Roger Ebert personally endorses Eddie Murphy as the most deserving winner of the Best Supporting Actor Oscar?

Norbit is #1 for the weekend with a projected $31,376,000 — playing on over 3000 screens, earning over $10,000 a print, running only 87 minutes. Hannibal Rising is second at $12,417,000, Because I Said No is third with $8,902,000 and The Messengers is #4 with $6,752,000. A Night at the Museum is fifth with $5,390,000, Epic Movie is sixth with $3,886,000, and Joe Carnahan‘s Smokin’ Aces is seventh with $3,617,000. Guillermo del Toro‘s Pan’s Labyrinth is #8 with $3,446,000, Dreamgirls is ninth with $2855,000 (down to $1200 a print…lost 400-odd theatres this weekend…will probably lose another 750 to 1000 screens next week), and Stomp The Yard is #10 with $2,352,000.

“The late Murray Kempton once described editorial writers as ‘the people who come down from the hill after the battle to shoot the wounded,'” writes L.A. Times columnist Tim Rutten. “Nowadays, media analysts are the guys who follow behind them, going through the pockets of the dead looking for loose change.

“So, yes, this column is about Anna Nicole Smith.

“Friday morning, less than 24 hours after she died in a Florida hotel room, the Drudge Report — our media culture’s digital arbiter of all things tacky and prurient — had 12 items posted on the onetime topless dancer. That would account for some of the media frenzy surrounding her death. It’s a little-known fact, but certain sectors of the broadcast media have long believed that if a dozen items on Anna Nicole Smith ever were posted on Drudge simultaneously, it would herald the onset of the apocalypse.

“Who knew? This is the way the world ends — neither with a bang nor a whimper but with cleavage.”

“I recognize there is a certain presumptuousness — a certain audacity — to this announcement. I know I haven’t spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I’ve been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change.” — from Barack Obama‘s formal announcement of his Presidential candidacy speech, delivered this morning in Springfield, Illinois.

“Why is it that the only people who really appear to lose control when they accept their [Oscar] statuette are the actors?,” writes MSN’s Jim Emerson. “Why don’t the art directors and sound editors sputter and wail as if they’d just been spared from lethal injection? If anything, you’d think the actors would be better able to control their emotions than most people.

“And you’d be right. You see, actors dig emotional meltdowns, on screen and off. They do it on purpose. It’s almost a form of noblesse oblige — a generous Acting Gratuity (more than 20 percent), if you will: “I will now treat you to an extraordinary demonstration of how deeply I am moved!” And, at the same time, it’s a form of grandiose self-inflation and self-abasement.”

The esteemed auteurs who produced Anna Nicole Smith‘s last film, an apparent piece of shit called Illegal Aliens, have cancelled screenings because, as director David Giancola has explained to the N.Y. Daily News, “so much of it is riffing on Anna and her riffing on herself, I just don’t think, with her passing, it’s appropriate to screen it so quickly after her death.”

The late Anna Nicole Smith in a still from Illegal Aliens

Smith lived a life that was mainly characterized by tastelessness and lack of refinement, and now that she’s gone her colleagues feel it’s time to get all sensitive and discreet. Not to mention the likelihood that the film’s only chance of being even marginally commercial would depend on it being released as soon as possible and then sent straight to DVD.

“We had planned to release it in April,” Giancola explained. “But right now, it’s such an early stage, we just don’t know.” Filmed in Vermont in 2005, pic is “supposed to be a comedy” and in it, Smith spends a lot of time making fun of herself. Considering how she died, that humor may now be lost. She plays one of three extraterrestrials who fight an intergalactic terrorist. Edgewood Studios bills it as “Charlie’s Angels goes sci-fi.”

In his handling of Music and Lyrics, director- writer Marc Lawrence “makes everything about three times more obvious than it needs to be,” says Variety critic Todd McCarthy. And yet “there’s energy” in this Hugh Grant-Drew Barrymore romance that Warner Bros. will open on 2.14, “and the actors feed on it.

“Grant carries the day as the fortysomething lad still living off his youth and just about getting away with it; from his first moment onscreen, he persuades you he’s the only possible actor for this tailor-made role. No matter Grant’s effervescence, newcomer Haley Bennett nearly steals every scene she’s in as the Britney/Christina/Madonna figure. Very cute and a hot little dancer, the singer-thesp presents an implacable figure of absolute privilege and authority while sneakily sending up the whole celebrity package in a wonderfully sly turn.

“Which leaves Barrymore something of the odd woman out. Granted her Sophie starts out just wanting to blend into the wallpaper, but the star still comes off as rather more drab than necessary, or at least seems so in light of the charisma popping from the pores of those around her. Surrounded by an ex-star, a diva, a brilliant former boyfriend and a livin’-large sister, it’s hard for a normal neurotic to get a word in edgewise.”

A sophisticated film chum who’s currently trolling the Berlin Film Festival (and who weirdly asked for anonymity) insists that “Olivier Dahan‘s La Mome (a.k.a., La Vie en Rose) — a hurricane dramatic ride into the tumultuous life of Edith Piaf — is the first great film of 2007.”

strong>Bob Berney’s Picturehouse acquired U.S . distrib rights in Cannes last year, and is now pushing what Berlin guy feels will be the #1 contender for the Best Foreign Language Feature race of this year.”

Marion Cotillard “delivers one of the best female performance of the past decade,” he insists. “She’s the Penelope Cruz (in Volver) of this calendar year except she could have a serious shot at winning it all.’

No Variety review yet, but the Hollywood Reporter‘s Kirk Honeycutt is calling it “a messy triumph…showy and scattered, sometimes corny and other times outrageous, focused intensely on emotions, in love with its heroine and to hell with anything else.

“Dahan, who co-wrote the script with Isabelle Sobelman, pulls apart Piaf’s improbable, melodramatic life and puts it back together in a mosaic that suits his idea of the singer. Dahan sees Piaf’s life as a fantasia where nothing separates life from art, where miracles dwell alongside tragedy and grief and a saint can drop by for a visit.

“The film is messy the way Piaf’s life was messy: It’s unafraid of extravagant gestures even when they fail to come off.

“La Vie en Rose aims at a broad international audience with a mix of Piaf standards, doomed romance and a larger-than-life, self-destructive heroine.

“Thanks to an extraordinarily brave performance by Marion Cotillard, whose every gesture and singing performance channels not only Piaf but perhaps a bit of Judy Garland, the film should have wide adult appeal,” Honeycutt declares. “Critics will be divided about the filmmaking, especially its more self-conscious aspects, but Cotillard’s performance and the film’s fervent, romantic belief that misery can be turned into art will connect with many age groups, especially among women.”

Marion Cotillard on the carpet

Is EXBERLINER Berlinale blogger D. Strass behind the curve and/or missing the boat on La Mome/Vie en Rose? He could certainly file a bit faster, since La Mome is the first seemingly hot thing to emerge from the Berlin Film Festival, with Marion Cotillard allegedly giving the first ’07 performance with a shot at becoming a Best Actress contender.

“Film choices are minimal today,” he wrote yesterday. The press screenings kicked off with a French prestige production (which is to say, it was almost three hours long): Olivier Dahan‘s La Mome, a biopic about Edith Piaf. [I’ve been] assured that this film will be worthwhile, though films of this size and nature tend to be more worthy than worthwhile if you see what I√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢m saying.

“The French still create the sort of gigantic historical epics that passed from favor in the U.S. 40 years ago, and with a sprinkling of politically muddled exceptions. And very few of these French Fanfares have much to offer other than some finely lit soot and, again, with a few exceptions. I notch this up to a pervasive nostalgia and melancholia that continues to flow through French culture √ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Ǩ≈ì the same sort that enable their love of Edith Piaf.”

“My expectations are low. It would be silly for me if I haven’t learned from my experience [of losing]. But it’s fun, dear. It really is fun. I would be delighted to win. If not, I will be the record holder for the one who never won one.” — Peter O’Toole speaking to L.A. Times profiler Susan King.

N.Y. Times Oscar David Carr — a.k.a., “the Bagger” — sees and wisely, rightfully plugs Florian von Henckel Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others.

The First Ones, a black-and-white N.Y. Times short film, directed by Jake Paltrow. It’s basically seven big-name actors — Brad Pitt, Helen Mirren, Leonardo DiCaprio, Penelope Cruz, Cate Blanchett, Abbie Cornish, Ken Watanabe — talking about the films that made early vivid impressions. Not bad.