You’d never know it from their website, but I think/trust/have been told that the National Board of Review crew will decide their annual movie awards slate on Wednesday, 12.3 The LA Film Critics Association (LAFCA) site says they’ll announce their choices on Tuesday, 12.9. (Wait, don’t they usually vote on a Saturday? I was expecting them to vote on Saturday, 12.6.) And then the New York Film Critics Circle will vote on Wednesday, 12.10.

I’m rooting for a Revolutionary Road upset over Slumdog Millionaire from either LAFCA or NYFCC. Not because I’m against Danny Boyle‘s film in any way. I just think Sam Mendes‘ film needs a little advance traction to get rolling with the L.A. pueriles who are saying they don’t care for it because it’s too morose. I’m telling you, that Death of a Salesman play is such a downer — what a loser! And all those Shakespearean tragedies besides…God! Can’t we have a little hope and happiness in our lives, something to feel good about with the economy being the way it is?

I guess I can imagine Milk taking it in Los Angeles to symbolically refute the passage of Proposition 8. Maybe.

That 11.27 projection about Twilight making $55 million over the five-day Thanksgiving holiday and $37.5 million for the three-day weekend came from a solid estimator, but Twilight‘s business fell off after Wednesday and now it’s going to come in second to Four Christmases with a significantly smaller take. Here are the latest numbers:

The three-day on Four Chistmases is $31.5 million, and the five day will be $46.5 milllion. Twilight is looking at a three-day total of 27.4. million, off 61% from last weekend’s three-day total. The five-day projection is for $40.5 million. The new long-range expectation is $150 million, give or take.

The third-place Bolt is looking at $26.4 and $36.1 million. Quantum of Solace is $20.3 and $29 million. Baz Luhrmann‘s fifth-place Australia will take in $14.3 and $19.5 — bad news for such an expensive film. Madagascar 2 is $14.2 and $19.3 Transformers 3 is 12.0 and 19.2. Role Models is 5.3 and 7.9.

The limited-release Milk is projecting $1.5 for three days and $2 million or five. Encouraging per-screen average — 3-day weekend estimate is $39,000 a print in 36 theatres. Slumdog Millionaire, playing in 49 theatres, is looking at $1.4 million and $1.9 million at 27,000 a print.

There’s an obvious note of African-American machismo in Barack Obama ‘s recent comments to Barbara Walters about not wanting to get a “yappy girly” dog. He said he wanted a “big rambunctious dog.” This sounded like a reference to a golden retriever or lab or Irish setter, but his comment reminded me that I’ve never once seen an African-American guy walking a dog on a city street that wasn’t just large, but also fearsome-looking. Pit bulls, bulldogs, dobermans…that line of country. Tell me I’m mistaken.

Cue the Glenn Kenny contingent so they can start calling me a closet racist, but not once — not a single time — in all my decades on the streets of New York, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco have I seen a black guy walking a pure face-licking love dog (which golden retrievers are a prime example of). Is there a p.c. way of saying that there seems to be something in the male African-American experience that responds to the concept of a muscular guard dog with an innate willingness to snarl at strangers and get aggressive at the drop of a hat? Probably not.

Somebody please tell me they’ve seen or heard differently. I realize I’m not supposed to say this, but I’m just saying. I’m a golden retriever man myself. I’ve had two — one fell off a Hollywood hills balcony and broke his back and had to be euthenized, and the other I had to give away due to travel. Breaks my heart.

The more I think about it, the Documentary Short List omission that’s growing more and more in terms of unjustness (and I’m sorry for not thinking of this right off the top) is the one for Gonzalo Arijon‘s Stranded, which opened theatrically last month.

In my heart the emotional import of this film is second only to James Marsh‘s Man on Wire. It was omitted, I’m guessing, for the usual pedestrian taste-bud reasons. The blue-hairs figured that the Andes plane-crash soccer-team cannibalism story of the early ’70s had already been done a couple of times before and why jump into the whole thing again? And because the image of starved young men eating strips of human flesh in order to survive unnerved them.

The chief differences between Tom Tykwer‘s The International (Sony/Columbia, 2.13) and Tony Gilroy‘s Duplicity (Universal, 3.20), the two early ’09 urban thrillers that star Clive Owen, seem to be (a) Gilroy’s is a bit lighter and more caper-ish, (b) Tykwer’s is a bit heavier, darker, apparently toying with a Parallax View vibe, and (c) Owen looks a tiny bit heavier in the Tykwer than in the Gilroy, in which he needed to look hot and buff for his romantic scenes with Julia Roberts.

They both look to be 70s’-styled escapist programmers, which is fine. And they both seem visually and tonally similar — i.e., the same kind of upscale urban backdrops. Okay, the Tykwer seems a bit bluer and grayer. It will also hit theatres five weeks before the Gilroy.

The International features a shoot-out scene in Manhattan’s Guggenheim museum. And of course, a guy falls from one of the upper tiers of the circular walkaround and goes splat on the stone-floor rotunda below.

It’s interesting to compare the British International trailer with the U.S. version. I was a bit more attracted to the British one, but that’s me.

The International is the out-of-competition opener for the Berlin Film Festival, which launches on 2.5.09.

We all know about the disappearance of Sean Penn from Wayne Kramer‘s much-delayed Crossing Over (Weinstein Co., 2.9.09). Penn shot a couple of scenes as immigration cop Chris Farrell in the Weinstein Co. drama, but he’s not in the trailer and his name is missing from the credit block. What gives? Why the hell would Kramer cut Penn, a major name actor, out of this Traffic-like drama about the problems of immigrants seeking U.S. citizenship? Because his acting sucked?

(l. to r.) Crossing Over director Wayne Kramer, Harvey Weinstein, Harrison Ford, producer Frank Marshall, Bryan Lourd

I don’t know for a stone fact why Penn is MIA, but an explanation came to me today from a credible, well-placed source. Penn asked to be removed from the film, the guy says, because he had a serious beef with a Kramer subplot in the film involving an Iranian character murdering his sister in an act of “honor killing.” I’m aware of reports that this scene was cut from the film (or diluted) after the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) and other voices claimed it was defamatory, but Penn, I’m told, still had a problem with it. Maybe this was just part of the reason.

In any event, Crossing Over is said to have been a “horrific experience” for Kramer, who didn’t get back to me when I wrote him earlier today. I got this story only a few hours ago and didn’t have time to do the usual calling around and cross-checking. Everyone’s on Thanksgving holiday anyway. This is just one well-placed guy’s perspective.

Kramer, I’m told, had a contractual final cut but that doesn’t cut much ice with Harvey Weinstein if there are creative differences afoot — Harvey can just say sure, okay, you insist on final cut and I’ll send your movie straight to DVD. The bottom line, my source claims, is that Harvey pretty much ignored Kramer’s final-cut contract by letting Crossing Over costars Harrison Ford and Sean Penn fiddle with it in editing.

Crossing Over shot sometime during the spring and early summer of ’07, and when Kramer’s cut was test-screened it tested “just okay, nothing great,” I’m told. Crossing Over is a tough, hard-knocks drama with a somewhat downbeat tone, and such films tend to test modestly or so-so. If it’s a sad or glum movie in any way, people go “ewww…I liked that Adam Sandler movie we saw last week better.”

Sean Penn

In any case, after Kramer’s version screened Harvey said okay, you’ve done your cut, now me and Frank” — Frank Marshall, Crossing Over‘s producer — “are going to cut our own version. Kramer flipped out over this at first, but Frank and Harvey’s version wound up testing a little better than his so he swallowed his pride and more or less agreed to let this version be the final one.

But then Harvey showed the film to Ford, who didn’t like this and that aspect so he took the film and did his own cut, but “it was so bad that Harvey decided to not even test it.” So Kramer was relieved that Harrison’s cut was awful and the pendulum had swung back to the Harvey-Marshall cut. But then Harvey said, ‘Oh, I’d better show it to Sean Penn’ and Penn has issues with it also, principally the way the Iranian honor-killing character was portrayed.

There was some back and forth bickering on Penn’s complaints with no resolution. The episode came to a crescendo, my guy says, when Penn’s agent, CAA’s Byran Lourd, called Harvey and said the best way to deal with this is to cut Sean out of the movie. To which Kramer responded, “What…?”

Harvey called Lourd and said, “I’m not going to cut Sean out, I have a contract, this movie cost $20 million, fuck you, we’re not rolling over for you guys,” etc. Two days later Harvey calls and tells Kramer, “We’re cutting Sean out of the movie.” I’m sorry but I think this is hilarious.

“I think it’s important that people know about what is happening to Wayne,” my source says. “My own view is that Penn should be shamed into giving Kramer the movie he wants and deserves. It is very easy to demonize Harvey in all of this, but Harvey, Frank and Wayne all had a cut of the picture they were satisfied with. Harvey’s weak link is giving stars too much influence. In this case it is Penn, who touts himself as being an artist of integrity, but in this case is completely screwing over a reputable filmmaker simply because he doesn’t agree with his political views. It’s really shameful.

“Another big question is where is Frank Marshall in all of this? How come he isn’t standing up to Sean for Wayne? Do these stars have so much power that producers are going to cave in to their political whims and destroy a fllmmaker’s work just so they can maintain a relationship with that star down the line? It should really give filmmakers pause.”

Crossing Over costars Ford, Ray Liotta, Ashley Judd, Summer Bishil, Lee Horsley, Cliff Curtis, Jaysha Patel, Alice Eve and Alice Braga.

MGM marketing vp Mike Vollman has replied to the Newark Star Ledger‘s Stephen J. Whitty about the latter’s 11.26 piece called “Valkyrie Surrenders,” in which Whitty posted what seemed like a logical interpretation of MGM’s decision not to show the Bryan Singer-Tom Cruise World War II thriller in time for possible critics awards contention (or for consideration by National Board of Review) by not screening it for junket journalists until December 12th, or to regular critics until December 15th.

“We have a great, strong, commercial movie and are quite proud of it,” says Vollman. “It is also the type of movie that will be deserved of intelligent critical analysis.

“What it does not deserve is to be slammed into the devastatingly cramped and arbitrary year-end critical-awards battles. When did a December release date mean that a film exists first and foremost for award consideration? And when did film criticism become a competitive sport, with deadlines, rankings, winners and losers.?

“We want Valkyrie to be judged on it’s own, not as one of a cramped herd of dissimilar artistic endeavours lumped together unfairly due to the vagaries of the calendar and the marketplace. Valkyrie is eligible for every guild honor, from ampas to ves, and will be on every single nomination ballot. If members of the entertainment community wish to honor it, they will be able to do so. We hope they do as the work is excellent and deserves recognition.”

Whatever happened to He’s Just Not Into You (New Line/Warner, 2.6.09)? If you’d asked me over Thanksgiving Day dinner, I would have said “uhmm, I think it came out last spring and died…right?” It actually won’t see the light of a digital projector lamp for nearly two and a half months.

He’s Just Not That Into You trailer

“Our customers have an enormous interest in our newspaper on Sunday; have almost no interest on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Thursday and Friday, they’re more interested; and Saturday might as well be in the desert.” — swashbuckling Tribune Co. owner Sam Zell speaking to Conde Nast Portfolio‘s editor-in-chief Joanne Lipman in a q & a that went up on 11.24.

“I haven’t figured out how to cash in a Pulitzer Prize. There was a day when a newspaper put ‘Winner of Pulitzer Prize’ on the front page, and people flocked to read the Pulitzer Prize story. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that that’s the case today. But I also think that there are scale issues. In other words, I think that if the goal is a Pulitzer, it’s in the wrong place. In other words, we’re not in the business of, in effect, underwriting writers for the future. We’re a business that, in effect, has a bottom line.

“So as far as we’re concerned, I think Pulitzers are terrific, but Pulitzers should be the cream on the top of the coffee. They shouldn’t be the grounds. And I think there are a lot of scenarios in the newspaper industry where the entire focus is on Pulitzers.

“If you want to play futuristic — and I don’t know how big an f on the word futuristic — you can make a case that the world in the future is all Kindles, and you’ll send out an email to everybody to their Kindle, and that’s how they’re going to get their newspaper every morning. That’s a real possibility at sometime in the future.”

The first locale in this recently posted trailer for Tony Gilroy‘s Duplicity (Universal, 3.20.09) is the Pantheon in Rome, rendered in that familiar bleachy-hazy late afternoon light. A good place to be, sit, hang, reflect, etc. I was too lazy to read the script but now, queer as I am for this tourist haven, I really like this movie. Even if most of it takes place stateside. What am I saying? Nothing. Post-Thanksgiving Day crazies.

There’s just one problem with this opening scene — Julia Roberts wearing shades. A major character wearing shades in a corporate espionage movie…I don’t know. And I don’t like that smug “I’ve got a secret but I’m not sure you can figure it out” cat-that-ate-the-canary look that she wears. But I can get past this. It’s okay. Especially with Paul GIamatti, Tom Wilkinson and Tom McCarthy on board.

If this is a corporate The Hot Rock, cool. But God protect us if it’s any kind of Robert Ludlum-with-a-smirk type deal. It can’t be. Gilroy is too sly and aware of cliche potholes to let this happen. Right?