It means absolutely nothing…okay, it means a little something but next to nothing, really, that seven Gold Derby “Oscarologists” — Deadline‘s Pete Hammond, Fox News‘ Tariq Khan, WENN’s Kevin Lewin, Yahoo Movies‘ Matt McDaniel, the Village Voice‘s Michael Musto and GD’s Tom O’Neil and Paul Sheehan — are intuiting that War Horse is the most likely Best Picture winner.

One of the above might have seen War Horse, maybe, but I’d rather not think about that.

11 Oscar-watching hotshots (myself among them) are standing by The Descendants, and that means something because everyone’s seen it. Eight are picking The Artist and one has chosen Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. And that’s the way it is on Monday, November 14th, 2011.

Robert Weide‘s Woody Allen: A Documentary arrived today. Tomorrow or the next day Criterion Blurays of Twelve Angry Men and Rushmore will be delivered. The L.A. press day for The Descendants is tomorrow afternoon, and the Academy screening that night. Wednesday night is either the Breaking Dawn all-media or my second attempt with Michael Roskam‘s Bullhead. A chat with David Cronenberg and a screening of W.E. are on Thursday; interviews with Olivia Colman and Michael Shannon on Friday.

Tyrannosaur star Olivia Colman is here in Los Angeles for a week, doing interviews and whatnot. Two significant articles about Tyrannnosaur/Colman ran yesterday in the LA Times (written by Mark Olsen) and NY Times (written by Dennis Lim).

Quote #1 from Olsen’s piece: “‘This is not social realism,” director Paddy Considine said at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. “I’m saying, ‘Here are these people. These are their circumstances. There are the worlds they are from, and this is a love story about the people you walk past in the street. Those people you see at the local shop have got a story.'”

And quote #2: “It never felt like we were unsafe — it never felt like we were doing anything other than pretending,” said Colman, best known in Britain as the star of television comedies, on the phone from her home in South London. ‘But I’m very pleased if it looks real and upsetting to people.'”

You want upsetting? I was upset…well, a bit surprised when Colman declined my invitation to bring her to tomorrow night’s Academy screening of The Descendants. I’d envisioned snapping a shot of her with George Clooney. Ah, well.

I’m looking around for a PDF of The Longest Cocktail Party, Jesse Armstrong‘s screenplay adaptation of Richard DiLello’s 1973 book about the gradual breakup of the Beatles from ’68 to ’70, otherwise known as the Apple downswirl period. Michael Winterbottom will reportedly direct it sometime next year. Actors who don’t really look or sound like John, Paul, George and Ringo will most likely be cast.

It was during a Toronto Film Festival gathering for Albert Nobbs that I casually mentioned to costar Janet McTeer that her performance as Hubert the house painter is more commanding and magnetic than Glenn Close‘s titular performance. McTeer stiffened and said nothing, and so I shifted over to another topic. It felt impolite on some level to step on Close’s toes.

But now Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson has flat-out said the unmentionable in a headline: “Janet McTeer Talks Stealing Albert Nobbs from Glenn Close.” So I guess the cat is out of the bag now. The only problem is that you can’t really hear McTeer in Thompson’s two YouTube clips.

Yesterday morning Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, Boxoffice.com’s Phil Contrino and I kicked it all around — Tintin, Oscar-Ratner debacle, Descendants, etc.. Here’s a non-iTunes, stand-alone link.

The new Entertainment Weekly says there are 56 significant films yet to be released this year. By my count there are 37, and if you further whittle the list down by the likelihood of a film (or a creative contributor to that film) being award-worthy, you’re left with 25. Here’s my list with the letters AW signifying award-worthy:

November 16 (1): The Descendants (AW).

November 18 (4): Another Happy Day (AW); The Lie (limited); The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1; Tyrannosaur (AW).

November 23 (6): A Dangerous Method (AW); The Artist (AW); Hugo (AW); The Muppets; My Week with Marilyn (AW); Rampart (AW).

December 2 (6): Coriolanus (NY, LA one- week Oscar run; wider on 1.20.12) (AW); Knuckle; The Lady; Outrage; Shame (AW); Sleeping Beauty.

December 9 (4): Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (AW); W.E. (NY, LA: one-week Oscar run — Feb. 3rd wide); We Need to Talk About Kevin (AW); Young Adult (AW).

December 16 (4): Carnage (AW); Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel; Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol (IMAX; wide on 12.21); Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.

December 21 (4): The Adventures of Tintin; Albert Nobbs (AW), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (AW); Pina (AW).

December 23 (2): In the Land of Blood & Honey (AW); We Bought a Zoo (AW…maybe…that Disney-family vibe is worrisome).

December 25 (2): Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (wide on 1.20) (AW); War Horse (AW).

December 28 (1): Pariah (AW).

December 30 (2): A Separation (AW); The Iron Lady (AW).

December TBA (1): The Flowers of War (possibly AW).

Comic-book illustrator and noir-style film director Frank Miller has dug himself a grave and is now lying flat in the mud and waiting for the dirt. I always thought Miller was an aesthetic lightweight and a sleazy masturbatory noir fetishist, but now that he’s shown himself to be a Merle Haggard-style reactionary in terms of his views on the Occupy movement, he’s a dead man.

Frank Miller

The statement that has finished Miller off is contained in a week-old (11.7) posting on his personal blog. (Thanks to TheWrap‘s Lew Harris for passing it along.] He states that “al-Qaeda and Islamicism must be getting a dark chuckle, if not an outright horselaugh, out of [the] vain, childish, self-destructive spectacle” that is, in Miller’s view, the Occupy movement. Is everyone clear on that? The Occupy-ers are giving aid and comfort to Islamic terrorists.

And I love the intellectual eruditon contained in Miller’s statement that the Occupy protests can’t be called a movement “unless the word ‘bowel’ is attached.”

The man is an idiot. A snarling, bearded, fedora-wearing, front-porch primitive. Case closed.

“Everybody’s been too damn polite about this nonsense,” Miller’s 11.7 post began.

“The Occupy movement, whether displaying itself on Wall Street or in the streets of Oakland (which has, with unspeakable cowardice, embraced it) is anything but an exercise of our blessed First Amendment. Occupy is nothing but a pack of louts, thieves, and rapists, an unruly mob, fed by Woodstock-era nostalgia and putrid false righteousness. These clowns can do nothing but harm America.

“Occupy is nothing short of a clumsy, poorly-expressed attempt at anarchy, to the extent that the ‘movement’ — HAH! Some movement, except if the word ‘bowel’ is attached — is anything more than an ugly fashion statement by a bunch of iPhone and iPad-wielding spoiled brats who should stop getting in the way of working people and find jobs for themselves.

“This is no popular uprising. This is garbage. And goodness knows they’re spewing their garbage – both politically and physically – every which way they can find.

“Wake up, pond scum. America is at war against a ruthless enemy.

“Maybe, between bouts of self-pity and all the other tasty tidbits of narcissism you’ve been served up in your sheltered, comfy little worlds, you’ve heard terms like al-Qaeda and Islamicism.

“And this enemy of mine — not of yours, apparently — must be getting a dark chuckle, if not an outright horselaugh — out of your vain, childish, self-destructive spectacle.

“In the name of decency, go home to your parents, you losers. Go back to your mommas’ basements and play with your Lords Of Warcraft. Or better yet, enlist for the real thing. Maybe our military could whip some of you into shape.

“They might not let you babies keep your iPhones, though. Try to soldier on.

“Schmucks.

“FM”

I was too lazy (i.e., way too lazy) over the weekend to post David Ehrenstein‘s mubi.com praising of Angelina Jolie‘s In The Land of Blood and Honey (Film District, 12.23). But here it is with edits:

“Beyond Gobsmacked by In the Land of Blood and Honey, which I saw at a sneak preview yesterday [i.e., presumably Friday] afternoon. It’s a stark and truly shocking drama of the Bosnian Civil War of the 1990’s. This was genocide on a massive scale that was rigorously ignored by the west. At one point we hear Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeline Albright saying the U.S. ‘didn’t have a dog in this fight.’ Ugh!

“What we see here is the story of what happened ot a particular woman, played by an actress I’ve never seen or heard of before — Zana Marjanovic, who is absolutely world-class. So is her leading man Goran Kostic.

“Kostic plays a Bosnian soldier who is romancing Marjanovic at a dance in the opening scene. Then a bomb goes off. Months pass and a convoy arrives at our heroine’s apartment block. Everyone is ordered out. All the men are executed. The belongings of all the women are confiscated. Anyone who balks is shot in the head. Several of the women are chosen to be raped (anally, of course) in front of their friends. This is all about degradation and humiliation.

“The soldier our heroine knew is now a commander. He discovers she’s been rounded up and takes her aside to use her as his own personal servant. He renews their relationship on a romantic level — which she seems to accept. But what she feels is in this situation beside the point as she’s a prisoner.

“Kostic’s father, played by Rade Serbedzija (the only name actor in the cast, best recalled as the costume chop owner in Eyes Wide Shut) insists she’s nothing more than a ‘Muslim whore’ and that his son ‘should finish with this.’

“Needless to say it ends badly for all. But that’s not the point of the film. The point is to expose MASS GENOCIDE that was DELIBERATELY IGNORED. Kind of like the way Penn State ignored child rape.

“And now the Big News. This film was written and directed by Angelina Jolie.

“I always knew she had a lot on the ball, especially from what Don Bachardy has told me about her. But never to this extent. The most glamorous woman in the world is As Serious As A Heart Attack. She is a Major Filmmaker at the very start of what I expect will be a long career.

“Not to be missed under any circumstances.”

The early word on Phyllida Lloyd‘s The Iron Lady (Weinstein Co., 12.30), fortified to some extent by that late-summer teaser, was that it had a “light” tone, or that the film itself skirted serious drama. I’m not getting that from the trailer. I’m getting a story about a somewhat older woman who defied and defeated sexist attitudes about her potential.

“That’s all fine,” The Guardian‘s Stuart Jeffries wrote many months ago, “but that narrative trajectory risks skewing the story. This was not just a time of one woman’s assault on a male bastion, but an era of rage about what Thatcher, economy destroyer and warmonger, was doing to Britain.

“This rage was captured in two songs by Elvis Costello from that time — ‘Shipbuilding’ (‘Within weeks they’ll be reopening the shipyards/And notifying the next of kin’) and his pre-obit for Thatcher, ‘Tramp the Dirt Down’ (‘When they finally put you in the ground/I’ll stand on your grave and tramp the dirt down”).

“It will be a shame if The Iron Lady overlooks that deep anger in favor of exclusive focus on Thatcher as a woman triumphing against the odds.

“Lloyd’s film will deal with the 17 days before the Falklands war at a time when Thatcher was deeply unpopular. In 1982, Britain was beset by racially inflected inner-city riots and soaring unemployment, and Labor looked like an electoral dead cert. But war changed Thatcher’s fortunes decisively.

“Did she really need to send a taskforce to the other end of the world to defend British sovereignty? Were 1,000 war dead sacrificed to make her electable? We don’t know yet if the film will tackle these questions.

“Doubtless, though, The Iron Lady will meditate on what Joseph Conrad wrote: ‘Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.'”