Taken following this afternoon’s screenwriter’s panel at Santa Barbara’s Lobero Theatre. Moderated by Variety‘s Anne Thompson, the guests were Dustin Lance Black (Milk), Tom McCarthy (The Visitor), Robert Knott (The Appaloosa) and Andrew Stanton (Wall*E).

Dustin Lance Black

Tom McCarthy

I have commentary to share plus a video clip to show, but I have to get to another event. I might put them up later tonight; more likely early tomorrow.

In today’s report about the apparent death of the Seth Rogen Green Hornet project, Hitfix’s Drew McWeeny declines to answer or even ask “why,” even on a speculative basis.

All he says, boiled down, is that The Green Hornet “has gone onto life-support at Sony” and that there’s “a good chance the studio’s going to kick the plug out any moment now.”

I don’t know diddly squat but I can speculate on a reason. The screenplay of The Green Hornet, written by the unequivocally smart-ass, comedically inclined Rogen and Evan Goldberg, never found the right balance between the demands of a geek-friendly superhero flick (which always includes a serious-sincere current of geek emotion) and the humor element that these two guys live for and what their careers are based upon.

This may not be why the Hornet movie is all but dead, but at least it’s something to kick around.

“Ever since Stephen Chow started to waffle about his participation in the film, I’ve been hearing rumors that there were major hesitations at Sony,” McWeeney writes. “Then at Sundance, I heard several people say that the film was off completely. I spoke this afternoon with a source close to the film, and while they didn’t call it completely dead, they did say it is ‘highly unlikely’ that the film will shoot in 2009 at all.”

“Underworld…vampires, Bill Nighy, naah. Hotel for Dogs…great title, kids movie, naah. Already seen The Wrestler, good downer flick, hope Mickey wins. Mall Cop is a slob comedy…nope. Didn’t I read somewhere that Dustin Hoffman gives his best performance in Harvey since…I don’t know, a really long time? S’matter? You just wanna eat something? Sure? Fine.”

I have a solution for the obviously flawed Academy Awards’ nomination process. We all know the line about what an honor it is to be nominated by your peers, but we also know that the motives and taste buds of a certain sector of the Academy — i.e., the sentimentalists, the cheap-seaters, the over-the-hill gang — have resulted in various embarassments.

The geezer-homophobia bloc that took down Brokeback Mountain is the most infamous example. Two current manifestations are the Best Actor nominating of Brad Pitt for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and the Best Actress nomination-snubbing of Happy-Go-Lucky‘s Sally Hawkins.

One way to fix this would be to monitor and, when necessary, disenfranchise those Academy members who’ve proven repeatedly to have exhibited bad or atrocious taste, but that would just provoke a rebellion from defenders of the over-70 set and everyone asking what’s “bad taste?” and shouts of “no elitism!”

A more practical and political solution would be to create a board of elite taste-filter types — a revolving team of accomplished industry veterans who “know better” by virtue of being in the game and currently productive. These people would have ultimate deciding power over nominations and winners.

The concept of elite taste filter boards is not new. Similar thinking led to the creation of the Electoral College in the late 18th Century and last year to the creation of Mark Johnson‘s elite Foreign Language Film board that gives them trump power over the ninnies who refused to short-list 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.

This elite group could, when the situation warrants, dismiss and counter-act certain bad-taste nominations when they go too far. To me this makes sense. The rank-and-file can’t be and shouldn’t be trusted to do the right thing. They will always do the wrong thing and sometimes make decisions that result in gravy stains upon the Academy’s reputation. One-man, one-vote democracy is a shaky enough system in the political arena, but it can’t work when it comes to recognizing and voting for serious artistic achievement.

HE reader Richard Huffman finds it very odd, as I do, that the Academy denied Happy-Go-Lucky‘s Sally Hawkins a Best Actress nomination. You’d think someone who won a Best Actress trophy last month from the Los Angeles and New York film critics as well as a Best Comedy/Muscial actress Golden Globe award would have at least warranted a nomination, for heaven’s sake. But no — not even that.

What happened?

“I’ve only scanned the awards of the last eight years, but every single winner of Best Actress in a Drama, or in a Musical/Comedy at the Golden Globes has been guaranteed an Oscar nod until this year,” Hufman says. “Renee Zellwegger won a Musical/Comedy Golden Globe in ’01 for Nurse Betty but didn’t prevail with the Academy; ditto for Madonna in ’97 — Comedy/Musical Golden Globe for her performance in Evita, but zip from the Academy.”

The difference is that Hawkins’s Happy-Go-Lucky performance was (no offense to Zellweger or Madonna) of a much higher calibre. The NYFCC and LAFCA Best Actress awards speak to that; ditto the Silver Bear she won in Berlin, the Best Actress award from the Boston Society of Film Critics and Satellite Award for Best Actress in a Comedy/Musical.

The only theory I can figure is that Academy voters mainly vote for primary-color performances in bigger budget mainstream films, but will sometimes, out of the goodness in their hearts, vote for one quirky, oddball, indie-ish performance out of the five. The actress who took this year’s indie nomination was Frozen River‘s Melissa Leo, so that left Hawkins out.

Hawkins should have taken the Angelina Jolie/Changeling slot. I’m sure I’m not the only one who suspects that Jolie (who, don;t mistake, gave a strong and respectable performance in Clint Eastwood‘s period film) was nominated for her marquee value.

“He was just a very smooth, cool, laidback dancer. He was just like a normal person,” Victoria Lucas, 14, told People‘s Sandra Sobieraj Westfall and Stephen M. Silverman three or four days ago. “I said to him, ‘Let’s start the Bump,’ and he was like, ‘Well, okay!’ It was the only dance move I knew that was good for TV. We both had the basic movement going on and it just sort of fell into place. He’s just an all-American good dancer. I hope I find a boy like that!”