This 12.19 Bagger video is the best in days — i.e., a chat with N.Y. Times critics Manohla Dargis (on voice-box) and Tony Scott (live in the flesh) inside the paper’s carpeted Eighth Avenue sanctum.

I had a pretty good current going when I tapped out my 12.12 pan of The Day The Earth Stood Still. But my Seven Pounds review hasn’t panned out at all, in large part because I’m not allowed to talk about the basic shot — i.e., the climactic third-act revelation that tells viewers what Will Smith‘s character has actually been up to, which has been kept obscure throughout 98% of the film.

Unless the viewer has simply read the IMDB reader comments about the plot particulars, which have been sitting there plain as day for many months.

Seven Pounds is about a guy played by Will Smith trying to make amends, save himself, save others, find redemption, etc. An important third-act component is a big white jellyfish. Suffice that there’s a satirical Seven Pounds poster, inspired by one for Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, on my back-up drive that I’d like to post some day.

I saw Seven Pounds in the company of former Fox News entertainment guy and stand-up comedian Bill McCuddy. We were sitting maybe three feet apart in the 7th floor Sony screening room with no one else around, but just for fun we began texting each other with impressions as the film went along and got worse and worse. About 45 minutes in McCuddy wrote, “If only Smith could save this movie.”

Always be suspicious when a big movie star plays a nice guy looking to help people who need it. Especially if the good guy is played by a guy with perfect white teeth who writes checks for Scientology. Double-especially if the fictional do-gooder has decided to limit his largesse to a specific number of recipients (which automatically indicates an overly schematic and precious mentality), in this case seven. And triple-especially if the doer of good things has chosen the recipients based on a judgment call — upon his personal reckoning that they “deserve” it.

I’ve always disliked the word “deserve.” Nobody ever deserves anything except for the fee or salary that they’ve earned with good respectable work. But nobody deserves anything in the greater sense of the term — to live or die, to become rich or not, to have a pleasant or unpleasant life. Life has always happened without moral rhyme or reason or any sense of justice or fairness, certainly without a cosmic entity deciding that this or that should or shouldn’t happen because the people involved “deserve” their fate.

The characters who’ve been chosen to receive Smith’s help, according to the Seven Pounds merit-badge system, are in their own way centered, fair-minded, even-mannered — people with kindly, positive, compassionate attitudes who — I can certainly reveal this much — are between a rock and a hard place health-wise.

I don’t agree with arbitrary decisions about this or that person’s moral, humanistic worth. As long as Smith is playing a guy engaged in a kind of Christ-like endeavor (despite his motive being primarily about self-redemption), why not adopt Christ’s attitude during his time on earth about spending time with the sinners on the theory that they need his help more than the morally disciplined? This movie would have a lot better if Smith had gone this route and decided to help only scumbags, criminals, drug users and the like.

McCuddy wrote me a day after the screening with this thought: “Think how much better Seven Pounds might might might have been without Smith’s baggage. For once the well-oiled Smith machine actually takes away from what could have perhaps been a gut-wrenching little indie starring a bunch of unknowns.”

McCuddy also came up with the title of this piece — “Organ Grinder.”

N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott was truly feeling his oats when he wrote this pan. Read and enjoy — it’s pretty damn delicious.

While I was piddling around the apartment and making rental-car reservations, TMZ and Defamer reported this morning that the sushi-afflicted Jeremy Piven “was worried he was suffering from mononucleosis” two months ago (i.e., October), near the beginning of the run of the now-Pivenless Speed-The-Plow.

Plow‘s producer told TMZ that Piven had “complained of illnesses from the beginning of the show’s run in October. First, says the producer, Piven reported ‘low-level mono.’ After that, Piven told producers he was worried he might have Epstein-Barr virus. The final diagnosis, as his doctor stated publicly, was mercury poisoning from a two-a-day raw fish habit.”

“Buffalo Bill’s defunct / who used to ride a watersmooth-silver stallion / and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat / Jesus / he was a handsome man / and what i want to know is / how do you like your blue-eyed boy / Mister Death” — E.E. Cummings.

Or rather how are you, Mr. and Mrs. American moviegoer, coping with all the Hollywood expiration over this holiday season? But before going any further… SPOILER ALERT! (Okay?) Between 12.1.08 and 12.31.08, there will have been no fewer than fifteen films in which either the lead or one of the second-lead characters is killed, pushes on, or otherwise kicks it .

When, I’m asking, has there been another holiday season in which this many major movie characters have succumbed?

This list may not be complete, but it’s what I have so far. (And thanks, David Dubos, for bringing this to my attention.) A lead or significant character in the following films (and again I say SPOILER ALERT!) takes the final journey: Milk, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Marley and Me, Valkyrie, Seven Pounds, Nothing But The Truth, The Wrestler, The Spirit, The Reader, Slumdog Millionaire, Gran Torino, Revolutionary Road, The Boy in Striped Pajamas, Cadillac Records and Che. What am I missing?

“We’re all gonna get there, no exceptions.” — Terrence Stamp‘s “Willie” to John Hurt‘s “Wallace” in Stephen Frears‘ The Hit.

There’s a Huffington Post story explaining Jeremy Piven‘s mercury-overload condition that led to his quitting the Broadway production of Speed-the-Plow and running home like a weenie. It turns out Piven brought this condition upon himself by compulsively eating too much sushi.

Photo-illustration by Everett Bogue stolen from a 12.18 New York “Vulture” item.

The statement from Piven’s rep says he doesn’t like it that everyone has been making fun of his ass over quitting the show due to the mercury thing. Trust me, Piven — the term “sushi defense” makes you seem like an even bigger baby and a bigger douche.

“A slain cop is resurrected as a masked crime-fighter in The Spirit, but Frank Miller’s solo writing-directing debut plunges into a watery grave early on and spends roughly the next 100 minutes gasping for air,” writes Variety‘s Justin Chang.

“Pushing well past the point of self-parody, Miller has done Will Eisner‘s pioneering comic strip no favors by drenching it in the same self-consciously neo-noir monochrome put to much more compelling use in Sin City. Graphic-novel geeks will be enticed by the promise of sleek babes and equally eye-popping f/x, but general audiences will probably pass on this visually arresting but wholly disposable Miller-lite exercise.

“If this summer’s The Dark Knight raised the bar for seriousness, ambition and dramatic realism in the comicbook-based superhero genre, The Spirit reps its antithesis: Relentlessly cartoonish and campy, it’s a work of pure digital artifice , feverishly committed to its own beautiful, hollow universe to the exclusion of any real narrative interest or engagement with its characters.

“There’s no denying the fastidiousness and occasional virtuosity of the overall design, or the lustrous texture of the widescreen images. But all this incessant monochrome has its perils, too: When a man falls to the ground, his body covered with white bloodstains, it’s unclear whether he’s been felled by bullets or by incontinent birds.”

HuffPost’s John Aravosis has posted an allegedly leaked conversation (sic) between President-elect Barack Obama and Sen. Dianne Feinstein in which the president-elect decided to to choose conservative evangelical Christian leader Rick Warren to handle the invocation at Obama’s inaugural.

Yes, the piece notes — the same Rick Warren “who wants to ban all abortions, has compared gay marriage to pedophilia and incest, helped lead the fight for Prop. 8 in California, has said he agrees with far-right wingnut James Dobson on pretty much everything, and who’s devoted his entire life to destroying everything Obama stands for and believes in.”

Feinstein’s rationale to Obama, according to the transcript, is that the Warren decision will convey that he’s “so post-partisan that [he’s] willing to embrace and promote someone who loathes you, didn’t vote for you, and will do everything in his power to destroy your presidency. It’s like the Lieberman thing, but even bigger!”

To which Obama responds, “So you mean, by promoting a guy who represents none of my goals, ideals or hopes that the majority of the country voted for, and by devastating my own [pro-choice and gay] supporters on what was supposed to be a day of celebration and national rebirth, I’m actually promoting ‘change’ by publicly undermining it?”

I should have noted this earlier, but here’s to the Toronto Film Critics Association for ignoring the Zelig impulse, standing up like men of character and cojones and giving their Best Picture award to Kelly Reichardt‘s Wendy and Lucy. The two runnners-up were Rachel Getting Married and WALL*E.

Wendy and Lucy‘s Michelle Williams was named Best Actress, Jonathan Demme was named Best Director for Rachel Getting Married, Rachel‘s Jenny Lumet won for Best Screenplay, Rachel‘s Rosemarie DeWitt won Best Supporting Actress, Mickey Rourke took the Best Actor award for The Wrestler and the late Heath Ledger won Best Supporting Actor for his work in The Dark Knight.