Sharon Stone. She's had decent work done, I'll give her that, but she's become someone else entirely. She physically no longer exists.

Any comedy that shows two characters fainting and falling backwards at the same instant is dealing really cheap cards. Any alien-encounter comedy that mentions Reese's Pieces is looking to appeal to the lowest and stupidest people out there. It's hard to understand how Greg Mottola (Superbad, Adventureland) could decide to willfully devalue his brand by making something like this. I can't wait to see this with the hoo-hoo crowd at South by Southwest.

Last night I attended a q & a at the Writers Guild theatre with Susanne Bier, renowned director of the Oscar-nominated In A Better World (Sony Classics, 4.1), which had just screened. One of her most interesting answers came when a guy asked about the film not really saying one precise thing about pacifism vs violence and forgiveness vs. revenge, and whether her views on these subjects were less ambiguous than those in the film.

In my Sundance review I said that World "is like a moralistic cousin of Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven"...Read More

Scott Feinberg's "Narratives & Precedents" piece explains that over the last several decades performances that convey simple but appealing narratives have tended to win Oscars. Another conclusion is that inhabitings of selfish pricks -- "a man experiences professional successes but personal shortcomings" is the narrative -- tend to get nominated but don't usually win.

Jesse Eisenberg in The Social Network is this year's model. Feinberg mentions earlier manifestations like Orson Welles in Citizen Kane ('41) and Broderick Crawford's Oscar-winning turn in All the King's Men ('49), but overlooks Kirk Douglas's Oscar-nominated performance in...Read More

From "The Complete Procrastinators' Guide to Oscar Voting," a 2.2 John Lopez/"Little Gold Men" piece on Vanity Fair's website.

I'm trusting/assuming that the late Ronni Chasen will make the Oscars' In Memoriam montage, despite the fact that no one in Eloi-land will recognize her face. Chasen really mattered to this town, so we'll see what the Oscar producers are made of when this segment airs. Who won't make the cut besides Tura Santana, Zelda Rubinstein, Eddie Fisher, Corey Haim and Erich Segal? I'll be deeply offended if they don't include Kenneth Mars, Maury Chaykin, Maria Schneider and Ronald Neame. The locks, I'm guessing, are Tony Curtis, Dennis Hopper, Jill Clayburgh, Irvin Kershner, John Barry, Arthur Penn, Dino De Laurentiis, Susannah York, Blake...Read More

Never trust a teaser that tries to sell a sequel based on reviews of the original. That in itself suggests that The Hangover 2 (Warner Bros., 5.26) has issues.

Over the last year or so I've developed a small cancerous tumor because of Bradley Cooper, whose appearance on last June's MTV Movie Awards proved that he's a fizzy-souled showbiz whore. I was never that tickled with Zach Galifianakis' retard in the original, and now he looks...

Clock-wise, Europe is a much better place to compose Hollywood Elsewhere riffs, and Los Angeles is probably the worst. if you're in Cannes or Rome or Paris you can start working at 10 am and post your first story by 11 am or noon, at which point New Yorkers (i.e., six hours behind) won't even be waking up for another hour or two, and Los Angelenos have just gone to bed. You're way ahead of the game! But in LA you wake up every day in a losing position, always behind the New York crowd, never "first." You might have the "most" in...Read More

I'm getting a deeply referenced, self-tilting, performance-art vibe from those James Franco-and-Anne Hathaway Oscar promo spots. It may as well be faced -- these guys aren't going to be that funny.

They're obliged to be "out there," of course, and do whatever they can, but I'm sensing very little to come in the way of machine-gun panache, nervy Billy Crystal-like...Read More

I don't know how old this report is, but it's a more-than-worthwhile visit with Social Network composer Trent Reznor by N.Y. Times "Carpetbagger" Melena Ryzik. Best Picture is a lost cause, but it would be terrific, at least, if Reznor could win the Oscar for Best Score.

An hour ago I was sent a link to the first image of Ben Affleck and Rachel McAdams from Terrence Malick's untitled love story (which I thought was going to be called The Burial...no?). I've been asked to report that FilmNation Entertainment is handling international sales. Pic costars Olga Kurylenko, Javier Bardem and Rachel Weisz.

Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams in Terrence Malick's Oklahoma-set love story. Pic wrapped in late '10, is expected in theatres sometime in 2013. Okay, I'm kidding but anyone who expects to see this puppy before fall 2012 is probably dreaming.

Whoa, wait up. Hold it a second. Are you telling me that 12 respected Oscar watchers -- Thelma Adams, Brooke Anderson, Roger Ebert, Scott Feinberg, Pete Hammond, Tariq Khan, Michael Musto, Steve Pond, Kris Tapley, Stu Van Airsdale, Chuck Walton and Susan Wloszczyna (a.k.a. "Suzie Woz") -- are seriously predicting that Tom Hooper will take the Best Director Oscar?

That still leaves 16 -- Tim Appelo, Erik Kevin Davis, Joseph Kapsch, Dave Karger, Peter Knegt, Kevin Lewin, Guy Lodge, Tom O'Neil, Kevin Polowy, Paul Sheehan, Keith Simanton, Sasha Stone, Anne Thompson, Bob Tourtellotte, Peter Travers and myself -- predicting a David...Read More

You can't trust trailers, but you can tell right away from this redband version that Jake Kasdan's comedy (Sony, 6.24) might be fairly decent. Maybe. Obviously raunchy. Cameron Diaz's second line coupled with a shot of a high-school sign that says "Home of the Jammers" makes the point. It feels like a comedic riff on Diaz's In Her Shoes character. Justin Timberlake seems funny and assured; Jason Siegel is obviously getting fatter and fatter.

The question everyone will be asking, of course, is how do you launch a Saturn V rocket without anyone noticing? You'd have to blast off from some super-remote location, and that would mean hauling billions of dollars worth of NASA equipment and manpower off to this godforsaken spot. Quite an undertaking. Come to think of it, who wouldn't notice all that money being spent?

I'm sorry, but this looks like cereal-bowl slop to me. It produced by the notorious Timur Bekmambetov, director of...Read More

Some people you just can't trust about comedies, and the guy who told me that the laughs in Hall Pass (Warner Bros., 2.25) are hilariously gross and vile and made him bust a gut is now one of them. He's a good guy and a smart critic, but he's off the "trust" list. The next time he tells me some new film is really funny I'm gonna go "cool, fine, thanks for telling me" and then ignore the shit out of every word he's just said.

I saw this Bobby and...Read More

MSN doesn't like to timestamp, but they've recently posted another cogent summary of the Best Picture race, this time from the highly perceptive Glenn Whipp:

"The template for this year's Oscar race was carved in stone in September when The King's Speech premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and The Social Network opened the New York Film Festival. In one corner, you had a film that had seemingly checked off every box in its appeal to Academy voters -- Royals! Period piece! Lofty British drama! Triumph over disability! Triumph over Nazis! -- and,...Read More

I wrote a Weinstein chum this morning about attending a couple of the Weinstein events this week. Not to show repentance about my King's Speech opinions (i.e., very good film but shouldn't win the Best Picture Oscar), but to simply say "hi" and smile and pat friends on the back. "I'm speechless at your note," she replied. "From reading your site faithfully, TWC parties are the last place I'd imagine you'd want to be." "Aww, come on," I replied. "My Hollywood Elsewhere routine is about work and religion and call of duty, and parties are about sociability and hanging-with-pallies and relationship fortification and...Read More

Earlier today Awards Daily's Sasha Stone, Boxoffice.com's Phil Contrino and yours truly poked at the last dying embers of the 2010/2011 Oscar season. We also discussed the box-office prospects of Hall Pass (which I'll be seeing this evening at L.A.'s Arclight) and the ups and downs of The Adjustment Bureau (Universal, 3.4). Here's a stand-alone link. A relaxed and lively session, I'd say.

You could argue that In Contention's Kris Tapley and Entertainment Weekly's Dave Karger are the most dispassionate Oscar-race handicappers. ("They're almost like machines," a friend said this morning.) So it's weird that they've both chosen Rick Baker's Wolfman makeup to win the Best Makeup Oscar. What's so special about the eyes, snout and teeth on Benicio del Toro's Larry Talbot? Nothing much. We've been dealing with hairy bipeds since the days of Henry Hull and Lon Chaney, Jr. I'm thinking that the makeup in Peter Weir's The Way Back has to win.

In Straight Time, Dustin Hoffman's Max Denbo explains the difference between being in prison and being free on the streets of Los Angeles: "Inside it's who you are. Out here it's what you have in your pockets." Same analogy today. In New York City I had an image of refinement and accomplishment, based partly on my professional rep but also my personal appearance. Now I'm back to being a guy who drives a semi-beater, or what my son Jett calls a "ghetto car." No valet parking, always parking two or three blocks away for fear of anyone identifying me as the owner of...Read More

After attempting to attract unwashed Eloi moviegoers (i.e., those who wouldn't know Joe Swanberg or Noah Baumbach from a giraffe) with an assurance that the cast of Arthur (Warner Bros., 4.8) is safe and familiar, WB marketers have stuck
their necks way out by admitting that Greta Gerwig has the lead female role. Or, in short, that she's Liza Minnelli.

(l.) the Arthur teaser poster with Jennifer Garner, Russell Brand and Helen Mirren that was unveiled on or about 2.16.11; (r.) Gerwig added to the current version.

The original...

The Social Network "is shrewdly perceptive about such things as class, manners, ethics, and the emptying out of self that accompanies a genius's absorption in his work. It has the hard-charging excitement of a very recent revolution, the surge and sweep of big money moving fast and chewing people up in its wake.

"From the first scene to the last, the film hints at a psychological shift produced by the Information Age, a new impersonality that affects almost everyone. After all, Facebook, like Mark Zuckerberg, is a paradox: a website that celebrates the aura of intimacy while providing the relief of distance, substituting...Read More

Sorry, but I expected a little more from an ad directed by Sofia Coppola and starring Natalie Portman and Alden Ehrenreich. I think it's the music that throws me. Yes, there's a nice erotic vein in two or three shots.

I do. Really. Listen to the Oscar telecast co-host singing "You Haven't Seen The Last of Me" from Burlesque. It doesn't matter if he's naturally dreadful or if he's doing an Andy Kaufman thing. Awful is awful. "They pulled this from the Oscar show," Franco tweeted. "Damn it."

Any way you slice it, bad singing is torture. Decent singing is about being able to (a) hit notes and to (b) phrase -- to use your voice, however good or mediocre it is, to its best advantage. During her Velvet Underground days Nico, who had a fairly mediocre voice, sang within her limits...Read More

"If I were still doing 'If We Picked the Winners' with Gene Siskel, my preference for best film would be The Social Network," Roger Ebert wrote about 12 days ago. "It was not only the best film of 2010, but also one of those films that helps define a year. It became the presumed front-runner on the day it opened, but then it seemed to fade. Oscars often go to movies that open after Thanksgiving. It's called the Persistence of Memory Effect.

"There's another factor. A lot of academy voters don't choose the 'best' in some categories, but 'the most advantageous for...Read More

"If The Social Network wins Screenplay, Editing, Directing but then loses Best Picture it will join the ranks of only two movies in Oscar history to do so: A Place in the Sun and Traffic." -- Sasha Stone, Awards Daily, sometime last night. The film that beat George Stevens' Sun, along with Elia Kazan's A Streetcar Named Desire, was the very pleasant and colorful An American in Paris. Shameful.

This clip reminds that Anne Hathaway will be absolutely guns blazing as Judy Garland. In that 2013 or '14 Weinstein-produced adaptation, I mean, of Gerald Clarke's "Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland." Glorious, manic-nutso, Oscar-calibre...the whole shot.

Garland in her downswirl phase, that is, starting with the making of A Star Is Born in '53/'54 and ending with her death in 1969 at the ripe old age of 47.

It was reported last December that production on the Garland biopic "has been pushed back to allow the...Read More

In a recent interview with the Huffington Post's Patricia Zohn, The King's Speech screenwriter David Seidler "has gone far beyond the original misrepresentation and falsification that lie at the heart of the film, and has become a propagandist for the Munich faction," in the view of Slate's Christopher Hitchens.

"As I wrote [on 1.24], The King's Speech is an excellently made movie that features (with the awful exception of Timothy Spall's Churchill) generally first-rate acting. Oscars should go to those who entertain and amuse. But if the academy gives an award to Seidler, a man who absurdly fancies himself subject...Read More

It was sunny and clean today in Los Angeles. Not "warm" but certainly pleasant jacket weather. It's hard not to say to yourself "life is better out here -- greener, cleaner, prettier and less taxing in some respects" when you've just come from a cold and windy New York City with garbage scraps strewn over the sidewalk near my Brooklyn building. I'll always be a New Yorker (or a Parisian or a Roman) in spirit, but I had these thoughts regardless.

Fairfax near Melrose -- Monday, 2.21, 8:55 am.

Display in foyer...

Several kids were romping around in a back yard a couple of hours ago. School's out (i.e., President's Day ) and it was somebody's birthday party. All to say it's hard to concentrate when kids are having fun outside and you can hear every last yelp, chuckle and scream. I know what that sounds like, but...all right, maybe I should shut up. They eventually stopped.

And then the dog started snoring. You can barely hear it on the video soundtrack, but dog snoring is just as persistent and annoying as the human kind. When...

David know-it-all Poland's diss of Mark Harris's GQ article called "The Day The Movies Died" is BOOOR-ing! Harris is obviously coming from a non-Pollyanic, half-empty-rather-than-half-full perspective, but he's not blowing confetti out of his ass when he talks about "how stifling and airless and cautious the [Hollywood] atmosphere is, how little nourishment or encouragement a good new idea receives, and how devoid of ambition the horizon currently appears." Ask anyone.

Wells to Poland: Pauline Kael wrote a fairly similar piece in 1980 called "Why Are Movies So Bad? or, The Numbers." The article...Read More

I noticed something last night when I glanced at a North by Northwest frame capture. It was the date on a newspaper -- 11.25.58 -- being read by one of Leo G. Carroll's alphabet soup cronies about Roger O. Thornhill being wanted after knifing a UN diplomat. Every last scene in Alfred Hitchcock's 1959 film, shot in Manhattan and Long Island's North Shore and Chicago and Illinois and Rapid City, makes it clear that the weather is quite warm -- shirtsleeves and light jackets, no coats or scarves in sight. So there you are.

...

About a week ago Film Detail's Ambrose Heron began posting a series of 25 mp3 recordings containing about twelve hours' worth of the original interview tapes between Alfred Hitchcock and Francois Truffaut that were recorded in 1962, and later used as the basis for Hitchcock/Truffaut, the definitive "Hitchcock speaks" book that every film buff in the world has read.

Truffaut's English was fairly nonexistent so he hired Helen Scott (of Manhattan's French Film Office) to act as translator. It's quite irritating to listen to, frankly, with...Read More

With the help of Awards Daily's Sasha Stone, Radheyan Simonpillai of Ask Men has written a concise, well sculpted history of the last five or six years of Oscar history, and explained how the surprise Best Picture victory of Crash six years ago was a seminal event. Nothing new overall but a good satisfying read.

The King's Speech "is basically a film about what positively smashing folks the royals are," Joe Queenan wrote two days ago in The Wall Street Journal. "It's a film that's infatuated by those awfully swell people up at Balmoral who wear kilts and shoot foxes. Americans used to turn up their noses at this sort of stuff. But that was before Upstairs, Downstairs and Merchant & Ivory intoxicated the entire republic with the rustle of crinoline and the shimmer of lace.

"The King's Speech is not, after all, a film about a Welsh coal miner who overcomes a speech impediment. It...Read More

Only one of the opening-credit sequences mentioned in Alice Rawsthorn's 2.21 N.Y. Times piece ("If There Were An Oscar For Film Titles") stirred my interest: Neil Kellerhouse's for The Social Network. "[The] idea was for the titles to be totally unobtrusive...it was literally a case of how small can we make the type," Kellerhouse explains. Which I liked enormously. It established the brisk, dry tone of the film in just the right way.

Sooner or later all discussions of main-title sequences end up mentioning (i.e., defaulting to) Saul Bass. There's...Read More

Years later, I've often found that my favorite parts of the best films are the earlyish portions. Late in the first act, say, before anyone has acted decisively (or tragically) and cast their lot. The good-to-go, pure-enjoyment cruising section.

[Filed from Delta flight #165, somewhere above New Mexico.]

As I understand it (and please correct if I'm wrong), Guardian film editor Andrew Pulver isn't predicting a Social Network Best Picture win -- he's simply saying it should win. "A superb piece of filmmaking in every respect," they declare in one passage, "[and] probably the first important movie that could only have been made in this century. It brings a sharp eye and a critical intelligence to bear upon a remarkable phenomenon without appearing either dazzled by youth or querulously fogeyish."

[Filed from Delta flight #165, somewhere above Arkansas.]

Sasha Stone's Awards Daily Oscar prediction chart is up, and I must say again that it's incredibly heartwarming to know that six pundits have joined me (or I them) in predicting a Social Network Best Picture win. It's one thing to deny reality on your own, but there's a special feeling of fraternity from being one of seven mule-ish diehards.

Favorite stubbornism: It is a far, far better thing to stand with these few than to join The King's Speech crowd. 2nd favorite: "No...I cannot!," said John Foster Dulles when he refused to shake the hand of Zhou Enlai.

15 months after debuting at the 2010 Sundance Fim Festival, Spencer Susser's Hesher will arrive on 4.15.11 via Newmarket Films. And the most arresting thing about the trailer is the revelation that Natalie Portman looks hotter in horn-rimmed glasses than without. The last time this happened was when Marilyn Monroe put on glasses in How To Marry A Millionaire...bingo.

I'm not saying Hesher is another low-budget drama with a slightly brownish-and-bleachy color scheme in the vein of Monogamy, but it does seen to lean in that direction.

Synopsis: "After...Read More

It's not clear or proven to me whether Baz Luhrman's 3D version of The Great Gatsby, to begin shooting next August in the Sydney area, will ignore the Long Island setting of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel, or attempt to simulate it. Either way, I find it oddly appealing that 3D will be used in service of a dialogue-driven, tragic-fancy-pants drama rather than the usual usual.

It's time to acknowledge a fundamental truth (and okay, perhaps a prejudice) in the wake of yesterday's news about Paramount's decision to release Martin Scorsese's Hugo Cabret on 11.23. The forthcoming 3D drama has been described as basically another orphan story in the tradition of Oliver Twist, Annie and the Harry Potter films, and I'm telling you right now that movies about orphans have never reached me, much less melted me down.

Hugo Cabret costars Chloe Moretz (l.) and Asa Butterfield (r.)

Growing up young and vulnerable without parental support is painful and wounding, but it...Read More

Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall's editing of The Social Network is so clean, swift and seamless that you could almost overlook it. But of course, the American Cinema Editors didn't. Last night they gave their big Eddie award to the TSN guys instead of to The King's Speech's Tariq Anwar. Does this mean the Best Picture Oscar tide may be shifting? Doubt it. I think that the editors simply decided that they liked the cutting of The Social Network better than that of The King's Speech. Nothing beyond that.

At 1:02 am this morning Deadline's Pete Hammond ran one of his...Read More

I went completely blank -- no posts or tweets -- yesterday. Mainly due to final packing for today's 3 pm flight to Los Angeles plus the usual dark-gray-hole effect that accompanies any visit to my mother's assisted-living-facility in Connecticut. (Don't ask.) Plus the generally traumatic mindset that always kicks in prior to a cross-country move involving three suitcases. The whole HE operation is shifting back to Los Angeles (cats included) for four to six to eight months, depending on the breaks. Just in time for the last seven days of the 2010/2011 Oscar season. Escaping New York's winter weather will be very nice,...Read More

Yesterday The Digital Bits' Bill Hunt reported that Bluray singles of Barry Lyndon and Lolita will be on sale in France, Germany and Denmark in May. If they're not region-locked, I'll be buying both in Paris after the Cannes Film Festival.

I guy I know who's seen the Farrelly brothers' Hall Pass (Warner Bros., 2.25) says it has four or five really big raunchy laughs. To judge by the conflicted look on his face as he described them, they're the kind of laughs that will make decent people hang their heads in shame.

Obama: "Uhm...Google Trending...you read this?...is saying The Social Network has been upticking for five weeks, and is therefore the most likely Best Picture Oscar winner." Zuckerberg: "No, I didn't. But honestly? That movie cost me $100 million bucks, Mr. President. I wouldn't mind if it lost." Obama: "Aw, come on! It's your film! Made you a star!"

Criterion's Bluray of Sweet Smell of Success (2.22) is one of the most beautiful black-and-white films these eyes have ever witnessed in high definition, and is all the more luscious for looking like a lot like real film. 70% film and 30% digital, I'd say. It has my kind of grain (i.e., tolerable). Thank God Criterion didn't bring their Stagecoach aesthetic to this one! It's so clean and crisp and beautifully captured it'll bring tears to your eyes.

In my book this is way, way up there with Warner...Read More

Nine months after debuting in Cannes, Abbas Kiarostami's Certified Copy (IFC Films, 3.11) is finally about to open stateside. It's understood by most big-city critics and columnists that slamming a Kiarostami film will lead to slings and arrows, so they tend not to. I got beat up pretty badly when I posted my Cannes review, which was mostly negative. Here's a portion of it:

"Certified Copy is a two-character endless dialogue movie set in and around San Gimignano, Italy -- one of the worst places in the world, incidentally, because of...Read More

Another reason why I didn't much care for Monogamy (Oscilloscope, 3.11) is that it passes along negative judgments about an engaged photographer (Chris Messina) because he succumbs to a form of voyeurism. He's a photographer who's developed a business in which clients pay him to snap candids of them leading their day-to-day lives. The plot is about Messina getting involved in the life of a hot blonde client. We all know voyeurism is "wrong," but that it's also a guilty pleasure. Alfred Hitchcock knew that when he made Rear Window. But Monogamy is a drag, I feel, because it frowns and...Read More

The reason I saw only the last half of Meet Monica Velour yesterday was because I was watching Dana Adam Shapiro's Monogamy in a tiny screening room right next to Velour's. (Both showings began at 4 pm). After about 45 or 50 minutes of Monogamy I was feeling so dispirited that I decided to jump ship. It's not that Monogamy is awful -- it has two or three interesting elements -- but I just couldn't stand the dysentery-like color scheme.

The color in this trailer is much more robust than the color projected...Read More

The similarities between the clean-shaven Russell Brand (as he appears in Arthur) and the late Tiny Tim are there, obviously. The eyes, the height and the long curly blank hair are very close, okay. But Brand is thinner and flashier than Tim -- a kind of semi-studly, square-jawed, randy movie star-with-a-sense-of-humor thing going on -- whereas Tim was hook-nosed, pear-shaped and girly-boyish. And yet he had more intrigue than Brand. Tiny Tim pretended to be an effeminate hippyish carnival freak, but was actually a serious devotee of old tinny music.

Late yesterday afternoon I saw the second half of Keith Bearden's Meet Monica Velour (Anchor Bay, 4.8), and I have to admit that Scott Feinberg's admiring review (filed during last spring's Tribeca Film Festival) was more correct than not. I obviously need to see the whole thing, but the part that I saw persuaded absolutely that Velour is a mildly decent, in some ways very affecting little film. I'm giving it a B-plus for effort.

Velour actually has a clear theme -- a kid growing up by way of dispensing with illusion. And it offers a...Read More

I have three nights left in Manhattan before flying back Sunday to Los Angeles for four or five months. Taking a video of a Fifth Avenue video-screen display (which a couple of hundred Middle American tourists have probably already done today) means I'm getting sentimental in anticipation of the homesickness. I shall return.

Is Natalie Portman ever going to make another good movie, or is it going to be like this from here on? The formula used to be "make one for them, and then one for yourself." Portman's formula, apparently, is make a single great Darren Aronofsky film and then completely trash your hardcore, super-devoted, high-rent actress image by appearing in three or four shit flicks in a row.

I'm sorry, but as "well done" at Clint Eastwood's (or Scanline VFX's) tsunami sequence in Hereafter may have seemed to some, to me it looked fake. The wave was much more furious and caused more devastation than anything I saw in the various videos that played after the real thing happened in 2004. Hereafter's version was obviously cool, but also a hard-drive thing -- a tragedy intensified to ratchet up the gasp levels.

A 2.17 N.Y. Post story says that the 1000-plus-member Newspaper Guild is moaning over a proposal by the New York Times Co. to freeze pay over the next two years while adding an extra 5.5 hours onto the standard work week that is currently set at 34.5 hours a week. "That is an effective 16 percent pay cut," whined NG president Bill O'Meara. He said the Times' proposals were "draconian" and "as they stand now would ruin the paper."

HE reaction: Wake up and smell the 21st Century news business, dead-tree and fossil-fuel-delivery man. You're lucky to have a job. And anyone...Read More

How long have the various trailers for Insidious (Film District, 4.1) been playing? Four, five months? I feel like I've seen it already. Enough tease -- it's time for the beef. The participation of Rose Byrne, Patrick Wilson and Barbara Hershey implies a cut-above thing, but still.

I'd like to know who designed this poster for Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff (Oscilloscope, 4.8) because it works. It has a certain authenticity, a yesteryear quality. It suggests the look of a poster for...I don't know, some Lillian Gish or Gloria Swanson film from the 1920s, Queen Kelly or Orphans of the Storm or something in that vein.

I managed to miss this film at last year's Toronto and New York film festivals, and also at Sundance 2011. The truth? I didn't want to see it because of the bonnets. Here's how I explained it...Read More

As a follow-up to yesterday's announcement about Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio and Alexandra Milchan intending to finally produce, after years of delay, a film version of Jordan Belfort's "The Wolf of Wall Street," here's something I wrote about this project nearly four years ago:

"Boiler Room and Wall Street are both about young, lean, hungry-for-money guys (a) gaining entry to the world of high finance, (b) learning the ropes, making big bucks and getting a little drunk on the juice of it all, and (c) eventually going too far, getting busted and crashing into...Read More

Since writing Wednesday's story about whether Arthur's teaser poster misleads by omitting Greta Gerwig, the ostensible female lead (i.e., she plays the same role that Liza Minnelli had in the 1981 original), a friend sent me a 10.17.09 draft of Peter Baynham's 117-page script. I read it right away, and without being too specific I can confirm that Gerwig does indeed have the "Minnelli role" in this draft, which is to say the dominant one as far as a third-act resolution is concerned.

To repeat, a Warner Bros. spokesperson said yesterday that the current...Read More

According to designer Eric Stillman, Broadcast News director-writer James L. Brooks didn't like this suggested cover idea [below] for Criterion's BN Bluray. And yet it's quite obviously the best of all the options. "I like it because you can read it as an indictment of William Hurt," Stillman writes, "or you can read it as Albert Brooks' character off to the side, childishly scribbling over his rival's head."

Due respect, but Brooks having turned this one down tells you something about how sharp his instincts are these days. Here, by the way, is...

I've just sent in my final, final, double-final Gold Derby Oscar ballot, and I titled my email as follows: "I'd Rather Be Wrong About Best Picture Than Side With The King's Speech Crowd."

BEST PICTURE: The Social Network
BEST DIRECTOR: David Fincher (The Social Network)
BEST ACTOR: Colin Firth (The King's Speech)
BEST ACTRESS: Natalie Portman (Black Swan)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Christian Bale (The Fighter)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Melissa Leo (The Fighter)
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: The Social Network (Aaron Sorkin)
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: The King's Speech (David Seidler)
...Read More

Indiewire's Anne Thompson is pushing (or half-pushing) a "Helena Bonham Carter could win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar" scenario. Reason #1: HBC is due. Reason #2: HBC was charming at the recent Oscar Nominee Luncheon. Reason #3: HBC is riding the King's Speech coattails. If Thompson had briefly addressed or even mentioned the over-and-done-with Melissa Leo ad issue I might have given this some thought, but she's just indulging in whimsy, methinks.

Yesterday afternoon I saw Unknown (Warner Bros., 2.18), the latest European-set Liam Neeson paycheck actioner. I haven't time to review it now, but it's not bad in a "somewhat better than meh" sort of way. It's nowhere near the level of the Bourne films, but it's actually a touch more plausible than Taken, for what that's worth. And it offers a winning, at times amusing performance from Bruno Ganz, so at least there's that.

I do think, however, based on the obligatory and run-of-the-mill car-chase sequence in this film, that it's finally time...Read More

Will someone with a PDF of the shooting script for the new Arthur (authored by Peter Baynham and Jared Stern, based on characters by Steve Gordon) get in touch so I can straighten out a confusing issue? I'd like to know if the about-to-open remake (Warner Bros., 4.8) has changed the original story so that Liza Minnelli's Linda Marolla character, who wound up with Dudley Moore's Arthur at the end of the 1981 original, is now, in the person of Greta Gerwig, a secondary character. Or not.

Obviously the new Arthur poster more or less declares...Read More

It's being alleged that this Charlie Brown painting, found on the wall of a fire-damaged Santa Monica building, is a recent Banksy creation. This too. Which, if true, tells us that Banksy is possibly in L.A. for the Oscars. I'll believe it when Matt Dentler and/or John Sloss tell me so.

CBS reporter Lara Logan has reportedly checked out of a hospital five days after suffering a beating and sexual assault last Friday in Tahrir Square. Logan's story is appalling and yet odd. Her attackers were presumably anti-Mubarak types who'd been celebrating the Egyptian leader's resignation from office, an obvious contrast from the beatings and shovings that Anderson Cooper, Christiane Amanpour and Katie Couric received earlier at the hands of pro-Mubarak thugs.

And why, I wonder, did this story lie dormant for four days before breaking yesterday?

The Daily Beast's Howard Kurtz, a friend of Logan's, has written that the...Read More

In a 2.15 interview with Moviefone's Sharon Knolle, Unknown star January Jones is asked about her role in Matthew Vaughn's X Men: First Class (20th Century Fox, 6.3), a prequel which is set in 1962.

"But it's so, so different," Jones explains. "I didn't ever feel like I was in the '60s, except every once in a while when someone would say 'groovy.' Which I'm not even sure is historically correct for 1962!" Check. "That might be more late '60s," Knolle remarks. "We took some liberties," Jones says.

Why make a "period" film if you're not really gonna do "period"?...Read More

Keith Bearden's Meet Monica Velour (Anchor Bay, 4.8) is about a soulful dweeb-nerd (Dustin Ingram) seeking out and then trying to merge on some level with an '80s softcore porn star (Kim Cattrall) who's now a 49 year-old single mom living in an Indiana trailer park. You can imagine where it goes. But right away I was struck by a few things that didn't seem right.

(1) In the just-released poster, Cattrall doesn't look like herself. To me she looks like a somewhat older nondescript hottie with an opaque expression. This apparently isn't the case in...Read More

It's one thing for an Academy member with a need for cuddly-bear emotion to vote for The King's Speech as Best Picture -- I get that. But it's another thing for a hot-shot critic like the Philadelphia Inquirer's Carrie Rickey to endorse this mushy mindset. Plus she's wrong in her assessment of Jesse Eisenberg's Mark Zuckerberg character.

"Why is The King's Speech expected to win if The Social Network is The Movie That Speaks to the Moment?," she asks. "Because while both are about entitled individuals, finally The Social Network is about a guy who doesn't question his entitlement and The...Read More

"Don't read Jeff Wells' Hollywood Elsewhere rant on Incendies," MSN's James Rocchi tweeted about 15 hours ago. "Smug, whiny, spoilers. Actually, end that clause right before 'rant.'" That's fired-up emotion talking. When a bright critic falls for a certain film and then somebody trashes it? Rage. (Except I didn't "trash" it.) Rocchi is a very dapper gentleman (he wears nice suits) and has always been very friendly and gracious in person so I don't take it personally. And by all means, listen to guys like Rocchi on Incendies. But don't say I didn't warn you. Because I shovel the straight dope.

According to Rope of Silicon's Brad Brevet, the only new elements in Warner Home Video's upcoming Stanley Kubrick Bluray set (due on 5.31) are the Bluray debuts of Lolita and Barry Lyndon. The rest (Universal Home Video's "shiny" Spartacus, Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, Eyes Wide Shut) have all been released before. But WHV won't be making Lyndon and Lolita available as stand-alones, although they'll probably change this policy sometime in the fall. And that sucks. I feel badly for serious Kubrick-heads (i.e., those who've been buying Kubrick Blurays all along) who will have to wait.

I can't get my arms around Ralph Fiennes and John Logan 's Coriolanus until I see a trailer, at least. I'm sorry but that's how it is. Congrats to Harvey Weinstein for picking it up in Berlin. The reviews have been exceptional. The Hollywood Reporter's Ray Bennett called it "a bloody delight." Wait -- I don't like that term. And I don't like "bloody" used as an adjective.

To go by this mp3 audio of Charlie Sheen doing the Dan Patrick show, the man is still in deep denial. "Get me right now, guys...right now! I'm not in AA, I don't believe in it...I was bored out of my tree [when I was sober]...a vodka drunk is more linear...I've done research in the field...what's wrong with my brain, Dan?" Sheen hasn't crossed over and gotten clean. He's still hanging around on the mad cackle side.

Sheen's best line comes when he's asked whether he liked Wall Street 2. "Uhhm...it was interesting. I think it waited too long."

Robert Duvall's Network performance is incandescent. His "CCA hatchet man" Frank Hackett is one of the most entertaining and live-wire bad guys in movie history. I've no argument with Jason Robards having won the 1976 Best Supporting Actor Oscar for playing Ben Bradlee, but Duvall wasn't even nominated.

That's because Ned Beatty's burn-through as CCA chairman Arthur Jensen was, I suppose, but Duvall ruled -- he was a huge kick in every scene.

Duvall's big Network scene ("It's a big fat, big-tittied hit!") begins around 5:08 in the above clip. Here's the...Read More

I once visited Kenneth Mars' North Valley home with three or four actor friends. It was sometime in '83 or '84. A nice Sunday afternoon barbecue thing in the back yard with beers and Margueritas. I've never forgotten Mars' greeting at the front door: "Mi casa? Su casa!" Instant relaxation and acceptance. And now he's gone. And I'm sorry.

Mars was a farceur. His best-known role, of course, was Inspector Kemp in Young Frankenstein, followed by Franz Liebkind in The Producers -- both from the gifted brain of Mel Brooks, who was...Read More

I could never get past an impression that for all the trippy dandelion-pollen aspects and the close-to-perfect performances, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was too busy and bothered by itself. It tried too hard. HE reader Abbey Normal called it "a bad hipster remake of a Truffaut film."

Now that I've seen Denis Villeneuve's Incendies (NY/LA, 4.22), I know that the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar race is probably down to a choice between Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Biutiful and Susanne Bier's A Better World. Because as compelling and anchored and finely chiselled as Incendies is, it's such an ugly and searing portrait of tribal rage, ignorance, cruelty and sadism that it's finally one of those widely admired films that you'll never want to see a second time, or even think about once it's over.

Most critics have called Biutiful a tough...Read More

Cheers to Javier Bardem for having last night won the Best Actor Goya award for his performance in Biutiful. The Spanish Oscars were held last night in Madrid. Another gust of wind for the Biutiful sails.

No one will take the Best Actor Oscar from Colin Firth, of course, but if anyone could...

A week and a half ago I did a brief phoner from my Santa Barbara Film Festival hotel room with Biutiful director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. He was on a speaker and so was I, and when I played it back it was all but indecipherable....Read More

In honor of Valentine's Day (i.e., today), New York's Intel recently asked readers to "write down all the sex you've had and we'll share it with the world." Classy! And pretty far away from the spirit of Valentine's Day. And banal. In 1983 or thereabouts I started counting everyone I'd "been" with and came up with a tally of around 175. I meant it deep down each and every time, but that was the '70s for you -- the greatest era for nookie since the days of the Roman empire. And so what?

Here's a much...Read More

Daniel Day-Lewis fully deserved the 1989 Best Actor Oscar for his performance in My Left Foot -- no dispute. But Academy voters were way wrong in denying Nicolas Cage a Best Actor nomination -- at least that! -- for his hilarious landmark performance in Vampire's Kiss.

Tom Cruise killed that year as Ron Kovac in Born on the Fourth of July, and fully deserved a nomination. Ditto Robin Williams for his wise-teacher performance in Dead Poet's Society, and Kenneth Branagh's electrifying turn in King Henry V of England. But who today would...Read More

Last night Scott Feinberg didn't agree with Awards Daily's Sasha Stone and yours truly that it's better to live in a state of denial about The King's Speech cleaning up on 2.27 than to accept it, and to cling to a slender reed of a pathetic pipsqueak hope that The Social Network has any chance in hell. We all realize with a heavy sigh what's happening out there, but Feinberg's response is more adult-minded than mine or Sasha's.

After I while I said, "Can we stop obsessing about this Oscar race stuff -- it's over, people...Read More

Who wasn't assuming that True Grit's Roger Deakins would take the big kowabunga prize at last night's American Society of Cinematographers awards? It was understood and accepted. The fix was in. If you'd called around last Friday and asked motorcycle mechanics in Palmdale, pharmacists in Norwalk, Chinese restaurant chefs in Monterey Park and licensed massage therapists in Newport Beach, to a man they would have said "gotta be Deakins." So how to explain Inception's Wally Phister scoring an upset win?

TheWrap's Steve Pond called Phster's win "a bit of an upset." A bit? It was a 5.5 earthquake. Faint cries...Read More

As much as I respect and admire Cloris Leachman's performance in The Last Picture Show, which won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for 1971, Ann-Margret's portrayal of Bobbie-the-alleged-ballbuster in Carnal Knowledge, I now feel, dug deeper and delivered in a way that was more real, wide-open, vulnerable. All hail Mike Nichols for making this scene work as well as it does, and for generally hitting the film out of the park.

This scene alone (half of which obviously belongs to Jack Nicholson) more than proves my point about how good she was....Read More

Sunday, 2.13, 4:31 pm -- nothing startling or noteworthy, simply a taste of that feeling of vague resignation that always creeps in during my Westport visits.

The fact that the BAFTA bunch handed its Best Director prize to The Social Network director David Fincher this evening instead of to the King's Speech helmer Tom Hooper -- overcoming Hooper's home court advantage -- suggests that Fincher is all the more likely to win the Best Director Oscar on 2.27.

Otherwise The King's Speech ran the table at the Orange British Academy Film Awards, taking 7 trophies including Best Film, Best British Film, Best Original Screenplay, and acting honors for Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter and some other prize.

TSN won for Best Film Editing, the Best Cinematography...Read More

Gold Derby's Tom O'Neil, writing on the Envelope's Awards Tracker, says he was "flabbergasted" on 2.10 when a sage Academy member said his Best Actress vote is going to Annette Bening. O'Neil gasped because this guy "has backed all of the underdogs who ended up winning in recent years -- Crash, Marion Cotillard, Tilda Swinton." The wise guy's other picks: The King's Speech (Best Picture), David Fincher (director), Colin Firth (lead actor), Christian Bale (supporting actor) and Melissa Leo (supporting actress).

Lee Marvin's Kid Shelleen in Cat Ballou ('65) was the funniest movie drunk of all time. I remember my alcoholic father totally losing it when he first saw this otherwise so-so Eliot Silverstein film. Drunks were enjoyable as hell in the '50s and '60s, but they stopped being funny sometime between the late '70s and the time of Iran Contra. Dudley Moore was hilarious in the original Arthur ('81) but seven years later he was dead meat in Arthur 2: On the Rocks.

The main problem with Cat Ballou was that horrible...Read More

Consider Kirk Douglas and Cyd Charisse's wild car ride through Rome (starting around the 3:13 mark) in this clip from Vincente Minnelli's Two Weeks In Another Town ('62). Obviously studio-shot with rear-screen backdrop and a wind machine, it recalls Lana Turner's hysterical car ride in Minnelli's The Bad and the Beautiful ('52). And it shouts out a self-disgusted, I'm-really-miserable-and-have-had-it-up-to-here nihilism that I associate with other compromised characters in Minnelli's best non-musical films.

In a review of this and three other mid-career Minnelli films from Warner Archives, N.Y. Times columnist Dave Kehr...Read More

In an announcement of Magnolia's acquisition of Lars Von Trier's Melancholia, which the director has described as "a beautiful movie about the end of the world," a senior exec said something very strange. In an official release, senior Magnolia vp Tom Quinn declares that "as the 2012 apocalypse is upon us, it is time to prepare for a cinematic last supper."

What apocalypse is this? The Biblical nut end-of-days version? Or the general apocalypse signified by the radical political right? Is Quinn referring to the presidential campaign of Sarah Stillson? Does he see frogs falling from the sky? What film executive...Read More

If and when Chris Nolan manages to adapt Michael Drosnin's Citizen Hughes, a history of Howard Hughes' reclusive, obsessive-compulsive years, it will be, at best, a commercial disappointment if not a failure. Double guaranteed. Vulture has reported that Nolan wants to film the biopic in late 2012 for a 2014 release.

Nolan wants to do this, I'm presuming, because (a) for whatever perverse reason he personally relates (like Warren Beatty did before him) to Hughes' Las Vegas agorophobe phase, and (b) he feels artistically watered down and corporately poisoned from working on two superhero movies (directing The Dark Knight Returns, producing...Read More

There are so many problems with the selling/marketing of Atlas Shrugged, Part 1 (4.15) that it's hard to decide which ones top the list. The absence of stars is obviously concern #1. Concern #2 is that the trailer's slogan -- "Who is John Galt?" -- sounds like a rehash of the "Who is Salt?" copy used for last summer's Angelina Jolie thriller. Concern #3 is that Atlas Shrugged is basically a Ron Paul message movie -- an ultra-rightist, get-the-regulators-off-our-backs propaganda film.

The fact that...Read More

What life's natural process does to all of us in the end, even the luckiest and most beautiful and most magnificently endowed, is fairly horrific. I presume it's understood that it was the love of Elizabeth Taylor's life, Richard Burton, who came up with the above nickname during the shooting of Cleopatra.

Within the next two or three days, I'll become the very last guy in the column-writing, Bluray-reviewing realm to savor Criterion's brand-new version of Alexander Mackendrick's Sweet Smell of Success (2.22). DVD Beaver's Gary Tooze says it "offers superiority" over the previous DVD "in every area...significantly smoother [with] distracting artifacts removed, scratches greatly minimized, contrast vastly improved...[and] quite a bit more information in the frame on all four edges...a magnificent transfer."

"The wonderful commentary [from] film scholar James Naremore is typically professional, insightful and informative...one of the best I have heard in this early year...he knows...Read More

The Telegraph's Philip Sherwell, Robert Mendick and Nick Meo are reporting that during his last 18 days in power, deposed Egyptian president Hosni Mubrak "is understood to have attempted to place his assets -- more than 3 billion pounds, although some suggest it could be as much as 40 billion -- out of reach of potential investigators.

"On Friday night Swiss authorities announced they were freezing any assets Mubarak and his family may hold in the country's banks while pressure was growing for the UK to do the same. But a senior Western intelligence source claimed that Mubarak had begun moving his...Read More

In his 2.10 review of Unauthorized: The Harvey Weinstein Project, Toronto Star critic Peter Howell says director Barry Avrich "didn't just pick a hostile target [but also] a moving one, which makes his film both very timely and somewhat the victim of circumstance.

"This time last year, everybody was playing taps for the career of Weinstein, whose Miramax Films had redefined the indie landscape in the 1980s and 1990s, with such hits as Pulp Fiction, The English Patient and Shakespeare In Love. By 2010, Weinstein was beset with debts for his...Read More

Which of the following unpronouncable, unspellable names is the title of an established Massachusetts-based film society that hands out annual awards?: (a) Klastchbuddlekin, (b) Colbustisch, (c) Chlotrudis, (d) Specialsphincter and/or (e) Axolotl?

Jay Roach will direct a dramatic adaptation of Game Change, John Heilemann and Mark Halperin's best-seller about the '08 election, for HBO. Which means he'll be casting actors to portray Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, John McCain, Sarah Palin, John Edwards, Elizabeth Edwards and Reille Hunter. Question: If you were Roach would you reach out to Tina Fey to play Palin in a realistic, non-comedic, non-caricature vein, or would you start fresh with someone else?

"What's 'defining' about The Social Network is the way it shows a generation losing touch with its humanity," says Rolling Stone's Peter Travers. "The satire in Aaron Sorkin's script isn't aimed at what you call the 'cool kids,' the creative, non-narcissistic users of the internet who don't use 'friend' as a verb. They are in the minority.

"Who's the majority? Go to any multiplex to see a movie -- I just came back from Sundance -- and you'll see a lightshow of iPhones and Blackberrys at every performance. Not before or after the movie, but during. The guy next to me...Read More

At the end of Joe Morgenstern's Wall Street Journal column today comes this: "With The King's Speech gaining the Oscar traction it deserves -- the latest boost being an expression of approval from Queen Elizabeth -- I can't resist going public with a story that I've relished telling to friends, and to the people who made the movie.

"Several weeks before it opened, I had a conversation with Rupert Murdoch, who popped a question familiar to movie critics: What should he see?

"I suggested The King's Speech, and, not wanting to spoil it with too many details, gave...Read More

In their self-financed FYC Oscar ads, The Alamo's Chill Wills and The Color Purple's Margaret Avery "traded recklessly and shamelessly on their nominated roles," writes Baltimore Sun critic Michael Sragow. "Melissa Leo did nothing of the sort. Instead, she brought home the message that unless a mature working actress like herself boasts a high degree of chic or a record of box-office clout, you rarely see her in fashion ads or on slick paper. I don't think Leo hurt her chances with anyone who saw the ads. She may even have helped her chances if a few people got the point."

John Landis's Schlock ('73) is one of the funniest low-budget comedies I've ever seen, and I've only seen it once. Anchor Bay released it on DVD ten years ago. The 21 year-old Landis directed, wrote, produced and starred in the title role. Rick Baker did the makeup. It's actually more than a genre spoof. It's a combination of stoner humor and social satire in the vein of the old Ernie Kovacs show. The sequence below is a riff on an old Laurel & Hardy routine.

Here's another bit when a...Read More

All over Manhattan and across the other four boroughs, tens of thousands of people get happy, mildly buzzed or half-bombed every night. Tens of thousands. And yet people are still getting popped at alarming rates for getting mildly and harmlessly baked. I have no dog in this fight at all (I haven't turned on since the '70s) but I find it astonishing that New York City cops, 45 years after pot consumption began to explode in the mid '60s, are expending so much chickenshit energy to bust people for doing next to nothing.

"Because of a long-standing policy at Paramount, The Fighter's distributor, Melissa Leo has not been the subject of solo 'for your consideration" ads highlighting her as an individual, presumably...because the studio doesn't want to offend Amy Adams, who is nominated in the same category." -- from Scott Feinberg's 2.8 article called "In Defense Of My Friend Melissa Leo." In other words, Paramount changed its mind.

I've made fun of the Poland curse, but I'm no exception when it comes to comedies. The general rule has always been that if I really like something that I consider to be funny (Election, Rushmore, Greenberg, Hot Tub Time Machine), it's going to be some kind of commercial shortfall with Joe Popcorn. So it's moderately comforting, at least, to see that Cedar Rapids, which I admire except for the third-act conclusion, has an 80% Rotten Tomatoes rating. It opens limited this weekend.

Mubarak was just a figurehead so don't be too ecstatic. There's an entire culture of corrupt weasels still running things and wetting their beaks, just like before.

The usual pattern when a smallish U.S. distributor picks up a critically-praised indie at Sundance or Berlin is to bury it for several months, and then release it early (and in a way that barely catches your attention) the following year in some kind of simultaneous cable-demand-and-theatrical break. Let's hope that Strand Releasing does better by Paddy Considine's Tyrannosaur, which I saw and fell in love with when I saw it last month at Sundance.

Strand's Jon Gerrans and Marcus Hu have just acquired the British-made drama in Berlin. Please guys...don't bury it. Don't...Read More

I've been invited by the Weinstein Co. and Peggy Siegal to all the King's Speech gatherings over the last two or three months, and each time I filed respectful and appreciative reports. But I heard zip about the NYC Geoffrey Rush gathering that happened earlier this week. This was due, I presume, to my having equated the announcement of The King's Speech's 12 Oscar nominations with the arrival of Soviet tanks in Prague in August 1968. And yet I've always liked the film for what it is (i.e., in context), and the filmmakers and the Weinsteiners, etc.

I think...Read More

The people who cut this Arthur trailer apparently have something against star Greta Gerwig, who has the role Liza Minelli played in the 1981 original. Gerwig has about four seconds of trailer time, but I'd much rather hang with her than the more front-and-center Jennifer Garner, who has the Jill Eikenberry role. So what is this? Already I've got my hate socks on.

I'm watching it and I'm going "why?...what for?...who gives a toss?" Russell Brand and Helen Mirren, Russell Brand and Helen Mirren, Russell Brand and Helen Mirren, Russell Brand and...Read More

The most richly detailed and eye-candyish of the three is MGM Home Entertainment's Last Tango in Paris. Warner Home Video's Network Bluray reps a modest but noticable improvement over the most recent DVD, and their All The President's Men Bluray has darker tones than the DVD with stronger, punchier colors, better detail and a pleasant filmy texture. They all street on 2.15.

Thursday, 2.11, 11:20 pm

Here are DVD Beaver reviews for Last Tango in Paris, Network and All The President's Men. Oddly, Gary W. Tooze writes that the Tango Bluray has...Read More

I was hoping for a glimpse of Jennifer Lawrence's Mystique get-up, and I got JFK's speech on the Cuban Missile Crisis instead. Already they've pissed me off.

Earlier today I enjoyed re-reading a December 2002 HE piece about Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation. No biggie and nothing related to today except it reminded me how smarty-pants types have this tendency to pick on highly original films, or to misunderstand them, and that it always seems to take them a while to get past their issues. I called it "The Truth About Charlie."

"Let's cut to the chase about Adaptation (Columbia, opening Friday) and jump right into the Big Problem. The word over the last several weeks, partially fortified by my own opinion,...Read More

There's no mistaking where Michael Angarano's anti-hero in Max Winkler's Ceremony (on demand 3.4, theatrical 4.8) is coming from. Relentlessly if not obnoxiously in love with an older, engaged Uma Thurman, Angarano's Sam Davis is clearly descended from Jason Schwartzman's Max Fischer in Rushmore. How can Winkler deny the inspiration?

In a 2.10 Marie Claire interview with The Fighter's Melissa Leo, Thelma Adams has gone right to the big topic at hand.

The Fighter costar Melissa Leo

Adams: "It seems that the big criticism has been that you're the frontrunner behaving like the underdog."

Leo: "Whatever my position might have been as we came in closer to the date with some wins in my pocket, I was not being told frontrunner. I could just feel in my heart this opportunity that has so vastly eluded me. I spent a month-and-a-half flying back and forth from the set of...Read More

My personal preferences among Eric Lavallee's Cannes 2011 predictions include Dominik Moll's The Monk, Juan Antonio Bayona's The Impossible, Terence Davies' The Deep Blue Sea, the Dardennes brothers' The Kid With a Bike, Lars von Trier's Melancholia, Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, Pedro Almodovar's The Skin I Live In, Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights, Lynne Ramsay's We Need To Talk About Kevin, strong>Gus Van Sant's Restless and Marina Zenovich's Roman Polanski: Odd Man Out.

I'm primarily pleased about HE's new Cannes lodging. After learning yesterday that a Cannes apartment I've been sharing...Read More

Could The Daily have blown it any worse? That alleged Nikki Finke photo that they posted this morning, taken by Hunter Walker, is reportedly a fake. Finke has told Gawker that it's not her, and Anne Thompson and TheWrap's Sharon Waxman, who both know the Deadline founder, agree.

In the view of Daily Beast contributor Marlow Stern, AMPAS "should do the right thing and honor The Social Network over The King's Speech with the Best Picture Oscar, lest they risk further alienating the younger generation of movie fans who have caught on to the Oscars' blandness and predictability. This lack of imagination is one of the reasons why TV ratings for Hollywood's biggest night have dropped precipitously from a high of 57.25 million viewers in 1998 -- the year Titanic cleaned up at the awards -- to just 41.3 million in 2010, despite nominating 10 films for the Best Picture...Read More

In Joe Wright's upcoming Hanna (Focus Features, 4.8), Saoirse Ronan plays a teenaged girl raised by her ex-CIA dad (Eric Bana) to be a killing machine. That's not wildly different from Chloe Moretz's "Hit Girl" backstory in Kickass, or Anne Parillaud's in La Femme Nikita. And we all know the territory, of course. Knifings, garrotings, lotsa bodies, speeding vehicles, rapid cutting, people going "aarrrgghh!"

So how did Wright, who began his British directing career as the new...Read More

4:07 pm: Tens of thousands in Cairo's Tahrir Square are reportedly furious following Hosni Mubarak's refusal to step down in a speech he just gave a few minutes ago. While saying again that he wouldn't run for president in September, Mubarak said he'll transfer powers to Vice President Omar Suleiman, but will "continue the oath of his office" and will "continue to shoulder" his responsibilities and work for a peaceful transition of power.

Earlier: Apparently the Egyptian military has stepped in and told Hosni Mubarak, "Okay, enough is enough, pal...that's it, you're out." Mubarak will...Read More

Last night Deadline's Pete Hammond reported that he's "picking up some interesting trends" in his chats with Academy pallies. "Not just the expected strong support for The King's Speech (it's real), but also a surprising amount of backing for The Fighter. It has been the most mentioned movie after The Social Network and could figure significantly by drawing mostly first- and second-place votes."

"Because you don't know the answer to that question, I pity you."

He also noted that while "some" of his Academy pallies "have already cast their ballots, most have not." So if there's any...Read More

If this was a film and Lindsay Lohan was playing a character like herself, listening to the warnings of a judge in court, I'd be geninely impressed. Because she's not "acting" here, and yet her dolled-up face is a portrait of torrential contradictions. She's nodding and going "yes, Your Honor" but it's obvious she's not there. She's quietly livid because she's finally begun to understand that her life is really and truly fucked. Lohan is a very fine actress, but in high-end Hollywood circles she's seen as beyond repair.

I began reading Stu VanAirsdale's latest Oscar Index article in a state of profound excitation. An upset is coming? Really? Or may be coming at least? O joy! But my heart began to sink when I got to the third or fourth graph and I realized that VanAirsdale is just blowing confetti out of his ass and/or doing an air-guitar riff. Fake out! And back came the gloom.

John Madden's The Debt, an espionage thriller, will be distributed for Miramax by Focus Features and Universal Pictures International. Focus will open it in the U.S. on Wednesday, 8.31, and UPI will release the film internationally.

I could run this announcement as a boilerplate thing or fill things in with my opinion of the film. I just flipped a coin and it came up heads so here's my 9.15.10 Toronto Film Festival review of The Debt's first 40 minutes:

"By the time I left, John Madden's The Debt had administered several self-inflicted wounds. Bruises, scratches, cuts, scrapes -- they kept coming non-stop....Read More

As I said in early January, "Not every subway movie poster gets trashed but some do, and I've come to suspect that it means something when a certain poster gets the treatment. Spooky but true." How concerned should Universal be that antisocial budding-criminal-class Manhattan teenagers have a problem with The Adjustment Bureau (3.4)? Perhaps it's not even worth thinking about, but only certain posters seem to get defaced in the NY subway system, and there's always a reason.

For what it's worth, I can faintly sympathize with Nikki Finke's reportedly extreme discomfort with having a present-day photo of her circulated by Rupert Murdoch's The Daily. Last week I sat down with Gold Derby's Tom O'Neil and Paul Sheehan for an Oscar race discussion. When I saw the first portion of the video yesterday I almost fell out of my chair.

All I can think when I watch it is how I really have to (a) start up with 24 Hour Fitness again when I get back to West Hollywood and (b) drive down to Mexico for some affordable...Read More

I could've seen Peter Mullan's Neds at the Marrakech Film Festival last December, but a bad-wifi mood pocket interfered. Now I really want to see it due to Neds having defeated The King's Speech to win the Best Film prize at the Evening Standard's British Film Awards in association with the London Film Museum.

Andrew Garfield won the...Read More

This happened last weekend in the state of Washington. The thief may simply be a skilled actor or perhaps even a sociopath. But he seems to me like one of the nicest felons ever.

It's interesting that the trailer never shows us the predator's face. Prior to the Toronto Film Festival I read an idiotic and misleading synopsis of David Schwimmer's film that mentioned security and a dad obsessing about how to protect his family and blah, blah, blah. Never once mentioned false cyber relationships or a violation of a young girl.

Columnist Scott Feinberg has very plainly and eloquently put the whole Melissa Leo self-financed ad brouhaha in its place, and taken a swipe at Deadline's Pete Hammond in the bargain. Read it and tell me Feinberg hasn't put this issue to bed and then some. That rash-minded boob who told The Hollywood Reporter's Tim Appelo that "she's lost my vote" needs to consider all the angles and pro-Leo arguments that Feinberg has voiced.

If you listened closely to what was said at tonight's Oscar panel at the 92nd Street Y -- called "Reel Predictions: Countdown to the Oscars" -- you heard several subtle, polite and deftly worded putdowns of The King's Speech. So subtle that I can't offer (i.e., remember) a single money quote, but the sound of Tom Hooper's drama being needled throughout the evening for being too pat and tidy, too "safe," and not all that interesting was music to my ears.

Quite possibly the blurriest and/or least distinct photo anyone has ever taken of N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott...

Stick with the longish Brad Bird tribute, which showed at last weekend's Annie Awards, until the 4:30 mark for a very funny bit. I should have snagged this when it first went up yesterday afternoon but I didn't and so what?

It's important to remember what Submarine director-screenwriter Richard Ayoade told me prior to the Toronto Film Festival, which is that his romantic dramedy (costarring Craig Roberts, Noah Taylor, Sally Hawkins and Paddy Considine) is more of a Mike Nichols-meets-Wes Anderson thing than just an Anderson-y thing about quirky young love. The Nichols aspect alludes, I gather, to the anguish and heavy heartache thing that has turned up in various Nichols films, including The Graduate.

This is a way of saying that despite opportunities in Toronto and...

And Pete Hammond and Tom O'Neil and Sasha Stone and Kris Tapley all the other Oscar pulse-takers. Because the 2011 Best Actress race is all but settled as of this moment. Or at least, it has an obvious front-runner in the star of The Iron Lady. Look at her! And imagine her Margaret Thatcher accent....are you kidding? With Academy members being the suckers they are and always will be for lofty-realm British drama?

The only thing that can screw things up is if the film itself turns out badly, which is certainly possible given...Read More

Cedar Rapids played like gangbusters when I saw it at the Eccles a couple of weeks ago during the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Everyone in the theatre got every last joke and allusion, and they laughed and applauded their asses off. But much of Miguel Arteta 's film played kinda flat and ho-hummy when I saw it last night at the Lincoln Square with my son Jett and maybe 50 or 60 others.