The just-announced 15th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards nominations contain at least two what-the-hells. Slumdog Millionaire‘s Dev Patel, a novice, is up for Best Supporting Actor while Revolutionary Road ‘s Michael Shannon has been ignored. (What is the blockage that people have about Shannon and this film? It’s unconscionable to blow off a performance this lightning-bolt vivid.) And Changeling‘s Angelina Jolie has been nominated for Best Actress for a strong if less-than-breathtaking performance, while the stunning achievement of I’ve Loved You So Long ‘s Kristin Scott Thomas has been given the go-by.

Two factors were behind the KST snub: xenophobia (i.e., “we gave the Best Actress Oscar to a French-speaking actress last year…that was enough”) and the super-celebrity, magazine-cover butt-kiss impulse benefitting Jolie. This is a very sad day for me personally as SAG, repping a very influential voting bloc, has now all but killed the likelihood of Oscar noms for Thomas and Shannon. Am I wrong?

HE approves of four of the Best Actor nominations — Richard Jenkins in The Visitor (justice! attempts by the Gurus of Gold to marginalize Jenkins have been waved off!), Frank Langella in Frost/Nixon, Sean Penn in Milk and Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler . But it’s wrong and slavish to nominate Benjamin Button‘s Brad Pitt — who gives a fine if unstirring performance as a passive sponge man — at the expense of the far more deserving Leonardo DiCaprio in Revolutionary Road or Benicio del Toro in Che. The Pitt nomination is largely driven by the celebrity butt-kiss impulse along with a Benjamin Button coat-tails effect.

In addition to Jolie, SAG’s Best Female Actor noms have gone to Rachel Getting Married ‘s Anne Hathaway (right), Frozen River‘s Melissa Leo (applause!), Doubt‘s Meryl Streep (yes), and Revolutionary Road‘s Kate Winslet (very much deserved). I for one am not distressed about Happy-Go-Lucky‘s Sally Hawkins getting bypassed. I’m presuming this happened because some of the SAG membership feels as I do about her performance — i.e., technically expert and emotonally alive, but in service of a horribly irritating character.

Patel aside, SAG’s Best Supporting Actor nominees are Milk‘s Josh Brolin, Tropic Thunder‘s Robert Downey, Jr., Doubt‘s Philip Seymour Hoffman, and The Dark Knight ‘s Heath Ledger.

I have two disputes with SAG’s choice of Best Supporting Female nominees — i.e., Doubt‘s Viola Davis and Amy Adams , Vicky Cristina Barcelona‘s Penelope Cruz, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button‘s Taraji P. Henson, and The Reader ‘s Kate Winslet.

The arguments are (1) there’s no way in hell Adams’ Doubt performance, good as it is, is a match for The Wrestler‘s Marisa Tomei , I’ve Loved You So Long‘s Elsa Zylberstein, Rachel Getting Married‘s Rosemarie DeWitt, The Vistor‘s Hiam Abbass or Nothing But The Truth‘s Vera Farmiga; and (2) Winslet’s ex-Nazi-guard character is utterly central to the story of The Reader, and she’s unquestionably the lead female actress in the film so calling her a supporting player is pretty close to ridiculous.

On top of his other allegiances, The Day The Earth Stood Still director Scott Derrickson is an avowed Christian. Which has clouded his vision. Everyone agrees that Michael Rennie‘s Klaatu in the original 1951 film is a Christ-like figure (his adopted earth name is John Carpenter — i.e., J.C.) but how Derrickson sees Keanu Reeves‘ Klaatu in the same light is beyond me. For most of the film Reeves seems barely cognizant of moral or emotional distinctions in people, and he’s decided from the get-go to murder the human race in order to save the planet earth — an understandable thought from an earth-firster but hardly a Christ-like determination.

And speaking of entertainment industry professionals who demonstrate their allegiance one way but play a different tune when asked, Seven Pounds star Will Smith has told Fox 411 columnist Roger Friedman that he’s “not a Scientologist” but has told Access Hollywood that “the ideas of the Bible are 98 percent the same ideas of Scientology, 98 percent the same ideas of Hinduism and Buddhism.”

Yesterday Friedman reported that just-released tax returns for Smith’s charitable foundation “show that he and wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, gave $1.3 million in donations last year to a variety of religious, civic and arts groups,” but included in this package was “a combined $122,500 to the Church of Scientology, to wit: $67,500 to the New York Rescue Workers Detoxication Fund, $50,000 to the group’s Celebrity Center in Hollywood and $5,000 to ABLE, another Scientology offshoot.”

Friedman adds that Smith and his wife “have also supported a private school called New Village Academy they opened this fall in suburban Los Angeles that uses Scientology learning concepts.”

Yesterday I read the Wikipedia biography of the utterly loathsome Elisabeth Hasselbeck. Now there‘s a fall-of-the-Roman-empire anecdote if I ever saw one — spending a portion of your work day reading about a right-wing co-host of The View! There’s something wrong with a world that seriously considers (and I’m obviously including myself in this equation) the knee-jerk political sentiments of a former Survivor contestant because she happens to be a moderately hot-looking blonde with great legs.

The profile, in any event, quotes Hasselbeck as saying she’s “neither a conservative nor a liberal…her parents had an independent political stance, never telling their children for whom they voted…she has stated that the term ‘conservative’ does not define her as a person.” Translation: many if not most right-wingers in the entertainment industry call themselves “independent” because it’s good for business — simple. I personally know a Beverly Hills-residing fascist-Christian-conservative blonde with a curvy bod who claimed last fall that Barack Obama was in league with Muslim terrorists, and she always insists she’s “not right-wing!”

Each morning for the last few days, the first thing I’ve done online is delete the interracial loving spam that’s among the comments for each post, and of course ban the sender, who’s probably some desperado from Mumbai.

“I have to say I’m not that interested in making films any more,” Nicole Kidman has told a Telegraph interviewer. “I know I’m not meant to say that, but that’s where it is for me now.

“I’m 41 years old and very happy being in Tennessee with my baby and with my husband. I obviously have creative blood in me and it needs to come out in some way but I just don’t have that burning desire any more. I’m not saying I’m never going to work again, but I’m at peace with whatever happens, which is a nice place to be at this stage of my life.”

A.O. Scott‘s video essay about Brian Desmond Hurst‘s A Christmas Carol (’51) says everything I’ve always felt and believed about it. This British-produced adaptation of Charles Dickens‘ classic novel is by far (a) the most emotionally affecting, (b) the best acted, (c) the spookiest and (d) the most atmospherically correct of the lot. You can sense the mood and aroma of 19th Century London in every frame, line, garment and setting.

And no ghost in any other film has ever howled quite like Michael Hordern‘s Jacob Marley — here‘s the mp3.

In one of his most stinging pans, Variety‘s Todd McCarthy has shown himself to be no jellyfish when it comes to zapping Gabriele Muccino and Will Smith‘s Seven Pounds.

Calling the 12.19 Sony release “an endlessly sentimental fable” that “aims at the heart at the expense of the head,” being “unguided by rationality and intellect,” he says it’s considerably “off-putting for its manifest manipulations, as well as its pretentiousness and self-importance.”

He also bitch-slaps Smith for embracing his character’s “saintlike status…in a way so convincing that it proves disturbing as an indication of how highly this or any momentarily anointed superstar may regard himself.”

The film “offers either seductive emotional appeal or indigestible mawkishness, according to taste. Along the way, there are references to a fatal vehicular accident, suggestions of [Smith’s character’s] deceptiveness and inscrutable imagery of a jellyfish which, you may be sure, all factor crucially in the denouement.

“Whether one entirely rejects the project’s high-minded game-playing or falls right into the filmmakers’ quasi-spiritual trap and is thereby helplessly reduced to a jellyfish-like state at the end, it’s impossible to claim that Muccino and Nieporte lack the courage of their convictions, or faith in the moral value of their contrived little sacrificial fable.”

Who decides after 50 years of avoiding media attention that they want to jump into big-time politics as a U.S. Senator, a big-league, rough-and-tumble job that’s not for novices or the faint of heart, and has always demanded some basic fire-in the belly ambition? Caroline Kennedy just doesn’t strike me as the type.

She seems to have warmed to the idea of filling Hillary Clinton‘s Senate seat because she wants to do good things and help build a better future in the genteel climate of an Obama administration, but I think she lacks the necessary steel. Or so my character instinct tells me. Wanting to serve doesn’t mean zip if you don’t have the moxie and the social gregariousness and shrewd backroom moves that any tough operator needs. Plus she has a very dull speaking style.

Just today some press people asked about Kennedy’s qualifications and whatnot and she ducked into a black SUV because, according to this N.Y. Times story, her aides didn’t want her to talk. If Ms. Kennedy can’t get into a little tennis ball back-and-forth with the press about her ambition and background and whatnot, why in hell is she lobbying to be a U.S. Senator? No would-be legislators run from the press unless they’re facing indictment or some other kind of career-threatening situation.

In a post up today, Filmmaker‘s Nick Dawson asks Nothing But The Truth director-screenwriter Rod Lurie if he knew in advance that the film’s distributor, the Yari Film Group, was headed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

“I didn’t know,” Lurie responds. “I found out about 6pm [on December 12] and it was really, absolutely shocking. At this moment, I still haven’t spoken to Bob [Yari] and I’m sure he’s got incredibly important things to do. None of us really knows what it’s really going to mean, how it’s going to affect the film.

“Probably it will have it’s Academy [Awards] qualifying run and [then] there’s going to be a situation where it probably will have to get sold to another distributor. It’s rather stunning.

“This town is littered with the corpses of movies that got trapped in bankruptcies and companies that went under and we just want to do everything we can not to become one of those films. It’s very possible. I’m so proud of all the actors involved in this film, and I can’t believe that I’ve spent over a year working on nothing but this – my whole heart is in it – and then goodbye Charlie. But hopefully it will work itself out, because the Yari people are good people. They just got really trapped in really horrible economic vise.”