An informative, nicely written piece by Time‘s Josh Tyrangiel about Stephen Gaghan’s researching of Syriana (Warner Bros., 11.23). And a good New York Times piece by Stephen Farber about the current popularity of multi-narrative Syriana-type films.

Beware of two highly touted, nicely production-designed, supposedly audience-friendly movies that have been frequently mentioned as Best Picture contenders. You may go to them when they open and like them, etc., and that’ll be fine…but everything I’ve heard so far tells me these two are going to get slammed by a majority of the critics. Both are broadly-based and aimed at the shmoes, and at least one of these will probably do very well with audiences, based on NRG test scores. But every now and then you see some- thing you’ve heard will be quite the thing because a couple of prominent journos like it, and then you see it and it’s like, “What? There’s nothing there…pretty pictures do not make a film.”

The Big Question in Anne Thompson’s “Risky Business” piece about Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain isn’t really answered, so let’s boil some of the snow out. The question is, will the quietly homopho- bic Bubbas out there go for Brokeback Mountain the way they might if they weren’t vaguely weirded out about gay people? And if they don’t, what will this do to the film’s chances of winning the Best Picture Oscar? Thompson quotes Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation spokesperson Damon Romine saying that Brokeback Mountain “is the first film I’ve seen about two men in love, [that’s been] told in a way that straight people can relate to. People don’t have to be gay to understand loss and longing and unrequited love. This is…a film that has tremendous potential to reach and transform mainstream audiences.” Thompson also alludes to “Gallup polls” having stated that “Americans [are] growing increasingly tolerant of homosexuals, but movie audiences have never been confronted with a gay western.” I’m really starting to worry that “gay western” and “gay cowboy movie” is going to stick to Brokeback and hurt it. What Thompson is inferring in her piece is that it’ll be one thing for critics and uptown audiences to support brokeback Mountain, but if the dollars aren’t earned in the theatres across the nation — if Brokeback doesn’t make, let’s say, a good $40 or $50 million — the Academy will fold and vote for another film. I think we live in a moderately homophobic (and racist) culture for the most part, and that what people say to Gallup pollsters and what they really think deep down are two different things. The battle for Brokeback Mountain is just starting and it’s going to be a brawl. It’ll be nominated for Best Picture, certainly…especially given all the supposed Oscar contenders that are falling by the wayside, one after another. But if that goldurned “gay cowboy” expression doesn’t get shut down and kicked out of the room paying movie- goers are going to start turning off before they’ve even seen it, and that won’t be good. Brokeback Mountain is not a gay western and it’s not a gay movie…it really isn’t.

Did I read or just hear a line allegedly said by a gay jounalist- critic to a friend, which is that Brokeback Mountain is “our Gone With the Wind“? B. Ruby Rich wrote something along those lines a couple of months ago, but Anne Thompson says that a Toronto journalist said it specifically. Who was it?

Will you listen to New York Times critic Stephen Holden jizz all over Keira Knightley and her intoxicating aura in Pride and Prejudice (which is quite tedious, by the way)? Knightley “is, in a word, a knockout,” he enthuses. “When this 20-year-old star is on the screen, which is much of the time, you can barely take your eyes off her…her radiance so suffuses the film that it’s foolish to imagine [her character] would be anyone’s second choice.” This is dereliction of duty. There should be more to a captivating actress than looks and radiance. She needs to have it inside…deep down… and Knightley, as I wrote in early September, “doesn’t. I don’t mean sex appeal or vivaciousness or any of that natural-aura stuff. I mean she doesn’t have ‘it.’ People are delighted with Knightley…that young, beautiful, Audrey Hepburn-ish quality, and the way she seems to add fizz to any movie she’s in. But there’s nothing about her that sticks or sinks in. Whatever it is that Rachel McAdams possesses and dispenses, Knightley has not.”

The cathartic effect of war films and what they get into vs. don’t get into — particularly in the recent Jarhead, Gunner Palace and Syriana — will be the topic at the annual “Times Talks” on Saturday, 11.12. It’s happening inside theatre #10 at Hollywood’s Arclight cinema. Kicking things off at 11:30 will be critics A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis riffing on war films past and present, followed by a 2 pm panel discussion between Times editor Gerald Marzorati and directors Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight), Michael Tucker (Gunner Palace), Garrett Scott (Operation Dreamland) and Stephen Marshall (Battleground). The finale will be a discussion between Lynn Hirschberg and George Clooney, primarily talking about Syriana. For information and availability, visit www.AFI.com/afifest or call 866.234.3378.

All the big year-end films but three are either currently screening or will start to screen in a week or so. Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, The White Countess, Casanova, The Producers (starting on or about 11.18), Syriana, Memoirs of a Geisha, Narnia, Match Point, et. al. The last to be considered will be Terrence Malick’s The New World (there’s an Academy screening set for 11.26), Peter Jackson’s King Kong and Steven Spielberg’s Munich (both in very early December). It’s flurry time, screening-conflict time, dog-and-pony-show time.

Exactly how weak is the Best Picture contender list? A lot of films so far have fallen by the wayside, and more will follow suit before long. The only dug-in finalists by my barometer are Capote and Brokeback Mountain. (Haven’t yet seen the apparently well-regarded Memoirs of a Geisha.) The highly-rated possibles are Walk The Line, The Constant Gardener, Syriana, The New World and Crash. Tea-leaf readings are telling me Munich will fall short, but that and $1.75 will get you a bus ticket. The reality that nobody seems to want to face up to is that Cinderella Man, easily one of the year’s best, ought to be a finalist. I’ve always felt that the quality of a film ought to be a factor…naive as that may sound.

I’m struggling to sift through my feelings and understand why I’m looking forward to seeing Rob Marshall’s Memoirs of a Geisha (Columbia, 12.9) with the same anticipation one normally associates with going to the dentist. I shouldn’t admit to this. Prejudice before-the-fact is not an admirable thing. If it’s made with the right stuff, if it’s a touching film…it will be something to cheer. And yet…and yet. Am I concerned because Gold Derby guy Tom O’Neill is over the moon about it? Yes. Am I persuaded by Time‘s Richard Corliss having declared that “it has a shot to join Chicago as a Best Picture champ.” Uhh, no…because anyone who points to Chicago as something to measure up to in any regard is talking the wrong language with me. Consider Corliss’s description of Arthur Golden’s 1997 best-selling novel of the same name: “[An] authoritative evocation of an alien, exotic world, one in which women served men less with sexual favors than by creating a simulacrum of the feminine ideal. But the book’s real pull is its take on the Cinderella story.” And Sony Pictures’ production chief Amy Pascal saying, “I’ve gotta believe, in the job that I do, that when you give the audience something that they haven’t seen before, they are going to like it. I’m hoping the film appeals to people who have ever been in love.”

Yes, I’d very much like to see James D. Stern’s untitled documen- tary about how thuggish Bush loyalists managed to prevent enough liberal-leaning voters in Ohio from voting (or managed to discourage them from same) in order to tip the totals in President Bush’s favor and give him a second term. Stern, a Hollywood financier, has submitted the film to the Sundance Film Festival. Oh…so no seeing it until January?

Jarhead is over, according to an Envelope/Gold Derby story that went up today. Okay…but I think we all knew that a couple of weeks ago. Jarhead is the Middle Eastern grunt movie that doesn’t work, and Gunner Palace is the Middle Eastern American grunt movie that does work.

The buzz on Steven Spielberg’s Munich (Universal, 12.25) seems to be…well, not building. First that less-than-encouraging teaser with indications that Munich is going to be some kind of dutiful procedural with a sentimental streak (a line from Eric Bana’s character expressing concern that his daughter’s affection may be at risk if she finds he’s been killing Palestinian terrorists, or words to that effect). And now comes word that a senior Spielberg rep was talking fairly seriously about his boss’s possible participation in a certain promotional event that would have stirred talk and/or fanned heat regarding possible Oscar nominations or Academy support for Munich. And then about two weeks ago the rep abruptly cancelled. A Universal spokesperson says my information is dead wrong, but also says the general Munich game plan is for Spielberg to steer clear of Oscar dog-and-pony shows and to “let the film speak for itself.”