“Mark my words, if Eddie Murphy doesn’t win on Oscar night, it’s because someone worked very hard to take it away from him.” — Anne Thompson writing yesterday on Riskybiz blog. In other words, there’s no way a sizable block of voters might decide on their own that Murphy’s Dreamgirls role and his performing of it aren’t that awesome, or that they simply feel more respectful and supportive of Alan Arkin this year? And there’s no way to express doubts about Murphy’s Oscar worthiness without being a hater and a smear-ist?

Barack Obama “is young, brilliant, handsome, charismatic…and, yes, Senator Biden, ‘clean as a whistle,'” Arianna Huffington wrote yesterday. “But the reason why Hollywood has gone ga-ga for Obama can be summed up in one word: casting. In Hollywood, it’s the key to greenlighting a movie; it can make or break one (if you don’t believe me, put someone other than Will Smith in The Pursuit of Happyness and see if it makes over $150 million domestic).

“As much as we may not want to admit it — as much as we may wish that politics was about policies and the perfect health care plan — the truth is unavoidable: casting matters. It matters very much. And it’s not just a question of finding someone with ‘star quality,’ a young, handsome leading man to head your ticket (if that were the case, Brad Pitt would be president — and our first lady a lot more interesting). It’s about blending the right candidate with the right role at the right time for our country.

“For a long time now, America has been besotted with the idea of President as Macho Cowboy. Think John Wayne. Or Ronald Reagan epitomizing the John Wayne archetype. The tough-talking, straight-shooting, no-crap-taking role model has captured the public’s fancy — especially in a post-9/11 world.

“It’s one of the reasons Bush was able to win reelection despite all the massive failures of his first term. He was seen as a brush-clearing, pick-up-driving, big-belt-buckle-wearing, terrorist-ass-kicking kind of guy. The sort of fellow you could have a beer with, as opposed to John Kerry‘s equivocating, wind-surfing, Chardonnay-drinking persona.

“But after six years of Bush’s all-hat-no-cattle leadership, the American public seems ready to abandon the John Wayne fantasy. The question is: to be replaced by what? A Jimmy Stewart-style Everyman? An honest-as-the-day-is-long Gary Cooper type? A Gregory Peck-does-Atticus Finch moralist?

“With his moral sense of social responsibility and his ‘audacity of hope’ optimism, Obama may help the country leave behind John Wayne and embrace Atticus Finch. The man and moment may be made for each other.”

“And after months of debating Cuaron vs. Inarritu vs. Almodovar, Eastwood vs. Eastwood, and Dreamgirls vs. The Departed, the burgeoning Democratic presidential field has given the film community something more to debate than who will win a statuette.

“‘Politics has come back, and with a huge thrill,’ said Irena Medavoy, wife of the movie producer Mike Medavoy, who has vowed to raise $100,000 for Senator Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat, with an event at her home in March. (Her husband is neutral as yet.)

“What√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s more, she said, the fund-raising sprint gives Hollywood people a chance to speak out without fear of a backlash, a window that will eventually close. ‘Right now we can raise money and talk about the issues,’ Ms. Medavoy said. ‘In 2008 we√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢ll have to shut up again, because not only does Hollywood not matter, but you can hurt your candidate.'” — from David Halbfinger‘s N.Y. Times story about the Hollywood fund-raising frenzy among Presidential contenders.

New York‘s Rebecca Milzoff, the current “Intelligencer,” asks, “Is Disney’s magic well dry? Since July, when Walt Disney Pictures made former marketing chief Oren Aviv its head of live-action production, the greenlight process at the studio has virtually ground to a halt.

“Several industry sources say that since Aviv took over, the only project he’s given the go-ahead to is National Treasure 2 — though some say his predecessor, Nina Jacobson, moved it into production, meaning Aviv has greenlit nothing. (Aviv had the idea that became National Treasure; he receives an executive-producer credit on that film and its sequel.)

“‘It’s sort of a sign of the future,’ says one source who worked with Aviv in his marketing days. ‘Movie companies no longer making movies.’ A Disney spokeswoman calls the no-greenlight claim ‘completely untrue,’ insisting that Aviv, who had little prior film-production experience, has greenlit four films during his tenure — though the studio would not name those movies.

“‘When we want the press to know,’ the spokeswoman says, ‘we will announce them.'”

N.Y. Times reporter Sharon Waxman wonders why some of her favorite filmmakers (including some guys she wrote about a couple of years ago in her book “Rebels on the Backlot“) take so many years — five, six, seven — to make movies. David O. Russell, Kimberly Peirce, Darren Aronofsky, Cameron Crowe and Spike Jonze are the ones examined.

Two and a half years ago New Line marketing chief Russell Schwartz made a decision not to release Mike Binder‘s The Upside of Anger — an emotionally affecting adult relationship drama with two exceptional performances from costars Joan Allen and Kevin Costner — during 2004’s Oscar season (i.e., October- November), bumping it instead into a March ’05 release. Anger was well received, but there’s no question it suffered in esteem (and possibly at the box-office) because it wasn’t in the ’04 “derby.”

Now the same thing is happening and then some with Binder’s Reign Over Me, an exceptionally strong adult relationship drama with a surprisingly affecting lead performance by Adam Sandler and a very respectable one by Don Cheadle. Sony marketing execs Jeff Blake and Valerie Van Galder aren’t exactly “doing a Russell Schwartz” — they’ve got their own style. But it boils down to not showing the love, not really, and Blake/Van Galder being either unwilling or unable to sell Reign Over Me with the heart and TLC that it needs.

Reign, which I saw in a nearly completed form late last summer, could have been released during the ’06 derby season but Blake/Van Galder didn’t want Sandler’s performance competing for honors with Will Smith‘s in The Pursuit of Happyness (especially with Sandler and Smith being mainly known for their comic skills), so they bumped it into a 3.9.07 release. And then they bumped it again to 3.23.07.

I’ve been getting indications all along that Sony is a wee bit fearful of press reactions (a lot of critics are down on Sandler no matter what he does, and some have recoiled at Reign‘s anecdotal use of the 9/11 tragedy as a backstory element) and aren’t 100% behind it. I’m not at liberty to divulge one apparent indicator, but I can report that Sony turned down an opening-night slot at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, which could have started the ball rolling with Sandler showing up and chatting on the red carpet, etc.

It just seems to me that Binder’s film is going to get faintly pissed on in the way all smallish adult relationship movies get faintly pissed on these days by big-studio marketing departments. Reign needs a Fox Searchlight or a Picturehouse-style marketing effort, which Sony./Columbia is renowned for not understanding or being the least bit good at.

I am not alone in this view. Sony’s Reign Over Me attitude seems to basically be about hesitancy. There seems to be an underlying attitude of, “Let’s get Sandler to go on Kimmel, SNL, Letterman and O’Brien…and if it dies or trails off after a week or two, we did our best!”

The reasons for this attitude have nothing to do with research screening scores. Not according to what I’ve heard, at least. Average Joes allegedly love Reign Over Me. And there’s no tracking to go by yet. Sony’s half-heartedness is probably tied on some level to Sandler’s yes-maybe passive-aggressive mindset, by which I mean he’s been saying he loves the film and wants to support it but is not really using his clout to make this or that opportunity happen.

Sandler is holding to his usual policy of not doing print interviews, despite his performance (which I think is brilliant) being a kind of career breakthrough for him. He’s playing a guy who’s dealing with extraordinary grief (i.e., the film is actually about a dentist who refuses to deal with his having lost his wife and two daughters in a plane crash), and it’s fascinating the way Sandler uses anger and rage and adolescent withdrawal to pull the character together while looking like Bob Dylan’s twin brother on the Blonde on Blonde cover.

And yet Sandler doesn’t seem to be standing up and saying “let’s really go to the mat with this one.” Like Blake/Van Galder, he seems to be taking a wait-and-see approach.

The underlying feeling seems to be, “We’re hoping for the best, naturally, but it would be simpler and less hard for all of us if we just opened this film in the usual blah-blah way and let whatever’s going to happen, happen. Obviously we don’t want Reign to die — we love Adam, we love Mike — but we don’t really believe in it, not really, and we don’t want to do anything exceptional because we’re not seeing any kind of big buck reception.”

In short, they’re taking the usual big-studio attitude about smallish, sensitive films which is to go through the motions without really feeling the spirit and acting upon it. They obviously get Ghost Rider because the fans get Ghost Rider — a $35 million dollar opening later this month!. — but they’re acting as if they feel stuck with Reign Over Me. No one thing you can put your finger on, but the attitude is there.

I tried to engage Sony marketing execs in a conversation about the Reign campaign, and all I got back was an e-mail saying I would be invited to see a slightly re-edited version during the next round of screenings. I talked to Binder about what I was feeling and he’s not as worked up. His attitude is that he’s very happy with the film, that he’s proud of it (particularly with Sandler and Cheadle’s performances), and that whatever’s going to happen when it opens is in the cards either way, and that he’s got other movies to write and shoot.

Sony is planning Reign Over Me screenings sometime this month. All distributors think of their films as little children, but all children have to make their own way in the world,. If Reign Over Me gets traction on it own when it opens, Sony will of course smile and pop open the champagne…but if it doesn’t find its own traction, c’est la vie.

Steven Spielberg has told N.Y. Times reporter Laura M. Holson that he “insisted, contractually, on autonomy for DreamWorks if I was going to continue under the Paramount and Viacom funding arrangement. So I take exception when the press is contacted by our friends and partners at Paramount, who refer to every DreamWorks picture as a Paramount picture. It is not the case.”

Steven Spielberg, Brad Grey, Stacey Snider

Spielberg and DreamWorks production chief Stacey Snider, who also talked to Holson, are clearly irritated with Paramount chairman Brad Grey‘s tendency to try and take credit for as much stuff as he can. I don’t know if the term “credit hog” fully applies, but Grey does seem to be so inclined And now Spielberg is saying to Grey in a public forum, “Back off, chill…we’re feeling threatened in terms of our identity.”

There’s definitely been an impression since early last year that Paramount is so entwined with DreamWorks that neither fully exists on its own, brand-wise — that they are in fact a new mingled entity called Dreamamount. That’s been my impression, at least. It’s much simpler to just say “Dreamamount” than to sort it all out every single time you write about a movie that DreamWorks has developed and produced but Paramount is distributing, blah, blah.

“The best marriage is when the husband and wife are always open to compromise, and the most important thing is dialogue,” Spielberg tells Holson. “I think this marriage is going to be dependent on a healthy amount of dialogue.”

A video preview of a 33-page film-noir spoof section — “Killers Kill, Dead Men Die” — in the Vanity Fair Hollywood issue, which will reportedly be purchasable on Wednesday. Photos by Annie Leibovitz, conceived and styled by Michael Roberts, and narrated by Ben Shenkman.

I’m truly stunned that the Vanity Fair gang, which is always supposed to be a little bit in front of everyone else, has gone in for something as retro-cheesy as this. The smoky romance of ’40s noir has been aped and re-aped to death over the last 30 to 35 years. Why Liebovitz & Co. would want to play dress-up with an idea that high school talent shows in Iowa, inspired by Steve Martin‘s Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, have probably been fiddling with since the early ’80s is beyond me.

The poseurs are Amy Adams, Ben Affleck, Jessica Alba, Pedro Almodovar, Alec Baldwin, Adam Beach, Jessica Biel, Abigail Breslin, Jennifer Connelly, Penelope Cruz, Judi Dench, Robert De Niro, Robert Downey Jr., Kirsten Dunst, Aaron Eckhart, James Franco, Djimon Hounsou, Jennifer Hudson, Anjelica Huston, Rinko Kikuchi, Diane Lane, Derek Luke, Tobey Maguire, James McAvoy, Helen Mirren, Julianne Moore, Jack Nicholson, Bill Nighy, Ed Norton, Peter O’Toole, Sylvester Stallone, Sharon Stone, Kerry Washington, Naomi Watts, Forest Whitaker, Bruce Willis, Patrick Wilson, Kate Winslet and Evan Rachel Wood.

Oh, and Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Chris Rock and Jack Black are on the cover.

The Colbert Report rips into the forthcoming Oscars, throwing its heaviest artillery at the Mexicans who are taking over this town.