The front page of the IMDB is the same old design deal with the Times Roman font, but they’ve done a redesign of all the film pages using the Avant Garde font and a sense of more space.

This Best Picture slide show, which I saw a little while ago on Sasha Stone‘s Oscarwatch, is, for starters, technically substandard with its cavalcade of muddy desaturated third-generation poster images. And the music that plays with the images is trite and tedious. But the main import is one of vague depression as the thing that hits you most if how “meh” a good percentage of the Best Picture winners now seem to be, particularly those from the late ’20s and ’30s. The best decade by far was the ’70s, no question.

Why is it I can’t seem to make myself rent a DVD of Dances With Wolves, which took the 1990 Best Picture Oscar. I’ve said to myself time and again, “Why don’t I rent the long version?” There’s a part of me that wants to, but I never do it. That’s because the Wolves-friendly part of me is a fairly small part — the much larger and stronger and more passionate part would rather watch Goodfellas for the 17th time. This is what much of the Best Picture Oscar legacy feels like to me — something I nominally respect but don’t really want to get into all that much.

I can watch Gone With the Wind, Million Dollar Baby, The Best Years of Our Lives, On The Waterfront, From Here to Eternity, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Apartment, The Godfather I & II, American Beauty, Unforgiven, All About Eve, Ben-Hur and The French Connection over and over again, but will I ever actually sit down and watch Wings again, or You Can’t Take It WIth You, Gigi, Marty, Driving Miss Daisy, Mrs. Miniver, Around the World in 80 Days or any of the other not-too- bad-but-really-not very-goods, which, after watching that video, seem more plentiful than the former group?

Michael Tucker, co-director (with Petra Epperlein) of Gunner Palace and The Prisoner, or How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair, has written a piece for Vanity Fair.com (“My Prisoner, My Brother”) about an American soldier from Ohio named Benjamin Thompson who “formed an unlikely friendship in the crucible of Abu Ghraib with an Iraqi detainee named Yunis” — the Iraqi central character in The Prisoner who refuses to take any shit from U.S. soldiers — “who was under his command.”

The Bagger (a.k.a., N.Y.Times Oscar David Carr) has written that he “has no idea what horse, or frog, to saddle up” as far as picking the Best Picture nominee most likely to win.

“His industry sources left him even more baffled than before, and while some of the comments he got from readers, whose predictions he solicited yesterday, where amazingly cogent and persuasive, they also tended to argue for different movies. Expect to hear much sound and fury for the rest of the week, signaling precisely nothing.”

It’s Babel, okay? It’s that old Crash magic plus the three countries and three languages plus the look on that young Tokyo detective’s face when he realized what was going on (and not going on) with Rinko’s deaf teenager character plus her very upset and concerned dad hugging her at the end. But if it turns out to be The Departed (i.e., my personal favorite), cool. And “yay, team” also if it’s Little Miss Sunshine.)

Collider‘s Steve Weintraub (a.k.a. “Frosty”) has posted some mildly nervy, undoubtedly fascinating comments from Departed screenwriter William Monahan that came out of an interview. One of the more interesting riffs concerns the rumors about one or more Departed sequels being planned.

“I read the prequel and sequel to Infernal Affairs for the first time a couple of weeks ago and there wasn’t anything I could use in Boston situation, not now. The thing is, that world of The Departed is sort of an intensely personal literary construct. If you analyze what the commodity is now, it’s that literary construct.

“People are talking about a sequel, but the reality is that I could propose Untitled Boston Crime Picture and sell it for more than I’d get for a sequel. I’m not putting the screws to anybody, I’m stating a fact. The commodity has transformed. I’ll be writing about Boston as long as I live, but whether or not I do it in the form of a Departed sequel is up to other people.

“I’d honestly love to bring back Dignam, (Wells note: Mark Wahlberg‘s character, he means. Duhhhhh….who the hell else could Monahan bring back? Everyone else is dead except for Alec Baldwin and Vera Farmiga.)

“And I know how the picture would open. With The Departed Tango and snow falling on the Boston Common. I know every scene in the picture. Maybe it will happen, maybe it won’t, maybe fuck yourself.” (Wells note: Monahan didn’t say those last three words — I stuck them in on my own because it sounded right and so damn similar to a line of dialogue that Wahlberg said in The Departed.)

“When I say that I couldn’t use Infernal Affairs 2 and 3 I’m not criticizing either film, I’m saying that “The Departed” now points in its own direction. Mak and Chong are brilliant filmmakers. I think that the give and take between American and Asian cinema is one of the great energizing cross-cultural relationships, like rock music getting to England in the ’50s and coming back as the British invasion. Except both are the R&B record and both are the British invasion.

“If there were no Martin Scorsese or Michael Mann there probably never would have been an Infernal Affairs, so there’s a chicken and the egg situation to begin with. I’m in negotiations to do another adaptation of a Mak and Chong script, somewhere down the road. And I may do an original in Hong Kong. I love the way they make films, they just run them up and get them in the theaters. If one doesn’t work you do another one. There’s no over-thinking.”

“Instead of living in Hollywood or Beverly Hills, Ryan Gosling has found a home in downtown LA for himself and his canine alter-ego George (‘He doesn’t like it that he’s a dog, you can tell’). There, Gosling says, people ‘are all doing something different. They don’t all have a script in their car. I live on Skid Row. You can’t filter yourself from reality there.'” — from Gaby Wood‘s interview with Gosling in the 2.18 Guardian.

Interior of Tagine, a Beverly Hills Moroccan restaurant that Gosling partly owns and sometimes even works in.

“I live in the poor part of Bel Air…Skid Drive.” — a stand-up line Bill Maher used six or seven years ago, or perhaps as long ago as ’99…I forget.

A journalist friend wrote a few hours ago that he’ll “be so glad on Monday when it’s all over” — i.e., all the Oscar crap — “for another year.” It will be over for precisely four, maybe four and a half months — until mid-July — by which time the ’07 campaigns will have been decided upon, pre-strategized and quietly launched. And then the game really kicks in come Labor Day.

Which means, now that I think of it, that it’s time for the ’07 Oscar Balloon to be thrown together. I can throw something together, of course, but it’ll be better if it’s done with reader input. All nominations due by 9 ayem Wednesday morning. Sometime today or tonight would be better. I’ll start it off with a sum-up article of some kind or another.

“Was it not just the other day that I mentioned the travesty of Prince of the City not being released on DVD? The double-disc treatment will get this masterpiece seen by many more than ever had a chance to catch it in theaters. I don’t know of any other film of this quality not yet out in the format…and POTC really is the best antecedent of Zodiac, which I saw the other night.

“Zodiac is a film that, on the one hand, seems to burst a blood vessel of tension when it wants to do so (pretty amazing for a film that tells a story in which we already know the answers) — but on the other hand, it’s more laconic scenes have a kind of ethereal beauty to them — there’s a warm bath quality to most of the film — perhaps that is due to how perfectly it captures an era in time. An era that most of us savor — for the movies, the music, the bad clothes and gas guzzlers.” — a director friend, writing late this afternoon.

WARNING: Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End plot spoiler about to be revealed, mainly because it’s already been revealed on jimhilledia.com and I hate these movies anyway (not how well they’re made, but how adamantly empty they are) so screw it:

“In the third installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean series, Will, Elizabeth and Capt’n Jack Sparrow are once again thrown together for a showdown between the fiercely independent Pirate Lords from around the world and the all powerful East India Trading Company (!!) led by the mysterious & cunning Lord Cutler Beckett. With possession of Davey Jones’s chest, Beckett is now able to use Jones and his ship, the Flying Dutchman, to further his plans of ridding the open seas of all Pirates. In response to this growing threat, the Pirate Lords call for a secret meeting at Shipwreck Cove.

“Newly returned from the other side, CaptaIn Barbossa agrees to help Will and Elizabeth rescue Jack who is now trapped in a very strange afterworld known as Davey Jones’s Locker. This unlikely trio makes their way to the exotic Far East where they meet Captain Sao Feng, the Pirate Lord of Singapore, and retrieve a special map that will then show them the way to Davey Jones’s Locker.

“Their course ultimately leads them to the edge of the world where their ship sails over a giant waterfall and comes crashing down through the darkness and literally into another dimension. There, Will, Elizabeth and Barbossa meet a somewhat bewildered Jack Sparrow still on board his beloved ship the Black Pearl, which is now stranded in the middle of a vast desert. Using reverse logic, Jack figures out a way to sail the Black Pearl back to the world of the living, where they are immediately set upon by Beckett and Davey Jones.

“After a series of plot twists and turns, Jack, Barbossa, Will and Elizabeth ultimately end up at Shipwreck Cove for the meeting of the Pirate Lords. During this meeting, the Pirate Lords agree to fight together against the approaching armada of ships led by Beckett and Davey Jones.

“The story’s thrilling conclusion unfolds in a huge sea battle between the massive fleet of the East India Trading Company and the Pirate Lords led by Jack, Will and Elizabeth, who while outnumbered and outgunned, possess a secret weapon so powerful yet so unpredictable that both sides may be lost in this final confrontation for ultimate control of the open seas.”

An industry observer who talks to Academy members is starting to think that maybe Alan Arkin might eke out a win against the ogre Eddie Murphy. “[Arkin’s] name is coming up, this and that person has told me they’re voting for him. Plus he’s in a Best Picture nominated film, so [Arkin’s performance] is being seen by a lot of people. Plus it’s not atypical for the Academy to have differences of opinion with SAG, and I’m thinking that such a difference just might be in this category [i.e., Best Supporting Actor].

“Murphy is a veteran, but Arkin is really a veteran, and the bottom line is that I just keep hearing his name…people I talk to on the phone and, like I said, I get stuff all over the map. It’s just another indicator that, at the very least, tells me the Best Supporting Actor category is not wrapped up….it isn’t a Helen Mirren situation. I’m not secure in predicting this absolutely, but there’s a reasonable chance, based on my unscientific readings, that [the winner] might be Arkin.”

“In Hollywood and on Wall Street, some question the focus at New Line Cinema,” writes N.Y. Times reporter Sharon Waxman. She then discusses the why and wherefores of that focus, or lack of. And yet the bedrock “thing” about Shaye and (talk to anyone who’s made a movie for him or had his/her film distributed by New Line) the moody, somewhat erratic, dark-cloud manner in which New Line operates, is not really given a name in the piece.

Talk to anyone who’s run a few laps around the track at 116 No. Robertson and they’ll give it a name, all right…but it’s a different proposition to tap it out on a keyboard and put it into print.

“After the success of Lord of the Rings, some had expected the studio to pursue a more ambitious agenda than the urban comedies and horror films of its past,” Waxman writes. “That might have included pressing ahead with The Hobbit, from the [original] ‘Rings’ author J. R. R. Tolkien, to which New Line shares the rights.

“Instead, Shaye has been trading insults with the Rings director Peter Jackson, while the studio has struggled to find a new breakout hit.

“I wouldn’t characterize it as a financial crisis, even if they had a bad year,” said Harold L. Vogel, an entertainment analyst. “It’s more like an identity crisis. It’s a fair question: where do you go from here? Everyone has the same problem, whether you’re 90 or you’re 20. And they’re facing it now with a little more emphasis.”

“If critics have observed that the studio seems distracted, there may be good reason. Shaye’s illness, the seriousness of which was not disclosed to the public before now, apparently derailed the studio for a portion of 2005 and affected the slate in 2006. And last year he took time to direct his own movie, The Last Mimzy, a family-oriented science fiction adventure (co-written by New Line’s president of production, Toby Emmerich) that will open in theaters next month.”

I saw The Last Mimzy a few weeks ago at Sundance, and it’s a nice family-level alien-visitation film…but it’s too E.T.-ish for anyone with strong memories of that 1982 Steven Spielberg film (and who doesn’t recall that film with unusual clarity?) to truly relax with and be genuinely moved by. Of all the stories that could be made into movies, why Shaye chose this particular one is a head-scratcher.