“There are tons of people [who] hate me and hate my movies. But hey, my movies have made a lot of money, two-something billion dollars. That’s a lot of tickets. They said that I wrecked cinema. They said that I cut too fast and now you see it in movies everywhere. It’s easy to bash a movie but until they know hard it is to actually make one. Do I take pride in people knowing my style? I think it’s nice people know a director has a style. And you can reinvent yourself too.” — Michael Bay talking to MTV.com’s Josh Horowitz about Transformers.

I couldn’t find enough Academy people to talk about who’s going to win Best Picture, but…but nothing. Nobody knows anything and that includes me. If anyone’s predicting anything, they’re saying it’s Babel because (a) it has the highest number of prestige nominations (i.e., seven), (b) because the lack of both a directing and an editing nomination for Little Miss Sunshine suggests a Best Picture weakness, and (c) because the ceremonial Martin Scorsese Best Director bequeathing is considered sufficient for The Departed.

Variety critic Todd McCarthy has suggested that the key target audience for Zack Snyder‘s 300 (Warner Bros., 3.9) may be a bit broader than just your standard comic-book geek-fanboy action crowd. Warner Bros. would do well, he’s essentially saying, to launch a concurrent ad campaign with The Advocate and other gay-friendly publications.

“Possibly nowhere outside of gay porn have so many broad shoulders, bulging biceps and ripped torsos been seen onscreen as in 300,” McCarthy writes, adding that this “will generate a certain bonus audience of its own. It’s not even certain Steve Reeves, the original Hercules, would have made the grade here. But then, this is Sparta, the Greek city-state where boys were separated from their families at age 7 to undergo years of training to forge a population of soldiers unmatched in strength, bravery and bloodlust.”

Right after the words “at age 7” I was expecting to read “and soon after had to be separated from older males with a crowbar” but nope.

The question, of course, is who’s the main closet case among the 300 auteurs? Snyder is the easiest guy to point to, but what about Frank Miller? What other films have been marketed as action-genre films aimed at straight males but in fact had a simultaneous homoerotic appeal to gays? Spartacus was the first sword- and-sandal pic to tap into this (47 years ago!) with the “snails and oysters” scene between Laurence Olivier and Tony Curtis.

N.Y. Post critic Lou Lumenick has just posted a link to the first Ghost Rider review, run by the Providence Journal. It’s a somewhat negative take from L.A. Daily News critic Bob Strauss, although he commends Nic Cage for giving “a full-blown oddball performance…more Vampire’s Kiss than National Treasure..a witty/nutso acting experiment from beginning to end.” Strauss’s review apparently wasn’t supposed to surface until 1 a.m, or eight and a half hours from now. Big deal. As if reviews matter.

I could get back into running dialogue quizzes with sound files. I quit doing it before because I couldn’t hack transcribing the dialogue and then having to format it. Here’s the first one — I’ve made it deliberately easy. It won’t stay this way.

Chris Cooper‘s diseased military dad in American Beauty was acid-intense, his Oscar-winning role in Adaptation was puckish and surly in all kinds of infectious ways, and his Alvin Dewey portrayal in Capote felt completely authentic. But his Breach performance as real-life FBI agent Robert Hanssen, a traitor who sold secrets to the Soviets for more than a dozen years, may be the most fascinating thing he’s ever done.

It sure felt that way to me during Tuesday night’s screening at Mann’s Chinese. Cooper takes a twisted uptight wackjob and turns him into a total “ride.” I was utterly riveted by his rigid, glaring eyes and the way his FBI-man air of impenetrability occasionally dissolves into faint twitchiness.

Cooper “carries himself with a rod-stiff posture and beetlelike precision, his face wrinkled into a permanent scowl and his voice lowered into a disagreeable bark,” writes L.A. Weekly critic Scott Foundas. “A dyed-in-the-wool agency man and devout Opus Dei Catholic, Hanssen devotes himself to work, family and God with the same ascetic rigor, sinning by night and begging forgiveness by day.

“And Cooper is the kind of actor who gets so deeply under the skin of a character that you stop thinking about a performer in a role and instead see only Hanssen and the high drama he was playing out for the better part of his career. Here is one of the best American actors in one of his best parts.”

The news about Aaron Eckhart playing Harvey Dent/Two Face in Chris Nolan‘s The Dark Knight has me hyperventilating. Tommy Lee Jones played the character in the reviled Batman Forever. Pic will see the return of Christian Bale, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Gary Oldman. And of course, Heath Ledger will play the Joker.

The Harvey Dent casting was probably sealed when Eckhardt (r.) posed with Gina Gershon and director-writer Neil Labute at the relatively recent Three Amigos party.

Amazing — Sony Pictures is actually doing something to help get the word out on Mike Binder‘s Reign Over Me (Columbia, 3.23.07).

“Maybe next year only 75% of the contending films will hire the Dart Group, suddenly aware that only Cynthia Swartz‘s favorite (Crash, The Queen) will actually get a Best Picture nod out of the hire. Maybe Tony Angellotti will get a reputation for good-mouthing movies. Perhaps Michele Robertson will have a karma reversal, though I don’t know why she would. Maybe Terry Press will be the hot new consultant in town, a Jet to the Dartees’ Sharks. Could Lisa Taback push Harvey or Sony back into the Oscar winner’s circle? Perhaps Karen Fried will see what it’s like when Focus actually has a movie that could work. Could Murray Weissman, Ronni Chasen and Nadia Bronson do anything but keep delivering for their myriad clients? Will Block-Korenbrot and MPRM and BWR merge to make MMBBRKWRR?” — from David Poland‘s latest Oscar assessment column/chart, Poland’s reiterating his animus toward Tony Angelotti, whom I regard as one of the most reasonable and fair-minded Oscar strategists around (i.e., given what the game is and the way you need to play it), is strange.

Tyler Perry’s Daddy’s Little Girls earned about $4.5 million yesterday, about $400,000 ahead of Music and Lyrics despite the Hugh Grant-Drew Barrymore film being in more theatres. The Perry film averaged about $2150 a print while the per-screen average for Music and Lyrics (which earned $4.1 milion) was about $1405.

Reuters reporter Sue Zeidler writes that Eddie Murphy “has been loved, hated and ignored but now he is back with Holly- wood heavyweights rallying around him for his career-redefining turn in Dreamgirls, a role that may win him an Oscar.”

In support of this assertion she runs friendly-to-Eddie statements from (a) DreamWorks honcho Jeffrey Katzenberg (an obviously biased source who ironically provided the definitive dynamite-plunger quote about Murphy not being interesting in testing his acting abilities, i.e., “That’s just not who Eddie is“), (b) film critic and historian Leonard Maltin (who merely observes that Murphy has been “laughing all the way to the bank for years” and that “some performers are immune to criticism and [Murphy] may be one of them”), and Dreamgirls director Bill Condon (“I love working with [Murphy] because he’s so terrific”).

Murphy may well win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor on 2.25.07, but will somebody please tell me how running supportive quotes from the afore-mentioned trio provides convincing proof that “Hollywood heavyweights are rallying around him”?

Katzenberg “dismissed suggestions Murphy was disliked or difficult,” Zeidler reports. “People trash people out of envy and self interest. Eddie Murphy has been in this business for over 25 years. The question is why now are some people anonymously blogging lies about him and trying to hurt him?” Anonymously? Who’s anonymous? And please explain, Jeffrey, what lies have been put forth in my anti-Eddie postings?

It’s not a lie, for instance, that Murphy once saw himself as a half-serious actor who might expand his talents by starring in a film adaptation of August Wilson‘s Fences. He really did do that, and he really did blow the project off when it came time to fish or cut bait. (Perhaps it was poorly written?) A guy who’s never once laid it on the line, arts gratia artis, and who’s opted time and again for the opportunity to earn some low-rent big bucks makes Murphy, in my book, a true Hollywood beelzebub — the ultimate King Turd.

“Peter O’Toole is a perfect example of the mysterious, almost cruelly diabolical ways in which Oscar works,” writes Hollywood Wiretap‘s Pete Hammond. “A couple of people have asked us recently how it was possible that he has never have won. The answer is that each year he’s been nominated he’s had the dumb luck to be defeated by incredibly formidable, unbeatable performances.

“In 1962 he was up against Gregory Peck‘s Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird. In ’64, against Rex Harrison‘s Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady. In ’69, he faced John Wayne‘s Rooster Cogburn in True Grit. In ’72 it was Marlon Brando’s Vito Corleone in The Godfather. In ’80 he was up against Robert De Niro‘s Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull. And now he’s facing Forest Whitaker‘s Idi Amin Dada.”