The Envelope‘s Tom O’Neil is reporting that in lieu of the near-collapse of Flags of Our Fathers, both commercially and as an Oscar contender, Warner Bros. and the Clint Eastwood team have rethought their Letters From Iwo Jima game plan and decided to release it in late December after all, which obviously puts it into the Best Picture Oscar competition. Technically, I mean.

They’re doing this not just because Flags is all-but-dead as a Best Picture contender, but because it’s a weak year all around and how can a Letters entry hurt at this stage, all things considered?
“Warner Bros. will give it a qualifying run in a few Los Angeles and New York theaters during the last week of 2006, O’Neil wrote earlier today, “[and] then open it wide in February after Oscar noms are announced.” He added that it “isn’t known if Iwo Jima made last Friday’s cut-off for Golden Globe eligibility. So far the Hollywood Foreign Press Association has not responded to our inquiry.”
I got no help from Warner Bros. publicists this evening, but I’ve been told by an excellent source that the new Letters plan is indeed in place. Letters From Iwo Jima was officially booked a few days ago into select indie-type venues, I heard tonight. It’s been characterized all along as an art-house film, so that fits.
In my mid-October Flags of Our Fathers review, I wrote that in light of the weak- ness of Flags, “the Japanese movie is going to save the situation or not. It would be better, Oscar-wise, for it to be released this year instead of just Flags of Our Fathers on 10.20.

“Letters From Iwo Jima may or may not be the movie that turns the situation around, but I know this: Flags of Our Fathers doesn’t have a powerful right hook and doesn’t even box all that well, and even with the aura of this being Clint’s latest and all, I’m not sure its even going to wind up as a Best Picture nominee.
“So let’s hear it from the other team. This year, I mean. Because right now the only thing that will save matters is a Hail Mary pass.”

Right in the middle of last January’s Sundance Film Festival, I wrote that Christopher Quinn‘s God Grew Tired of Us “is the reigning ‘heart’ movie of the Sundance Film Festival.
“It’s a lusciously photographed, exquisitely edited documentary about John, Daniel and Panther — three young Sudanese men, all refugees from their country’s ongoing, utterly devastating civil war — who escape to America to start new lives only to encounter profound longings for home and family, and no small measure of guilt.
“[It stirred] feelings of humanitarian compassion and admiration for these three Sudanese men…indeed, for the indominability of the human spirit. There’s no distributor on board yet, but it can be safely assumed if and when it opens later this year that God Grew Tired of Us will nab a Best Feature Documentary nomination.”
Nope! The Academy’s documentary committee will tomorrow issue a short list for the Best Feature Documentaries, and the word I’m getting about God is “forget it.” Apparently some felt it was too similar to Lost Boys of Sudan, and that Sudan is a better film.
On top of which Sydney Pollack‘s Sketches of Frank Gehry — a wise, unpretentious joy-of-creation doc about a genius architect — may not be on the short list. (A Sony Pictures Classic source hadn’t heard definitively one way or the other, and I wasn’t able to reach Sydney) And The US vs. John Lennon is kaput.
The list isn’t finalized so nobody knows but so far Wordplay isn’t on it either.
The short-listers so far are said to be An Inconvenient Truth, Blindsight, Iraq In Fragments, Deliver Us from Evill, Jesus Camp, Shut Up & Sing (the pretty good Dixie Chicks doc…fine but no great shakes), The War Tapes, The Ground Truth, An Unreasonable Man (the Ralph Nader that was said to be too long, so they cut it down and made it betters) and The War Tapes.

You never know what will happen when something you’ve written make its way into a print ad, so I just want to go on record regarding Darren Aronofsky‘s The Fountain. The WB marketers liked my comment about it being “more than a movie — it’s an experience” and I said fine…with a qualification. I meant “experience” in the Jimi Hendrix sense of the term, I wrote, “so would you guys mind keeping the Jimi Hendrix part? Seriously, that’s what I meant to say. Otherwise the quote makes me sound like Jeffrey Lyons.” I said some equally flattering, somewhat more interesting things last summer.

“Things have been so moribund for so long in the [James] Bond business that it was always going to take some major defibrillation to jerk it back to life,” comments New Yorker critic Anthony Lane in the latest issue. “Die Another Day, the last film, was a gruelling nadir, although the producers would be right to point out that it earned $450 million dollars. This means that the sight of Pierce Brosnan driving an invisible car, though bound to dismay every Bond-revering adult, was catnip to the larger constituency of teenage boys, who were comfortable with a film that felt like a video game.
“What they will make of Casino Royale — no babes, no toyland, and the poker not even online — is anyone√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s guess, but the earnings of the new film will doubtless affect the look, and the casting, of the next. If Craig falters, then I guess it√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s full speed ahead to Chris Rock as 007 and Borat as Blofeld. That would be a shame, because Casino Royale, though half an hour too long, is the first semi-serious stab at Ian Fleming, and at the treacherous terrain that he marked out, since On Her Majesty√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s Secret Service, in 1969.”
Hollywood Elsewhere, which has officially been put on Columbia’s arms-length shitlist (i..e, graciously invited to see Columbia product but only at all-media screenings, which usually happen a week or less from opening day), will finally see Casino Royale tomorrow night. Until then…