I need to inspect a hard copy of Vanity Fair‘s just-out Hollywood issue with a magnifying glass, but this image from the magazine’s website makes the cover spread look like a piss-poor Photoshop job. If all the principals were snapped at the same time at a single photo session, fine — I stand corrected. But it sure doesn’t look that way. Is “bartender” Robert Duvall the fakest-looking of the lot? No, that would be Mila Kunis — she looks like pure cardboard, shaped by an Exacto knife.

The headline of this N.Y. Times/Michael Cieply piece about the surge of The King’s Speech promises a couple of snippy quotes. It delivers nothing of the kind. There’s only a mention of a faintly xenophobic Variety ad for True Grit.

“Since forming the Weinstein Company with his brother, Bob, in 2005, Harvey Weinstein has struggled to regain the hot hand that made him one of the most successful and feared figures in the independent movie business,” writes Media Equation’s David Carr. “An opportunistic bottom feeder with a knack for resuscitating troubled projects, Mr. Weinstein has become one himself. Here at Sundance and elsewhere, people whispered he was a ghost.

(l.) Harvey Weinstein; (r.) David Carr.

“Turns out that he wasn’t starring in The Sixth Sense. He was playing the role of Jason in Friday the 13th, Part 9: biding his time and then striking again.

“As the Oscar nominations demonstrated, Mr. Weinstein is still capable of spotting value. Many people, including me, look at The King’s Speech and see a by-the-numbers film that’s a fine candidate for BBC TV. Mr. Weinstein saw a high-end buddy movie that humanized its royal subject and then he carefully husbanded the marketing resources of the film, enticing consumers to come out and see the film and reminding the academy voters that the carefully crafted dramedy of manners was worthy of consideration. The nominations surprise last Tuesday provided oxygen to the struggling company.

“Yes, his company is a shell of its former self and his partners are out a lot of money, but there is something to be said for relentlessness, a refusal to acknowledge that you are finished, and the will to just keep hacking away no matter what.

“No wonder Bob has had such good luck producing horror films: he grew up with Jason.”

“By standards of quality, the DGA’s choice of Tom Hooper, director of The King’s Speech, over The Social Network‘s David Fincher is indefensible,” writes Time‘s Richard Corliss.

“Hooper manages his principal players (Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter) expertly enough but forces the supporting actors into caricature. His camera style is stodgy, and his handling of a delicate subject lurid but not invigorating. He’ll do anything — peel onions — to make his audience cry. He commits all the sins of omission and commission that Fincher avoids. And this is one more reason The King’s Speech will triumph on Oscar night: if mediocre work wins in Hollywood’s official circles, it tends to keep on winning.

“When The King’s Speech had its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September, I pointed out the ways in which, by coincidence or cynicism, the movie followed virtually every rule of a Best Picture winner. It’s a biopic of a real person; it is set on or near World War II, with Hitler’s shadow looming; it dramatizes a man’s heroic struggle over some physical or psychological infirmity; and it’s got oodles of those classy British actors.

“Other Academy watchers noticed the same thing: Steve Pond, resident Oscar savant of industry website The Wrap, predicted a Best Picture win before he had even seen it. And it would be odd indeed if the people the movie was designed for — the senior Hollywood professionals who vote on the Oscars — didn’t go for it.”

Oscar Poker #19 is a discussion between myself, Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone and Hollywood & Fine‘s Marshall Fine about the stunning Oscar-race turnaround of the past week. Here’s a non-iTunes link. And here’s a bonus link to the first half-hour of yesterday’s Oscar Blogger podcast.

For whatever reason, watching this clip an hour ago just lifted me out of my King’s Speech melancholia. I’ve been living with it for six days now. It’s been like a chest cold only worse. Now, suddenly, I feel like there’s oxygen in my system again. Go figure.

I don’t like or visit ranker.com, but I have to say I liked Kristin Wong‘s “7 Greatest Bill Murray Stories Ever Told,” partly because I’ve never heard two or three of them.

Every time I re-watch my Bluray of Tony Gilroy‘s Michael Clayton, which seems a bit more masterful each time, I feel a little bit worse about not being more enthusiastic when it first came out 40 months ago. I didn’t put enough feeling into my riffs about it. Calling it “never boring,” “a tense adult thriller about some unsettled and anxious people” and “as seasoned and authentic as this kind of thing can be” didn’t get it. I held back and over-qualified. And I’m sorry.

John Barry‘s Oscar-winning Out of Africa score was his masterpiece, I think. And this orchestral, overture-like version of Barry’s Born Free theme is much more moving than the pop song that everyone knows. Something about the vastness of Africa obviously moved Barry, and this, I think, should be his legacy.

The editing is lumpy and clumsy, and there must be quite a few more scenes and lines of dialogue that could be compared. Has someone somewhere done a better job than this?

True Grit: 1969 vs 2010 from Amfidiusz on Vimeo.

Last night’s Santa Barbara Film Festival Chris Nolan tribute was fine. Nolan was gracious and charming in his usual curt-but-frank sort of way, and moderator Pete Hammond asked lively and intelligent questions. And it was cool when Leonardo DiCaprio (wearing a super-short 1930s haircut for Clint Eastwood‘s J. Edgar, which starts shooting on 2.5) stepped out to present the Modern Master award.

Modern Master award recipient Christopher Nolan (l.), moderator Pete Hammond (r.) at Santa Barbara’s Arlington theatre — Sunday, 1.30, 8:40 pm.

The after-party happened at some ESPN tin-shack honky tonk-type joint on lower State Street. I’m sorry but I’m not very big on places that have extremely polite, 450-pound, seven-foot-tall black guys asking you for your ID at the door. I was half-interested in chatting with Nolan for a few minutes but I got tired of waiting around and and tired in general so I bailed…sorry.

Nolan’s big take-away quote was “it’s best to pursue the movie you want to see the most…one you really want to see yourself.” (Or words to that effect.) So that means Nolan really and truly would like to see another Batman movie? Honestly? And he’d like to see another Superman movie (which he’s producing)? Because I don’t believe him. At all.

Isn’t Nolan making The Dark Knight Rises (which starts filming in May) as a payback to Warner Bros. for their having bankrolled Inception? And isn’t he helping out on Zack Snyder‘s Superman flick because…well, c’mon, really, why would he want to make a Superman film? Why would anyone?

However well made they may turn out to be, Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises and Zack Snyder‘s Superman film are essentially (or conceptually, if you will) bullshit fanboy ComicCon movies that will almost certainly do nothing to profoundly affect the cause of great cinema or accomplish anything other than the selling of tickets.

Chris Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio at the finale of last night’s Santa Barbara Film Festival Modern Master tribute.

One of HE’s broken-record rants is that fanboy superhero movies are a blight and a scourge and a form of cultural cancer, etc. All I can say is that Nolan — obviously one of the most talented and fascinating major-league auteurs of the day — is doing nothing to enhance his resume with these projects. I think he’s basically marking time and doing them for the money.

In a Howard Hawks-ian sense Memento was Nolan’s His Girl Friday or Ball of Fire, Insomnia was his The Big Sleep, The Dark Knight was his Red River and The Dark Knight Rises is going to be his Land of the Pharoahs .

Nolan needs to man up down the road and say no to the money and make some kind of little Memento-ish film again. He has to get off the corporate payroll and reclaim his soul by doing something other than make big expensive fanboy movies…please.

Note: This video of DiCaprio delivering his remarks last night looks pathetic, of course. But I’m posting it because at least you can hear what he said. My regular camera had no battery power so I had to resort to my iPhone.