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I’m tapping out my Benjamin Button reactions as we speak, but I have a phone interview set for 9:30 and I have to focus on that for a bit. All I know is that I don’t know what’s going on with the Best Picture race. Not any more. I’m lost. The tracking software in my head that has generated those old gut hunches for years on end isn’t working. I don’t mean to get all Wim Wenders–Dennis Hopper on you, but I suddenly don’t know who I am or who anyone else is.

I’m not at all persuaded, in other words, that Button, gently touching life-journey meditation and technical landmark film that it obviously is in many respects, is the Big One. It’s beautiful and immaculate and lovingly brush-stroked to a fare-thee- well, and thematically deep and far-reaching, but boil it all down and it’s basically a leisurely Gump cruise on a slow riverboat down an easy river, and filled with all kinds of touching meditations and pastoral riches and a constant awareness of the transitory tenuousness of life. Which is fine. It moves, haunts, entrances, caresses and provides as much warmth and emotional reflection as director David Fincher and screenwriter Eric Roth felt was right and appropriate.

But the story tension is nil (no “what’s gonna happen next?” intrigue), the rooting interest is zip (which isn’t to say you don’t care for Brad Pitt’s Button character but he’s nothing if not a fundamentally passive character — an absorber rather than a decisive doer with a primal goal or need) and that schmaltzy emotional compost that Robert Zemeckis knows how to shovel and which a film like this could use is barely exploited.

Fincher is one of my filmmaking heroes, Lord knows, but he’s too sardonic a fellow to drop his emotional pants. Button is a magnificent living painting and a technical dazzler for the ages, but he may not have been the right guy to make a film like this. It’s not a cold film, as some have alleged, but (and I hate saying this) it needs to be a little bit sappier and schmuckier and schtickier to win over the Academy squares and popcorn munchers in the plexes. It’s a little too burnished and upmarket (i.e., sparing, carefully measured) for its own good.

I’ve selected and pasted the live-wire graphs from Annie Karni‘s Harvey hit-job piece, called “Is Hollywood Hit Man Harvey Weinstein Running Scared?,” in Page Six magazine, which was published two days ago (11.23). Here and there I’ve thrown in HE comments.

“Has Harvey Weinstein lost his Midas touch? Has he spread himself too thin too quickly? Or is it a fool’s errand to ever really count Harvey Weinstein out of the game he himself created?

“Whatever the case, problems are apparent. In his glory days, Harvey spared no expense to lure top talent to star in his films. ‘He thinks nothing of flying to London for dinner and trying to talk you into a role,’ actress Nicole Kidman told New York magazine in 2001. Today, insiders say, he can’t afford to. ‘When Harvey’s flying talent, he flies them on his frequent-flier miles,’ says a former top executive at the Weinstein Co. ‘Even if it’s a $200 ticket from L.A. to San Francisco, he doesn’t pay.’ HE comment: I’ve been hearing for many months that Harvey is on the ropes, and stories about him shaving costs however and whenever obviously fit into this. That said, only a fool spends money like a nouveau riche hotshot. There’s nothing wrong with using air miles.

“Media watchers say that without Disney, Harvey has become just ‘another indie guy at a time when it’s very hard to be an indie guy.’ (Independent studios have to wrangle outside financing, often from Wall Street investors, and bankrolling movies typically drops off the priority list during a financial crisis.)

“Harvey claims that his company is running on all ‘six cylinders’ but his executives are fleeing in the wake of rumors that the business

“The Weinstein offices on Hudson Street don’t look like the backdrop of a business that is printing money. The finance and marketing teams are stashed away in cubicles. Empty cartons litter the hallway, as if the Weinstein Co. has just moved in, or is on its way out. Movie posters advertising Zack and Miri Make a Porno and Soul Men decorate the waiting area. But these recent films are not the critical hits Harvey needs to rule awards season and redeem his reputation.

“For that honor, Harvey is banking on The Reader, which is set to open December 10, and the musical Nine, which will premiere in 2009. But insiders claim that major financial turmoil within the Weinstein Co. has been revealed through these films.” HE comment: Nine, maybe. The Reader, nein.

“Harvey has said that Nine, starring Nicole Kidman, Penelope Cruz, Kate Hudson, Marion Cotillard, Judi Dench, Sophia Loren and Daniel Day-Lewis, will be ‘bigger than Chicago’ — the Miramax film that won Best Picture in 2002. ‘He sees it as his transformative hit,” says one industry souce, explaining why last year Harvey was turning down offers to co-finance the film. ‘He wanted to own it, but he ran out of gas. He’s putting on a front that it’s business as usual, but he ran out of money and couldn’t finance it himself.’

The Reader “‘is his one movie to get back in the Oscar game this year,’ says one former executive. ‘It’s his only shot for Best Picture, which is why he’s insisting on releasing it this year, even though the director doesn’t want to get it done.'” HE comment: I’m sorry, but believing that The Reader will be some kind of Oscar cow is wishful thinking. I saw it yesterday, I felt the vibe in the room, and I know whereof I speak. It’s far from a rank embarassment, but The Reader doesn’t feel to me like a formidable power-punch Oscar contender. It feels like something that should come out in February or March or September or October. It has a fine and immersive Kate Winslet performance as a lovestruck ex-Nazi concentration camp guard, and the aura of a classy, finely rendered, carefully burnished Oscar-bait film — but it doesn’t satisfy or connect like it needs to. Certain character aspects and actions feel quizzical and unfocused. The last 20 or 30 minutes in the third act are supposed to bring it all home and turn your insides into mush, but they don’t.

“‘Old Harvey would have gotten Sam [Riley] a nomination for Control [a 2007 Weinstein Co. biopic about Ian Curtis, the lead singer of Joy Division],’ an insider claims. HE comment: I pushed Riley as hard as I could in this column last year, and I feel the absence of corresponding energy, trust me, coming from the Weinstein Co.

“‘New Harvey isn’t promoting his films with the publicity and advertising needed to get in the Oscar race. He isn’t focused. He’s having too much fun trying to have a piece of everything. Unless they get great people in there at the top, I give [his company] a year,’ a source says.

“Although the Weinstein Co. employs 240 staffers (roughly half the size of Harvey’s staff at Miramax), last month four top executives left, with some even turning down promotions.

“‘The company is relying on a junior production staff,’ say insiders. ‘Nobody wants to work there so they have a problem replacing people,” says one source. “He’s been looking for a head of marketing for two years. Nobody wants that job. Michael Cole left his position as head of production and they haven’t gotten anyone to fill it.’

“Many longtime employees say Harvey has surrounded himself with too many yes-men who are afraid to tell him when he’s making poor decisions. Since the company went independent, ‘scripts were forced upon the slate that no one felt were smart projects to invest in,’ says a former executive, listing movies such as Dedication, The Last Legion and Grace Is Gone as missteps. ‘When people are shopping their projects, [the Weinstein Co.] isn’t their first choice. Miramax was everyone’s first choice.’

“Executives also complain that budget cutting is affecting their ability to be successful at their jobs. In September, for instance, Harvey didn’t fly his co-head of acquisitions, Maeva Gatineau, to scout for films at the Toronto International Film Festival. (Maeva was one of the four executives who recently left the company.)

“Last year, Fortune magazine reported that the Weinstein Co., which was bankrolled by $1.2 billion from Goldman Sachs investors, was expecting to be profitable by 2008. But employees say that ‘there [are] constant rumors that they have no money.’ Harvey maintains that the company will bring in more cash now that he’s focusing his energies on film.

“It is time for Harey to stage a comeback as grand as the one he produced for John Travolta in 1994’s Pulp Fiction. Don’t count him out yet — after all, he’s Harvey Weinstein.” HE comment: Nine, eh? I hope it all works according to plan. Harvey is a true Catholic in terms of his movie worship. The financial fortunes of the Weinstein Co,. aside, his brassy spirit is a vital component in this business. I feel more invested in the legend of this guy than I am often willing to admit.

It was raining this evening as I came out of the MOMA screening of Benjamin Button, so I bought a $15 umbrella for my walk back to 42nd and 8th Avenue. I put the damn umbrella on the floor of the Boulevard East bus under my seat. Fifteen minutes later I’d discovered someone had stolen it. Who steals umbrellas on buses? I’ll tell you who does this. New York animals do this. I had ownership for a total of 25 minutes.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button director David Fincher following this evening’s screening at MOMA’s Titus theatre — Monday, 11.24, 10:15 pm.

B’way and 50-something — Monday, 11.24.08, 5:55 pm.

Stephen Daldry‘s The Reader, which had its first press screenings today on both coasts, “feels rushed,” in the view of In Contention’s Kris Tapley. “It’s an oddly disorienting narrative,” he writes, “that takes some time settling into an emotional groove, but when it does, it packs affecting punch.”

Calling a film “rushed” and “oddly disorienting” are obviously negative sentiments. Fair game and all that, but I was under the impression there was a review embargo in effect until 12.1 or thereabouts…no? I saw it earlier this afternoon in the 5th floor Brill building screening room, but I intend to hold my water until further notice.

“The weird thing is it feels [as if it’s] have transported me back to the mid-1990s,” Tapley says. “This is a film that recalls the heyday of Harvey Weinstein‘s grip on this time of year, perhaps in atmosphere more than quality. It should be no surprise, then, that Anthony Minghella is one of the producers attached. There are echoes of his work throughout, and really, Daldry might be the only filmmaker with the right doses of prestige and dramatic flavor to take up Minghella’s mantle.

“I have to mention Nico Muhly‘s exemplary score,” Tapley adds, “and the exquisite photography from Chris Menges and Roger Deakins, both credited.”

The Big Reveal is this Gus Van Sant interview by Ain’t It Cool ‘s Mr. Beaks is that Gus initially wanted to shoot Milk in 16mm and have it look like a hand-held ’70s doc, like something D.A. Pennebaker, Albert Maysles or Frederic Wiseman might have shot.

“Well, it started with Wiseman literally. We wanted to shoot in 16mm. And we did hire documentary shooters that had worked along the same lines as Frederick Wiseman. We were even going to try to get Albert Maysles, because he still shoots and, you know, might be able to do it. We were trying to get as close as we could to the real 1960s and 1970s documentarians. [D.A.] Pennebaker. We could’ve seen what he was up to.

“[But] we didn’t get the main guys, but we did get the guys right under them – which was weird because they make a lot more money than a camera operator does on a Hollywood movie. It was at strange expense. And strange union regulations had to be signed off on. And because we weren’t able to use actual 16mm cameras, we realized that our idea was foiled: we wanted to shoot in 16, and we wanted it to be reversal film, and we wanted it to match with the documentary footage that we planned on using.

“But we were talked out of using the 16mm film. And we thought that would be okay; we thought, “Okay, they’ll just work with thirty-five cameras.” But that little-bit-larger camera actually affects the way the DPs work. Even though they’re doing the same thing, the optics are different; the actual depth of field starts to come in to play. So all of a sudden your film looks like everyone else’s cinéma vérite, Paul Greengrass, The Office television show. Law & Order…it starts to look like all of it. It looks like everybody’s 35mm version of a 16mm Frederick Wiseman-style film.

:So we realized our folly and switched quite drastically into a Godfather.” situation.

In stores tomorrow to go along with (i.e., feed off) the new Fincher mood.

Almost every New York journalist I’ve spoken to over the past week or so seems to believe that Dark Knight‘s Heath Ledger is more or less a lock to win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. He’s favored, of course, but my Ray Walston antennae tells me it’s no done deal. I’m not feeling a blitzkreig momentum, and I’m sensing that Revolutionary Road‘s Michael Shannon, who appears in only three scenes but delivers a wham-bam effect like no other supporting performance in any other film this year, may have a shot at stealing it away.

Posted a little more than a year ago, this very well-cut but conceptually tired mash-up was put together by What The Maynard’s Robert Panico. John Hughes‘ Planes, Trains and Automobiles is (a) the only Hughes film I genuinely like (as evidenced by the fact I’ve watched it at least ten or twelve times) and (b) my all-time favorite Thanksgiving film. (Thanks to HuffPost’s Alex Leo for the shout-out.)

With a total of 2,885,555 ballots having been recorded in the initial Minnesota U.S. Senate race, fivethirtyeight.com‘s Nate Silver has posted a mathematical analysis-projection report that “works out to a projected gain of 242 votes for Al Franken statewide over Norm Coleman. Since Coleman led by 215 votes in the initial count, this suggests that Franken will win by 27 votes once the recount process is complete (including specifically the adjudication of all challenged ballots).

“The error bars on this regression analysis are fairly high,” Silver cautions, “and so even if you buy my analysis, you should not regard Franken as more than a very slight favorite. Nevertheless, there is good reason to believe that the high rate of ballot challenges is in fact hurting Franken disproportionately, and that once such challenges are resolved, Franken stands to gain ground, perhaps enough to let him overtake Coleman.”

In a box-office story about the Twilight avalanche, N.Y. Times reporter Brooks Barnes notes that “experts” are saying the film “could struggle with what movie executives call playability, or the ability to maintain box-office heat after the core fan base has moved on.”

Summit distribution chief Richard Fay is then quoted saying that “he hope[s] strong word-of-mouth among mothers will keep ticket sales solid.”

Mothers? Guys of all ages can go to this thing and learn (i.e., remind themselves) how to act with their girlfriends and wives in a way that will most likely lead to some action. This is not a painful-to-sit-through, young-girls-only movie. It goes down fairly easily, plus it’s a major phenomenon that anyone who fancies himself to be any kind of cultural pulse-taker is absolutely required to see.