I was talking last night to a guy who’s right in the awards-season thick of things, and he says that The Theory of Everything‘s Eddie Redmayne, Mr. Cuddly Bunny, is coming on in the Best Actor race strong while Birdman‘s Michael Keaton, who’s been at the top of my list since Telluride…well, he won’t play along with the narrative that journalists and columnists want him to follow. Academy members vote for the narrative behind the performance and the campaign as much as for the performance. Dallas Buyer’s Club Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey won for his McConnaissance narrative (i.e., he saved himself from a lifetime of Kate Hudson romcoms by manning up and doing quality work), which he totally played along with. The Keaton narrative (which I don’t need to hear because it’s partly bullshit) is that his Birdman character, Riggan Thomson, obviously reflects Keaton’s own career history. But at every juncture, my guy says, Keaton has been saying “naah, not really…I just took some time off to raise my kids on top of which Riggan is really based on Inarritu and his feelings about Hollywood and superhero movies and how it feels to be 50,” which is true but not entirely. “Thick of things” guy is saying that whatever the truth of it, the smart play for Keaton would be to just go along with the simplistic b.s. narrative and leave Inarritu out of the equation in this context. Just say “yeah, it’s more or less me up there…I am or was Riggan Thomson, and now I’ve been saved by Birdman.” But he won’t do that, which is why Redmayne might (I say “might”) be surging ahead. I’m posting this not as an indication of agreement (I think Keaton is totally cool on all fronts) but as a friendly heads-up to Fox Searchlight. Don’t punish me for being the messenger.

Boy, those CG de-aging techniques have gotten better and better. Nightcrawler star Jake Gyllenhaal, 34, looks 27 years old in this trailer. Oh, wait…he was 27 when David O. Russell‘s Nailed was shot six and a half years ago. The Arrow Films release is now titled Accidental Love. In early November 2014 is was called Politics of Love, or so Screen Daily‘s Ian Sandwell reported. Pic will pop in England sometime soon. Which means, of course, that sooner or later it’ll stream in the States. Russell is probably pissed about this but I can’t say I’m not curious. I realize it probably doesn’t work but it can’t be a total wipe-out. Russell is too sharp, too exacting.

Originally posted in April 2009: Here’s a story about working for the Del Monte bean and pea plant in Markesan, Wisconsin. Fresh out of Wilton high school, five or six of us drove out to America’s heartland to earn a little money and have an adventure. It was fairly miserable work all around. Back-breaking, tedious, soul-killing. We wound up working different jobs and different shifts — pushing cans, operating fork lifts, end-of-shift cleanup, hosing down freshly picked peas and beans. Migrants did the actual picking in the fields.

For a week or two some of us were working the 8 am to 5 pm shift. We’d shower, eat and head out for a night of beer-drinking at a local tavern. We’d sometimes go to a place in Fond du Lac called the Brat Hut. And when we got back to the plant around midnight or so we got into a habit — for a couple of weeks, I mean — of taking out our rage at Del Monte.

A friend worked the evening shift atop a wooden chimney-like structure. His job was to clean freshly-picked beans and peas. Every night they were unloaded off trucks and sent up to his area on electrically-powered conveyor belts set at a 45 degree angle. The vegetables were then dropped into huge spinning cylindrical containers made of chicken wire. Our friend operated sprayers that bathed them in steaming-hot water.

The beans and peas were then dropped into tall metal chutes that fed them straight into a stream of open-topped, label-free cans about 20 or 25 feet below — constantly moving, spotless and gleaming. It would take no more than a second or two to fill up each can, maybe less. It went on like this all night, every night, and with a fairly deafening sound.

I’ve stayed twice in Park City’s Yarrow Hotel. The semi-spacious rooms are the size of any other room in any other moderately upscale hotel. But the place is clean and cozy and well-tended, and of course well located for anyone running around the Sundance Film Festival. But nearly $2500 and change for five days? The Creative Coalition guys are calling this a discounted rate. Tony Montana‘s response: “Thass 500 bocks a night, mang.” My place, the Park Regency, is about 3/4 of a mile south of the Yarrow, and just as nice in terms of the usual comforts. And bigger. A large one-bedroom apartment with bunk beds in an alcove for week #1 (1.17 through 1.24) and a smaller one-bedroom apartment for week #2 (1.24 through 1.30) for $1800 for two weeks, or $900 per week. The TCC post is wrong, by the way. A check-in on Thursday, 1.22 with a check-out on Sunday, 1.25 = three nights.

For at least the last six months of 2014 many Oscar know-it-alls had Angelina Jolie‘s Unbroken right at the top of their likely Best Picture lists. The vast majority of shepherd-following Gurus and Gold Derby-ites sang the tune in four-part harmony…”Unbroken, Unbroken, Unbroken, Unbroken…we can’t wait to fall to our knees and celebrate the wonder of Angie!” Well, this morning’s PGA nomination snub was a very sobering harbinger, I’m afraid. Unbroken is now seriously diminished if not down for the count in the Best Picture contest, and even Fandango‘s Dave Karger — one of Angie’s most loyal and steadfast soldiers — has thrown in the towel. It now seems fair to take a little bow for expressing reservations about this film ten and a half months ago, or on 2.27.14. I was just going on a hunch, a whiff of an aroma to come…but damned if what I wrote then isn’t a pretty good summary of what many people with taste (i.e., not those who offer opinions to CinemaScore) have been saying since Unbroken opened a week and a half ago. I can sense the drift of things months in advance. I’ve always had this ability. It’s why I’m good with a column like this.

Last night I watched an Amazon instant-download high-def version of Lewis Milestone‘s Pork Chop Hill (’59). The monchrome tonalities couldn’t have been richer and the focus was razor sharp, but it was cropped at 1.78:1. I didn’t like that because I know there was plenty of visual material above and below the cleaver lines, and that Pork Chop Hill has been shown previously at 1.66:1. So last night I ordered the 2012 Region 2 French Bluray which delivers a 1.66:1 image. I’m what you might call a 1.66 loyalist, and this is how I handle things when push comes to shove. There’s an Olive Film Bluray coming out on 1.27 that uses a 1.85:1 crop, according to online info.

(l.) Olive Films Bluray of Pork Chop Hill, streeting on 1.27.15 in 1.85:1 aspect ratio; (r.) Filmedia Bluray, released in France in March 2012 in 1.66:1 a.r.

At the end of the day, or more precisely on the morning of Thursday, January 15, Selma might squeak by with a Best Picture nomination. Perhaps a last-minute sympathy surge will manifest from Academy members who were shocked it didn’t make the PGA’s Zanuck nominee list. But after this morning’s stunning PGA exclusion, I think the game is pretty much over. Selma screeners were slow in arriving when they arrived at all, the “disparagement of LBJ’s role” meme stuck to the wall, and some people apparently decided that they didn’t want to do the African-American suffering thing two years in a row after 12 Years A Slave. The current situation, in the wake of the PGA snub, is that Selma has no chance to win the Best Picture Oscar, and is apparently in some kind of struggle to even be nominated. But it might slip in. Who knows?

How long does it take a DVD duplication facility to crank out thousands of discs and pop them into jackets, and how time-consuming is the mailing process after that? It shouldn’t take that long, should it? I’m hearing it was pretty much DuVernay’s fault for taking a long while to finish post-production despite a nearly complete version (sans closing credits) showing at AFI Fest on November 11th. (On 12.5 Paramount’s Lea Yardum told BFCA members that Selma “has just recently been finalized…therefore we are unable to send you screeners.”) And I don’t know whose responsibility it would be except Paramount’s for taking as long as it did to send out Selma screeners, and for sending them only to Academy members when they were finally ready.

Balloting for Academy nominations closes on Thursday at 5 pm so DuVernay snagging (or not snagging) a DGA nomination on Tuesday, 1.13, won’t mean a thing in terms of Oscar noms. What matters, as In Contention‘s Kris Tapley pointed out this morning, is that four industry groups have announced nominations so far this year: SAG, ACE, ADG (i.e., Art Directors Guild) and the PGA. And only five films have been recognized by all four — Birdman, Gone Girl, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Imitation Game and Nightcrawler. Selma has been hyped to heaven by its Oscar-blogging friends, but when push has come to shove it has not been cutting the mustard.

There has to be some frowning and head-scratching going on this morning by strategists working for Angelina Jolie‘s Unbroken and particularly Ava DuVernay ‘s Selma as both are missing in the just-announced list of nominees for the Producers Guild of America’s Darryl F. Zanuck Award for best feature film. A Zanuck nom is regarded as a reliable Oscar bellwether — a reflection of general industry sentiments. The final lap of last year’s Best Picture battle was an either-or between 12 Years A Slave and Gravity, and this resulted in a PGA tie with both films winning half a Zanuck.

The nominees are American Sniper (what?), Birdman, Boyhood (of course), Foxcatcher (bounce-back from Schultz tirade), Gone Girl, Grand Budapest Hotel, The Imitation Game, Nightcrawler, The Theory of Everything and Whiplash. A hearty back-pat for Nightcrawler and director-writer Dan Gilroy! And Gone Girl is back in the arena. And all hail Damian Chazelle‘s Whiplash.

The Selma exclusion is the biggest shocker. The civil-rights period drama is currently regarded as a likely Best Picture nominee by nearly all of the Oscar season know-it-alls (including me, despite my belief that it’s not a great film but a good one). So right now these people — particularly Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, who’s been one of the film’s biggest supporters — have some ‘splainin’ to do.

My guess is that recent negative reports about Selma having mischaracterized President Lyndon Johnson‘s attitude and record about the Voting Rights Act of 1965 are a factor in its absence. Too many reliable sources said that DuVernay got it wrong on this matter. The question is whether or not the PGA nominations will influence other voting bodies.

Josh Gad is apparently on-board to play Roger Ebert in Russ & Roger Go Beyond, a fact-based comedy about the making of Beyond The Valley of the Dolls, for which the 27 year-old Ebert wrote the absurdist screenplay under the tutelage of softcore producer Russ Meyer (Will Ferrell). 20th Century Fox financed and distributed the mind-bending, mildly awful sex farce about an all-girl rock band, opening it on 6.17.70.

Soft-porn producer Russ Meyer, Chicago Sun Times film critic Roger Ebert sometime in ’69 or ’70.

I was told about Gad’s casting by producer David Permut at today’s Variety brunch at the Parker Palm Springs. There was an earlier idea to cast Jonah Hill as Ebert, Permut told me a few months back, but that didn’t pan out. Hill has a thoughtful, whip-smart air about him — he would’ve been perfect. Ebert’s widow Chaz Ebert was at the same brunch, but had left by the time I heard about the Gad casting. I wonder what she thinks about her late film-critic husband being played by a guy who always seems to play hyper obsessives who can’t hold it in.

I was so taken aback by the notion of the geeky-mannered Gad playing the brilliant, urbane, smoothly-phrased Ebert that I forgot to ask Permut who will direct.

Russ & Roger Go Beyond has been described in Variety and Deadline stories as an upcoming indie since mid-2014. The screenplay has been written by Emmy winner Christopher Cluess.

From 11 am to 1 pm Hollywood Elsewhere attended Variety’s Creative Impact Awards and 10 Directors to Watch Brunch at the Parker Palm Springs. Totally relaxing…as pleasant and cheerful as this kind of thing gets. It was great shooting the breeze with The Judge costar Robert Duvall, Nightcrawler director-writer Dan Gilroy, Selma director Ava DuVernay, Leviathan director Andrey Zvyginstsev, Top Five director-star Chris Rock, Wild Tales director Damian Szifron, Sony Pictures Classics co-president Michael Barker, and Variety brunch host Steven Gaydos. And to discreetly gawk at Still Alice star (and almost-certain Best Actress Oscar winner) Julianne Moore, Foxcatcher costar Steve Carell and Boyhood director Richard Linklater.

(l. to r.) Wild Tales director-writer Damian Szifron, The Judge costar and likely Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominee Robert Duvall, Leviathan director Andrey Zvyagintsev at Variety‘s Palm Spring Film Festival brunch at the Parker Palm Springs.

(l.) Boyhood director Richard Linklater, (r.) Top Five director-star Chris Rock near end of ceremony.

Several attendees posing for a group shot. Don’t ask me to identity them all but obviously Chris Rock and Steve Carell are standing toward the left.

“At this point, everyone wants to know which film is going to win Best Picture,” MCN’s David Poland has written. “Anyone who tells you they know the answer is pulling their own chain. [But] it is looking more and more like Boyhood vs Imitation/Theory with the latter two splitting, allowing Boyhood to win. Birdman is divisive, especially amongst older voters.” Particularly older women, Poland neglects to mention. “There are a number of reasons why Selma is unlikely to win and two years in a row of ‘historical dramas focused on race’ is amongst them, whether we like it or not. Grand Budapest is a bit too light and magical and Whiplash is too thin, however entertaining. [And] Nightcrawler is just too brutal to win.”

I’m still waiting for a definitive sign that Boyhood is something more than a critics’ film, or more precisely a Steve Pond film. I’m not saying it isn’t that. Richard Linklater‘s Best Director campaign may indeed result in a win, but somebody needs to point out the solid indicators that say Boyhood‘s popularity is as deep and wide as the Jordan river. As much as I like and truly respect that film, I’m honestly questioning — unsure of — its strength amongst the fartists.