Many thanks to VanRambling’s Raymond Tomlin for his very generous assessment of Hollywood Elsewhere’s daily gruel. He also compliments the commenters, calling their remarks “first-class, thoughtful, well-considered and informative” and “sometimes screamingly funny.”

Tomlin’s appreciation, he says, “has grown since the recent debut of his and Sasha Stone‘s iTunes podcast, Oscar Poker.

“Both Jeff and Sasha are incredibly well-informed about film, the film market, and the work of prominent actors and directors past and present. Their rapport on Oscar Poker is utterly relatable, natural and becoming, informed and compelling. Honestly, Oscar Poker’s two commentators come across as if they’re lovers, their affection for one another so deep, abiding and respectful.

“Despite Jeff’s propensity to be curmudgeonly, which Sasha only laughs at with a knowing affection for Jeff because he’s outrageous but right, Jeff and Sasha come across as generous and thoughtful commentators and human beings — these are people you’d actually like to get to know, to discuss ‘the movies’ with over a beer.”

There’s just one thing complicating the situation for Peter Weir‘s The Way Back, from my humble Manhattan perspective. It’s a deeply admired film, but there’s just this one tiny problem. The Newmarket guys (i.e., the ones releasing it on 12.29) are keeping it under wraps, screening-wise. At least as far as my e-mail box is concerned. They showed it a couple of days ago in Los Angeles, but they’re apparently still sorting things out in terms of East Coast media.

Sorry but Sasha Stone has it wrong: Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen are clearly the leads in Mike Leigh‘s Another Year. They are the center-of gravity couple whom the supporting characters (including the tragically touching Lesley Manville) visit and congregrate around. They’re the base and the core of the piece.

I agree that Broadbent and Sheen are “soft” leads and that Manville is a much more vivid presence that both of them combined, but there’s no way Manville can be called the absolute and unquestioned lead in that film. Her sad-eyed character is the one you remember the most, of course, but that doesn’t mean she rules the roost.

This, at least, is the argument that Sony Classics has to make to persuade everyone concerned that Manville should be nominated for Best Supporting Actress and not lead. As I said the other day, this would be a tactical error. She has an excellent chance of winning in Best Supporting, and at best an iffy chance of winning for Best Actress. And I’m saying that as one of her greatest admirers.

This is not a “review,” okay? Definitely not a review. Call it an enthusiasm spasm. The point is that Roger Michell‘s Morning Glory (Paramount, 11.12) is much better than what Paramount’s marketing has so far indicated, and a tiny bit better than what that Showeast guy told TheWrap‘s Steve Pond a week or so ago.

The exhibitor said “it’s close to James L. Brooks territory, or to the border between Brooks and Nancy Meyers” and “a solid entertainment that in November will appeal to the over-30 audience in a way that nothing else will.” Total agreement with the second statement, but forget the Nancy Meyers analogy. This film is close to Broadcast News-level Brooks + grade A, totally-on-his-game Michell + Harrison Ford‘s best performance in years + Rachel McAdams giving an ever better performance than she did in The Wedding Crashers (and that’s saying something).

Ford’s performance as a grumpy, past-his-prime, Dan Rather-ish newsman has a shot at a Best Supporting Actor recognition. Or not. He’s surly but smirking all the while. The role as written isn’t quite home-run-level, but it’s fair to call it a solid triple, I think.

That’s all I have time to say before the next movie starts, but I just had to counteract the impression I gave when I posted this 10.19 story, which was mainly a reaction piece to the one-sheet. No offense but the one-sheet “lies,” in a sense. Morning Glory is much smarter, more more realistic, and much more adult in a spritzy and reasonably real-world sense than you might expect.

I was afraid of screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna in the wake of 27 Dresses, but what a surprise! In the realm of commercial confections about big-city, fast-lane ambition, Morning Glory is a notch or two above McKenna’s The Devil Wears Prada. It’s somewhat similar in terms of the choice that the main character faces between an exciting career and a strong personal relationship, but it resolves this situation more satisfyingly, I feel, and Patrick Wilson plays a much cooler and more interesting boyfriend that Adrian Grenier played in Prada.

Everything has changed, Jon Stewart Rally in D.C.-wise. I’m busing down on late Friday afternoon, staying in a rented room near Dupont Circle, attending the rally with purchased VIP tickets (the Comedy Central p.r. person, Renata Luczak, totally blew me off because I applied too late for press credentials), covering the rally, and staying on Saturday night and running around and whatnot. I’m open to schmooze and libations (i.e., the Tabard Inn on Friday evening?) with any HE readers who’ll be in the vicinity.

For me, President Obama‘s visit last night with Jon Stewart wasn’t all that satisfying because of Stewart’s tendency to flick questions in a roundabout way rather than put them straight. I would have loved it if he’d said, “Have you seen Inside Job, Mr. President? The same bad guys who authored and endorsed our ridiculous derivative-scheme predicament in the Clinton and Bush years are part of your team right now. What about that?”

Also: “What did you think of The Social Network? More to the point, what did you think of the Larry Summers scene in that film? Is that the guy you know to any degree? Did he seem a bit familiar, or was Aaron Sorkin just flying off and having fun in his own realm?”

I have a 10:30 am screening and then a 2 pm screening, and not much time to post or reflect between the two. The way it is. Back sometime in the late afternoon.

Every time I hear this Al Pacino locker-room speech, I feel the current all over again. It’s one of the best passages Oliver Stone ever put to pen, and may well be the most inspirational levitation moment ever delivered in a film. Because the sports context ain’t the half of it.

“We’re in hell right now, gentlemen. Believe me. And we can stay here and get the shit kicked out of us. Or we can fight out way back, into the light. We can climb out of hell. One inch at a time. That’s what football is. That’s what life is. The margin of error is so small, it’s inches…and the inches we need are everywhere around us. On this team we fight for that inch. Because we know that when we add up all those inches, that’s going to make the fucking difference between winning and losing. Between living and dying. In any fight, it’s the guy who’s willing to die who’s going to win that inch.”

Movable Type comment problem: There’s some kind of weirdness going on with Movable Type that’s been preventing HE readers from logging in to comment. We’re on it. Installing latest Movable Type version (5.031). The situation will hopefully be fixed soon. Well, by this evening.

It’s bad stuff and it doesn’t add up, but Lisa Blount, the Oscar-winning Arkansas native and actress best known as Debra Winger‘s best friend in An Officer and a Gentleman (’83), is dead. Blount’s mother reportedly found the 53 year-old actress-producer in her Little Rock home on Wednesday. The cause of death is a mystery.

On the 2002 Academy Awards telecast The Accountant, a short co-directed by Blount and husband Ray McKinnon, won an Oscar for Best Short Film, Live Action.

Blount and McKinnon met during the making of Needful Things (’93). They married in 1998. McKinnon appeared on HBO’s Deadwood and most recently as a high school football coach in The Blind Side.

Seven or eight years ago Blount and McKinnon moved from Los Angeles to Arkansas, reportedly “to make great Southern movies.” They collaborated on 2004’s Chrystal, in which Blount starred with McKinnon and Billy Bob Thornton.

Earlier today Rope of Silicon‘s Brad Brevet asked the usual columnists whether Another Year star Lesley Manville — a glorious actress giving a very sad, world-class performance — should be pushed for Best Actress or Best Supporting Actress. Here’s the piece. Eight people chimed in. What I wrote is pasted after the page photo:

“You said, Brad, that you just got off the phone with Sony Classics co-honcho Michael Barker and that he said ‘at the moment they are going with lead based primarily on the reasoning Manville is supposedly in the movie more than anyone else.’ Well, none of that means diddly-squat.

“What matters isn’t screen time or whether or not Manville does play the lead female role in Mike Leigh‘s Another Year. What matters is what you can get away with in order to win an Oscar that will propel the film’s box-office and ancillary sales. That’s it, the whole game, end of story. And Sony Classics can EASILY get away with calling Manville a Best Supporting Actress in that film. EASILY. PIECE OF CAKE.

“And if they do this, the odds of their getting a win out of it will be very…okay, relatively high. That’s the whole thing, the whole game.

“Ms. Manville, with whom I’ve spoken, very much wants to win as it will do good things for her career-wise. Barker knows what the Best Actress competition is likely to be, and it’s no duck walk this year. No disrespect to Ms. Manville — she’s very, VERY GOOD in Another Year — but she’ll be facing some very tough opponents, and the odds of her winning will not be high — let’s face it. If Sony Classics wants her to win an Oscar, there’s really only one thing to do.”

Lena Dunham‘s Tiny Furniture (IFC Films, 11.12) is an earnest, well-sculpted portrait of urban misery by way of self-portraiture. (Or vice versa.) Dunham, who directs, writes and stars, plays a forlorn version of herself — an overweight 20something named Aura who lives in her mom’s Tribeca loft, aspires to filmmaking but has no income and is dealing with lazy and/or indifferent attentions from a couple of guys she’s half-interested in.

Dunham’s actual mom plays her mom, her actual sister plays her sister, and her mom’s actual loft is the main setting. And there are actual actors (like Lovers of Hate‘s Alex Karpovsky) in supporting roles. And every step of the way the pacing is steady and leisurely and unforced. That’s a polite way of saying not a lot happens, and the film takes its time about it.

Tiny Furniture is realistic and character-rich and low-key “cool” as far as it goes. It’s got an honestly dreary vibe. It reminded me of what spectacular misery being young and unsuccessful and not-quite-formed can be, and how humiliating it can be to have no money, or to have so little that getting a nothing job as a hostess for $11 an hour seems like a step up.

I mean, $11 friggin’ dollars an hour from a part-time job of 25 or 30 hours a week? That’s enough money for delicatessen sandwiches and toothpaste and well drinks and a monthly subway card and various other things everyone needs but which don’t add up to very much. That’s just maintaining-but-going-nowhere-and-fuck-me money.

I was thinking at the halfway mark that Tiny Furniture is what Susan Siedelman‘s Smithereens might have been if Susan Berman‘s “Wren” character wasn’t so angry and scattered, and if she had a rich Manhattan mom.

Dunham is a fine, real-deal actress. I liked her right away, and I believed her acting to the extent that it didn’t feel like “acting.” It was just being and behavior. She has my idea of sad, caring eyes and a quick mind and a likably unassertive, quasi-hangdog manner.

During a post-screening q&a at Goldcrest: (l.) Anne Carey, (r.) Tiny Furniture director-screenwirter-actress Lena Dunham

Dunham, Tiny Furniture producer Kyle Martin.

The undercurrent felt a little bit lezzy at times, but not in a pronounced way. The two guys are “nice” and interesting to talk to, but they’re both kind of into themselves and really not much of a catch. (The second guy she hangs with, a chef, is actually a bit of a dick.) And there’s this nice-looking girl with a great smile who’s obviously interested in Dunham in a romantic way who appears in a couple of scenes.

I’m just wondering why the obvious fact that Dunham’s character is bulky never seems to come up except in one scene when her best friend reads negative YouTube commentary about her shape. Is it somehow uncool to talk about this? It wouldn’t have been 20 or 30 years ago when largeness was relatively rare. Now it’s fairly common among GenY types and no one raises an eyebrow. (Dunham, whom I spoke to last night after the screening, seems to have slimmed down somewhat since filming.) But the basic social rules still apply. People with weight issues generally don’t get laid as often, and their choices aren’t as vast as those of slimmer folk. You can shilly-shally around this all you want, but being heavy is not going to make your life any easier or happier. It’s definitely a compromiser.

Tiny Furniture is a smart little low-energy thing. It has integrity, but it really could be titled A Life in Hell, I feel. I was sitting there going “this is awful, what a life, Jesus H. Christ” but at the same time I was saying “I believe this”, “this hasn’t been faked” and “Dunham knows what she’s doing.”