“The DVD edition of Crash that came out last September says right on the back cover: ‘running time 122 minutes.’ It also gives a date of ‘2004,’ which means it shouldn’t have been eligible for the 2005 Oscar, but what do I know? I’ve seen it in a theatre, but I watched it again last night and it did seem to end earlier than it was supposed to. Confusing, yes. Why anyone would want to see a version three minutes longer…or three minutes shorter, for that matter? Your guess is as good as mine.” — Gordon Eklund, Seattle.

Variety‘s Brian Lowry and the Hollywood Reporter‘s Kirk Honeycutt are both calling Failure to Launch (Paramount, 3.10) a non-starter. There’s some merit to this opinion, which the vast majority of the reviews appearing this Friday will confirm. Sarah Jessica Parker can shrug it off and move on, but poor Matthew McConaughey…what can he do? No one on this film ever woke up one morning and realized that Failure to Launch is one of the worst titles ever conceived? Astonishing.

Okay…two more comments about the Crash victory. Can’t find the link but it appears that the Boston Globe‘s Wesley Morris wrote that “the memo from Hollywood seems clear enough. Better to reward the movie about people who clean our closets than the one about the men who live in them.” And the Washington Post‘s Tom Shales said last Monday morning that “film buffs and the politically minded…will be arguing this morning about whether the Best Picture Oscar to Crash was really for the film’s merit or just a cop-out by the Motion Picture Academy so it wouldn’t have to give the prize to Brokeback Mountain.”

I’ve been overhwelmingly told by so many readers that I’m overheated or flat-out full of shit about my belief that there was a sufficient numbers of Korean War and World War II-generation Academy members flinching at Brokeback Mountain to cause it to lose the Best Picture Oscar. I don’t know what to say except that I know I’m right about a certain percentage of these people voting against Ang Lee’s film for reasons I’ve described in previous postings, and/or supporting Crash for the “wrong” reasons. I know it, I know it…but nobody seems to agree (here’s Roger Ebert disputing it) so let’s just drop it and move on.

I don’t know how long this Starz bunny parody of Brokekack Mountain has been kicking around, but the words “who cares?” are inadequate to the task of expressing my interest levels. Why am I posting it then? Good question.

Ron Grover‘s 3.6 Business Week scoop about the recently- cemented deal between the Weinstein Co. and the Sony-based MGM Studios came out yesterday, and the official announcement may be announced at a press conference on Wednesday, 3.8. The MGM-Weinstein Co. deal “will mean a new, high-profile home for Harvey and his brother, Bob, who had a nasty 2005 divorce from Disney, which had bought Miramax in 1993,” Grover writes. The pact will also signal legendary studio MGM’s return to making and distributing films. “Sources” say Harry Sloan, MGM’s new CEO, will proclaim MGM’s resurgence as a full-fledged studio at the 3.8 press conference.

“My life is about finding time to dream. That’s why my card is American Express.” This speaker is famed director M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Signs), and it’s the only line of narration heard in his fascinating, self-directed two-minute American Express ad, which is definitely Night-flavored and Night-creepy, and two or three cuts above the usual-usual. (And I don’t care how long it’s been viewable…I just saw it now.

Okay, so the Oscar-viewing TV audience was down 8% from last year, but — but! — viewership among 18 to 34 year-old males was up 5%, which is probably due to Jon Stewart’s popularity with this demo. Nielsen’s estimated total count came in at 38.8 million viewers, compared to last year’s 42.1 million. And Sunday night;s show was ahead of the 2003 audience of only 33 million. And the 38.8 million figure is larger than the audience for the recent Emmy and Golden Globes shows combined, and was also larger than the Academy Award telecasts in 1986 and 1987. But they should still get rid of Gil Cates.

“The key to the success of Crash,” writes James Bates in today’s L.A. Times, “was that the film itself — and the carefully orchestrated promotional campaign undertaken by its distributor, Lionsgate √¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢√É‚Äû√É¬Æ appealed to actors, the academy’s largest voting bloc. With 22% of the voting members, the acting contingent is nearly three times as big as the next-largest group, producers. It was actors — specifically, those in Los Angeles — who were targeted to deliver votes. And judging by the upset, deliver they did. Crash likely…scored points with some actors because it was shot in Los Angeles at a time when runaway film production is a sore point. Crash was also set in Los Angeles, which probably gave it an additional home-field advantage. 78% of the academy’s voting members live in California — the vast majority of them in the L.A. area.” All of which is true, but downplaying or waving away the reported attitude-posture of who-knows-how-many-but-probably- more-than-a-few oldsters and old-liners toward Brokeback Mountain (couldn’t hack the pup-tent scene, wouldn’t see the film, resented the macho cowboy tradition being messed with) is a form of denial. All Bates will say on this aspect is that “much of the morning-after punditry and blog logic has centered on whether members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had trouble giving Brokeback Mountain a Best Picture nod because of its gay love theme.” As if it was some theory of celestial mechanics being floated in a scientific journal.

It was linkable yesterday, but David Halbfinger‘s N.Y. Times piece about Mark Birnbaum and Jim Schermbeck‘s sharply critical doc about former House majority leader and right-wing ideologue Tom DeLay is in today’s issue. The Big Buy: How Tom DeLay Stole Congress, which is about the trouble DeLay got into over campaign fund-raising as well as Texas redistricting, has been produced and will be distributed by “liberal provocateur” Robert Greenwald. Staunch leftie orgs like People for the American Way and Democracy for America “are expected to sponsor the film’s release,” which will start with openings in a few cities before being made widely available on DVD. “An important aspect of the release plan is to organize hundreds, if not thousands, of house parties in May and June at which the movie will be shown,” the story says. “The distribution strategy is to be detailed on Tuesday — primary day in Texas — as a ‘welcoming gift’ to Mr. DeLay.”

“My friend Jim is more interested in the Academy than anyone I know who isn’t involved in the industry. (He’s a chauffeur in Seattle.) By early summer he’s already talking up possible nominees. The discussion reaches a fever pitch in November and December when the prestige pictures are rolled out and critics make their ‘best of’ announcements. He goes to see these films. He talks about them. He actually cares. Not anymore. Crash‘s win did him in. The Academy, he said afterwards, ‘is not a serious body of voters who vote rationally. If they’re influenced by a DVD sales pitch, they’re not worth my time.’ Are they worth anyone√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢√É‚Äû√ɬ¥s time? Once again, they showed themselves susceptible to something other than a legitimate search for ‘the best.’ Once again, marketing appears to have won. The Academy is 78 years old and acting every bit of it, and last night they took another doddering step towards irrelevancy.” — MSNBC’s Eric Lundegaard on last night’s Best Picture Oscar winner.

Jon Stewart sure as shit didn’t hit it out of the park last night. The general consensus is that his material was a little too dry, and that he was mostly hit-and-missy. Did he do better than Chris Rock? Somewhat, but not that much. A few of his ad-libs were slightly funnier than the prepared material, but they weren’t golden either. The filmed bits were the funniest of all. If Oscar show producer Gil Cates was a hipper, nervier guy, he would have followed my suggestion and tried to get Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughan to co-host. C’mon…those guys would have killed. And Sarah Silverman‘s performance at last Saturday’s Spirit Awards showed she would have been great also. But Cates doesn’t watch her on TV so she probably wasn’t even considered.