I’ve been warming to the idea or hope that Thomas Vinterberg‘s Far From The Madding Crowd (Fox Searchlight, 5.1) will be more engaging or at least less trying than John Schlesinger‘s 1967 adaptation of Thomas Hardy‘s same-titled novel. The dreamy, cultured allure of Carey Mulligan‘s Bathsheba Everdene, and her three suitors — the earthy, well-muscled sheep farmer (Matthias Schoenhaerts) who probably climaxes too quickly, the somewhat rakish military man (Tom Sturridge) who’s heavenly in the sack, a giver of quaking orgasms, and the somewhat stuffy rich guy (Michael Sheen) who’s steady and reliable but who probably comes too quickly also.

A few hours ago Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone reminded that I’m “the only person in the predicting game who had Birdman at the top. His Oscar charts that he built were roundly ridiculed for being all about advocacy and not about the race. Jeff did not see a distinction between wanting something to win and it winning, [and yet] by some miracle the ‘Movie Godz’ have shined upon him and everything came into shape for the first time since Crash in 2005, when he was one of the few who predicted it to win early where everyone else had Brokeback Mountain.”

Thanks for acknowledging except I’m not in the “predicting game.” Okay, I predict stuff but HE is mainly an advocacy site. I honestly don’t even remember picking Crash to win, but maybe I did. I know that Brokeback Mountain‘s Best Picture loss felt like an awful grenade. The pre-Birdman advocacy moments I’m proudest of are (a) jumping on the The Hurt Locker bandwagon from day #1 (i.e., after seeing it in Toronto in September 2008) and (b) being an adamant Fog of War guy from the get-go.

That “Schlumpies and Dumpies” piece I posted on 2.11 is water under the bridge, but two or three days ago a producer friend offered an amusing response. The piece basically noted that “sexual attractiveness standards have evolved in favor of the notties over the past 10 or 12 years,” and that “we’re now living with a new attitude that has been partly if not largely perpetrated by the films and scenarios of producer-director Judd Apatow.” The producer recalled a 7 1/2 year-old conversation between himself and a friend after seeing Knocked Up. The friend didn’t buy the premise of Seth Rogen getting lucky with and impregnating Katherine Heigel, which my producer pal said was “kind of like watching Walter Brennan fuck Lauren Bacall.” I’m not sure that’s quite the right ’40s analogy. How about Van Heflin instead of Brennan? Heflin married to Jean Arthur…fine. But scoring with Bacall? The old studio bosses understood how this stuff worked.

Scott Feinberg‘s latest blunt-spoken Academy member — “a longtime member of the Academy’s 387-member short films and feature animation branch who has been nominated for an Oscar” — isn’t as colorful as the publicist he quoted yesterday. This new guy reminds of the type of person who (in the words of LBJ historian Ronnie Dugger) “goes through life vainly, making his dreadful moral points of condemning this or hoping for that or scratching the back of his head.” Feinberg’s publicist had more flair. She angered a lot of people but at least she expressed herself with a little pizazz and irreverence.

Short-film animated guy loves The Theory of Everything — “The only Best Pic nominee that fully works as a whole film…beautifully performed, nicely directed, about something.” And he’s totally stuck on Eddie Redmayne‘s lead performance in that film. He’s no friend of Whiplash because J.K. Simmons‘ tyrannical music instructor struck him as way over the top and beyond the bounds of possibility as an full-time employable at a reputable music school. Like yesterday’s publicist he doesn’t think Selma is all that good, and he regarded the outcry about the Academy being racists for not nominating it for more awards as “offensive — we have a two-term president who is a black woman [Cheryl Boone Isaacs] and we give out awards to black people when they deserve them, just like any other group.” The Grand Budapest Hotel is beautifully made, but its story just isn’t special.” And as for Birdman? “I didn’t get it at all…I look around and it’s doing so well and I just don’t get it.” Good God.

I’ve failed the DMV written motorcycle test four times since last October. Last night I purchased some kind of DMV-related study-guide course for $10 bills. My main problem in passing these idiotic multiple-choice tests has been my stubborn insistence on using basic logic, which of course you can’t do. You have to check the answer that the DMV believes is the most correct, but which is not necessarily logical and is sometimes infuriating. Between posts I’m been studying this damn thing, going over the material until it seeps out of my ears. It’s a kind of torture but I have no choice. I’m living in a kind of hellish limbo, and I will continue to do so there until God or fate cuts me a break.

In the current Vanity Fair there’s an Alex Witchel article about the decades-long…well, not exactly “friendship” but mutual admiration and good-vibeyness between Sound of Music costars Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. About 12 paragraphs in Witchel includes an obligatory sum-up of Andrews’ Hollywood career, but because of the article’s softball vibe Witchel doesn’t acknowledge that Andrews enjoyed a stratospheric six-year run in the mid to late ’60s, from the high of Mary Poppins to the one-two punch of disaster of Star! and Darling Lili. Nor, curiously, does she mention a film that Andrews regards as her all-time favorite — Arthur Hiller and Paddy Chayefsky‘s The Americanization of Emily (’64), the only film in which she ducked her goody two-shoes persona by playing a wounded adult woman who actually had sex outside of wedlock.

I was also fairly staggered by a Vanity Fair decision to add an apostrophe + the letter “s” to Andrews’ name to state a possessive. I don’t care what the style book says — it looks ridiculous. It looks like you’re supposed to pronounce it “Andrewszizz.” If a person’s name ends with an “s”, conveying a possessive requires an apostrophe and that’s all.

On top of his adamant, afore-mentioned refusal to grow sideburns in the late ’60s, Don Draper also has the temerity to wear, in this teaser, a blue sport jacket with mustard-brown pants — an atrocious color combination — with his pant cuffs at least a half-inch if not an inch too high. There’s something so profoundly creepy about this guy, so rigid, so opposed to the ebb and flow of things. Not to mention the tedious alcohol problem. I’ve run into guys like Draper all my life. He also reminds me of my pre-AA father on some level. I was right next to Jon Hamm at a Boyhood Chateau Marmont party a few weeks ago, and he was momentarily approachable. But I didn’t want to uncork even a portion of these feelings so I didn’t say anything. Better that way.

The final Gurus of Gold Oscar prediction chart calls it an even Best Picture match between Birdman and Boyhood…well, just about even. The Gold Derby gang seems a little more realistic with 17 experts or 54% predicting a Birdman win vs. 12 Boyhood boosters or 39%. Eight Guru loyalists are riding those sinking Boyhood ponies to the bitter end, down to the sea in ships: Greg Ellwood, Peter Howell, Dave Karger, Mark Olsen, Nathaniel R., Sasha Stone, Anne Thompson, Susan Wloszczyna.

Grantland is offering five video chapters of amusing, sometimes sage Oscar commentary from Wesley Morris, Chris Connelly and Bill Simmons (who writes about movies…what, once a year if that?). Simmons claims that Ed Norton gives an even better Birdman performance than Michael Keaton….arguable! Topics: (a) How to Sound Smart at an Oscars Party; (b) Best Actor and Actress: What’s At Stake?; (c) Personal Favorite Performances; (d) Sports Doppelgangers and (e) Sal’s Oscar Props. (Sal is Jimmy Kimmel‘s gambling-junkie cousin.)

The serial rapist allegations of the last three months have turned Bill Cosby into comic dog meat. You can tell jokes about him any damn way you choose and audiences will laugh and Cosby can’t say a damn word. He’s over, toast, kaput. But according to some tweets posted this evening by Norm MacDonald, Eddie Murphy refused to mock Cosby during the “Celebrity Jeopardy” skit on last Sunday night’s Saturday Night Live 40th Anniversary Special. Murphy didn’t want to dump on Cosby, McDonald tweeted, even though “he knew the laughs would bring the house down. Eddie decided the laughs [were] not worth it. He will not kick a man when he is down.” Update: NBC News has reported that Cosby is grateful. “I am very appreciative of Eddie and I applaud his actions,” the 77 year-old comedian said.

Scott Feinberg’s blunt-spoken Academy member from the publicist branch says the following about Birdman: “[It’s] a weird, quirky movie that Fox Searchlight did a really good job of selling. I never thought that it would make it all the way to the finish line like it has, but then I remember that it’s about a tortured actor, and when you think about who is doing the voting, at SAG and the Academy, it’s a lot of other tortured actors. I just don’t know how much it’s resonating out in the world. I mean, American Sniper made more in its third weekend in wide release than Birdman has made in its entirety.”

The long-adored Bringing Up Baby was not an out-and-out flop in 1938, but it sure as hell wasn’t a hit either. Joe and Jane Popcorn pretty much shrugged it to death.

Wells response: In other words, Joe and Jane Popcorn related more to the “veteran kicks ass in the Middle East but pays the emotional price when he returns to the heartland” narrative than the big-city tale about a neurotic actor trying to get beyond a ’90s superhero identity by redefining himself with a Raymond Carver play. Okay, understood. But Joe and Jane Popcorn caring less about Birdman and more about American Sniper doesn’t mean squat in the long run. Joe and Jane have never been and never will be at the forefront of perception and recognizing the finest and most lasting creations…ever. They like popular entertainments. When it comes to recognizing and celebrating films are up to something new and provocative, Joe and Jane are always lagging and more often than not at the rear of the herd.

Variety‘s Andrew Wallenstein is reporting that Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara, already notorious for committing Warner Bros. whole-hog to a cornucopia of superhero comic-book movies for the next several years, confessed yesterday to thinking and acting in a (how to put this diplomatically?) chickenshit fashion when Sony Pictures was being plundered by the North Korean hack and particularly when George Clooney tried to get the other big studios to rally round.

Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara during yesterday’s Code Media speech in Dana Point.

“It all happened so fast [but] we could have and should have done more, for [Sony chairman] Michael [Lynton] and Sony,” Tsujihara said at the Code Media conference Wednesday in Dana Point. “But you get caught up in ‘Is this going to become Whack-a-Mole? When you get lawyers and people in the room, things don’t happen.”