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I have to jump on the L line so I’m recommending the assessment about last night’s Broadcast Film Critics Awards by In Contention‘s Guy Lodge. The BFCA has a history of reflecting mainstream Academy tastes and prejudices. To my surprise Up In The Air seems to be falling more and more to the wayside. It really is down to Avatar vs. The Hurt Locker on the Best Picture front now. The gathering suspicion is that Kathryn Bigelow‘s film might actually win.

Meryl Streep and Sandra Bullock tied last night for the BFCA’s Best Actress award.

AJ Schnack invited me to last night’s 2010 Cinema Eye Honors at the Times Center on West 41st Street, and not only that — I went! Louie Psihoyos‘ The Cove won the best feature doc award. Women who’ve refused to see The Cove so far should not let this get in the way. If they don’t want to support a film that’s trying to wake people up about some ghastly goings-on in Taiji, Japan, that’s their right. Box-office democracy!

(l.) Cove producer Paula DuPre Pressman accepting the Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking award; (r.) Robinson, Schnack.

Cinema Eye director Schnack and co-host Esther Robinson (really great smile, founder/honcho of ArtHome) were the hosts.

Schnack charmed the audience (more or less) with a game of MadLibs that went on for eight or nine minutes. Schnack later tried a visual joke about fried chicken that totally bombed. I need to add that I respect Schnack’s ballsiness in trying to get a laugh out of feigned indifference to the torturing of Purdue chickens. This was the kind of error that only a confident and slightly mad host would have even attempted. Good on that.

The Cinema Eye show was projected to last 90 minutes. It went on for two hours and 20 minutes.

The technical name for the big whoa-ho award that The Cove won is “Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking.” Louie didn’t show, and neither did Fisher Stevens. The award was accepted (I think) by Paula DuPre Pressman.

The Cove also won the Outstanding Achievement in Production award. And Cove dp Brooke Aitken won for Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography.

October Country, directed by Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher, won Outstanding Achievement in a Debut Feature Film. I’m embarassed to admit that I’d never heard of this doc until last night.

The winner of the Outstanding Achievement in Direction award went to Agnes Varda for The Beaches of Agnes. Varda didn’t show but this didn’t feel like a big issue. Varda’s substitute was very gracious. The vibe was “we be fine, everything is fine.” And there was a noisy disco-inferno party afterwards.

A.J. Schnack, Esther Robinson

At last night’s Broadcast Film Critics Awards Avatar director James Cameron spoke with MTV.com’s Josh Horowitz about the Avatar sequel, the DVD sex scene, the extended cut, the Avatar blues, etc. In another clip he predicts that Avatar‘s box-office defeat of Titanic is “gonna happen.”

Moments after Mo’Nique won the Best Supporting Actress award at last night’s Critics’ Choice Awards for her Precious performance, Gold Derby’s Tom O’Neil asked about her not showing up at the Toronto Film Festival, the New York Film Festival and the New York Film Critics Awards to support the film. While giving O’Neil a look that would freeze the warts off a polar bear, Mo’Nique ducked the question (chickenshit) and let her husband-manager, Sidney Hicks, handle it instead.

Hicks gave O’Neil a “blah-blah-blah answer about her being a busy mom and talk-show host,” writes O’Neil.

A big-studio weekend estimate is forecasting that Avatar will beat The Book of Eli by nearly $10 million as of Sunday night, and thereby take the #1 slot for the fifth weekend in a row.

While Avatar‘s Friday total of $10,431,000 was slightly less than Eli‘s $11,728,000, the studio estimate claims that Avatar‘s 3-day total will be $41,750,000 (and a $52 million 4-day tally including Monday’s MLK hoilday) vs. a 3-day $32 million total for The Book of Eli (and $37 million with MLK).

The wide break of The Lovely Bones will come in third with $16,225,000 (MLK $19 millon) followed by Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel (3-day $11,544,000) and The Spy Next Door (3-day $9,224,000, MLK $12,102,000).

I’m way the hell back in the line of journalists looking for one-on-ones with Kristen Stewart during Sundance 2010. I realize that, and I know it’s my own damn fault because I didn’t work it soon enough. My chances are improved, I realize, by the fact that she’s got two films playing there — The Runaways and Welcome to the Rileys. But it’s still going to be hard. What else is new?

Kristen Stewart in Welcome to the Rileys.

But I may as well say this out loud in hopes that the publicists (KStew’s, the ones repping the films) may be reading and thinking things over. Not to put it too clumsily but I’d greatly appreciate a little face-time. 15 or 20 minutes, I mean. Because the Movie Godz have told me they need to take a closer look because the filters have been too thick so far.

I’m making this request as the only columnist who’s written the following about KStew: (a) that she’s “the GenY Marlon Brando/James Dean/Montgomery Clift,” and (b) that during her ComicCon appearance last summer she “looked, frankly, kind of rock-and-rollish with a kind of cigarettes-and-booze attitude…a fascinating actress, but clearly not someone who’s looking for peace as much as truth, even if it scalds.”

A little gut twitch tells me Rileys might — I say “might” — be the better of the two, but we’ll obviously know soon enough. I leave for Park City five days from now.

The Golden Globe awards are happening Sunday night. Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone has asked for GG predictions for a poll she’s doing. I sent the following minus the “Why” and “Personal Preference” portions:

Best Motion Picture, Drama. HE prediction: Avatar? (Lightstorm Entertainment; Twentieth Century Fox). Why: Wow Factor, Money Avalanche, 3D Game-Change. Personal Preference: The Hurt Locker.

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama. HE prediction : The Blind Side‘s Sandra Bullock. Why: Bullock is more of a Globey Globey-type girl than Carey Mulligan. Personal Preference: An Education‘s Carey Mulligan.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama. HE prediction : Crazy Heart‘s Jeff Bridges. Why: Convincing alcoholic sloth, career achievement award. Personal Preference: A Single Man‘s Colin Firth.

Best Motion Picture, Comedy Or Musical: HE prediction :

(500) Days Of Summer? (Watermark Pictures; Fox Searchlight Pictures). Why: It’s easily the best of the nominees. Personal Preference: (500) Days of Summer.

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture, Comedy Or Musical. HE prediction : Julie & Julia‘s Meryl Streep. Why: Gunboat Meryl factor. Personal Preference: Nine‘s Marion Cotillard.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture, Comedy Or Musical. HE prediction : A Serious Man‘s Michael Stuhlbarg. Why: None of the other contenders — Informant‘s Matt Damon, Nine‘s Daniel Day-Lewis, Sherlock Holmes‘ Robert Downey Jr., 500 Days‘ Joseph Gordon-Levitt — have built up any steam. Complicating Factor: Stuhlbarg plays a wimp. Personal Preference: Stuhlbarg.

Best Performance by an Actress In A Supporting Role in a Motion Picture. HE prediction : Badass Mo’nique, Precious: Based On The Novel Push By Sapphire. Why: Please…this is hard for me. Personal Preference: Up In The Air‘s Vera Farmiga.

Best Performance by an Actor In A Supporting Role in a Motion Picture. HE prediction : Inglourious Basterds‘ Christoph Waltz. Why: The multitudes have spoken — settled issue — no choice in the matter. Personal Preference: The Messenger‘s Woody Harrelson.

Best Animated Feature Film. HE prediction : Fantastic Mr. Fox (?American Empirical Picture, Twentieth Century Fox). Why: Fox has been gaining, Up has been static. Personal Preference: Fox because of the Willis O’Brien methodology.

Best Foreign Language Film. HE prediction : Broken Embraces (Spain, Sony Pictures Classics). Why: Because it’s far and away the best of the nominees? Personal Preference: Pedro.

Best Director, Motion Picture. HE prediction : Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker. Why: Decided, locked. Personal Preference: Biggy.

Best Screenplay, Motion Picture. HE prediction : The Hurt Locker‘s Mark Boal. Why: The straight-from-life factor. Boal embedded, took notes, put it all together. Personal Preference: Boal.

Best Original Score, Motion Picture. HE prediction : Avatar‘s James Horner.

Best Original Song, Motion Picture. HE prediction : “I Want To Come Home” from Everybody’s Fine (?Music & Lyrics by Paul McCartney). Why: The Beatles…hello?

I don’t see why any U.S. distributor would hesitate to put subtitles on any British-made film, especially a low-budgeter shot in northern England. There are few things worse than being unable to understand your own language because of a litany of beefy, sickly-looking British actors with the absolute worst haircuts in the world swallowing and gobbledy-gooking their northern patois.

I don’t want anyone to alter their natural speech patterns, mind. I just want to understand what they’re saying. The obvious solution is subtitles, and yet this rarely seems to happen except when the films in question (like Paul Greeengrass‘s masterful Bloody Sunday) have gone to DVD.

I saw about 60% of James Marsh‘s Red Riding installment (i.e., part two of the trilogy) last night, and I finally gave up because I really couldn’t understand half of the fawkin’ dialogue. I understood Paddy Considine, who plays the lead role, and some of what some of the supporting players were saying, but only fragments.

The okay-that’s-it moment came when Considine’s ginger-haired detective colleague told him something fairly important (to judge by his stunned reaction), and of course I couldn’t understand her. And Marsh couldn’t be bothered to rephrase or reiterate the information in some way. And it wasn’t just me. Anthony Kaufman told me outside the screening room that he had watched this same scene repeatedly on a screener and still couldn’t figure it out.

I’m finished with the Red Riding trilogy. The Yorkshire Ripper can keep on killing for all I care. Marsh’s filmmaking style is sturdy and legible, and I was pleased with his use of 2.35 Scope. But I was lost — and I seriously hate muttering guttural British films that make me feel this way.

I’ve been persuaded…actually, I wanted to be persuaded that Amir Bar-Lev‘s The Tillman Story will be a major film to see at Sundance 2010. Because I know what it’ll be going in — i.e., an exposing of Gen. Stanley McChrystal‘s failed bullshit spin and a slam at U.S. war policy in the Middle East. Mother’s milk to me.

Jon Krakauer‘s Where Men Win Glory was an exploration of the life and death of Pat Tillman, the former Arizona Cardinals safety and U.S. Army Ranger who suffered a friendly-fire death in Afghanistan in April 2004.

McChrystal’s roundabout admission last year that he fraudulently approved awarding Tillman a posthumous Silver Star as a result of enemy fire was heavily focused upon by Krakauer’s book and in a 10.14 Daily Beast article.

It is virtually 100% guaranteed that those fine AT&T people will again be unable to provide the necessary iPhone air coverage in the Park City area during Sundance 2010. Just like last year, which was generally an agonizing Waiting for Godot experience for the first five or six days. So why have I bought the Sundance 2010 app? I’ll tell you why. I don’t know why.

I understood last year about Chris Nolan‘s Inception script being impossible to get hold of, but enough of that. Today is 1.15.10, Inception will be playing six months hence (7.16.10), and even hard-to-find scripts always get passed around during this final-approach period. Bright, well-placed fellows have sent me the hot ones before. I’m asking.