Grantland‘s Mark Harris has joined the Gold Derby prediction gang, and he’s saying that the most likely Best Picture winner is The Help, followed by The Artist, War Horse and The Tree of Life. I’m sorry but apart from Harris’s choices being incredibly bland and hugely depressing, he’s way off.

The Help has awards heat because (a) it’s enormously popular with women and (2) because Viola Davis is the presumptive Best Actress front-runner. But it has never had genuine Best Picture heat and never will have genuine Best Picture heat because no one of any perception or integrity thinks it’s any kind of four-star achievement. It’ll probably be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar but solely because it made a lot of money. Even if the Oscar goes to the most popular film without regard to quality, Harris seems to be forgetting that a majority of Academy members are male. There are no beer-sipping, Cosby-sweater-wearing, baseball-bat-swinging guys out there who think The Help is any kind of great film…none.

Secondly, The Artist is going to start fading the more people talk about it, and especially if anyone sees it a second time, as I did at the Savannah Film Festival. “I felt under-nourished and bored…despite feeling mostly pleased and charmed when I saw it in Cannes five and a half months ago,” I wrote. “It’s too cloying and simplistic — too much of a peanut- gallery pleaser — to stand up to a second viewing.” And keep in mind what Brett Easton Ellis said anout eight days ago: (a) “Just walked out on L.A. screening of The Artist and wondered: am I a Grinch or is it just an unbearably cute flyspeck?” and (b) “Michel Hazanavicius‘ The Artist makes Mel Brooks‘ Silent Movie (1976) look like a masterpiece, and in their way The Weinstein’s are very smart.”

War Horse will probably be nominated for Best Picture. And it may indeed win. But Disney’s “show it to hinterland audiences first” strategy is probably indicative of issues that may amount to a problem down the road. And Harris surely understands this potential.

Finally, I will be surprised if The Tree of Life is even nominated. Nobody is questioning its merits, at least as far as the first hour goes. But older critics and viewers have had issues, as we all know. And if a Best Picture contender doesn’t have boomer-aged critics like Kenneth Turan and Marshall Fine singing its praises, it’s got trouble.

The general feeling among those who attended last night’s special Westwood screening of Wim Wenders‘ Pina, a beautiful ballet doc shot in 3D, is that dance comes wonderfully alive when viewed with stereoscopic depth. Germany’s official submission for the Best Foreign Language Oscar is not just sublime in its own right, but proof that 3D is most transporting when it captures life in natural proportion, and not when the camera is going for large brawny spectacle.

Wim Wenders during last night’s Pina after-party in Westwood.

There are two reasons why Alfred Hitchcock‘s Dial M For Murder is one of my favorite 3D films. One, the scale couldn’t be smaller or more intimate, the entire thing taking place within a modest one-bedroom London apartment. And two, there are only two 3D pop-through shots — the scissors and the latch key. I’d love to see David Jones‘ Betrayal remastered in 3D with the same high-quality precision that James Cameron has reportedly put into the 3D remastering of Titanic.

I asked Wenders at the Pina after-party when The American Friend (’78), my favorite of all his films, will be out on Bluray. Next year, he said, via the Criterion Collection. It will be part of a series or a box set, apparently. I couldn’t hear as well as I wanted to but I think he said the package will include four of his films.

From Joe Morgenstern‘s mini-review of Pina in the Wall Street Journal: “Pina is a wondrously surreal evocation of the work of choreographer Pina Bausch. (She died two years ago, before she could see the finished film.) It’s also a fascinating–and successful–marriage of dance and technology. The 3-D process, deployed with restraint, gives weight and presence to the dancers’ bodies, yet keeps the camera at sufficient remove to preserve the impression of a performance on a theater stage.

“Images of joy, loss and pain succeed one another: a dreamscape of rock and water in a driving rain, a wordless drama aboard an urban monorail car, perilous exertions on the edge of a huge mining pit. Dancers throw themselves at each other with seeming indifference to the danger. Pina brings new meaning to the notion of a leap of faith, and new immediacy to filmed dance.”

Movieline‘s Julie Miller has described George Clooney‘s harmless little anecdote about his first sensation of strong sexual arousal when he was six or seven years old as “skin crawling.” It happened, says Clooney, when he was “climbing a rope.” Well, the exact same thing happened to me, Julie, when I was eight or nine. And it’s probably happened to tens of millions of other boys over the centuries…big deal.

If Miller is reading this, she’s invited to explain how and/or why this minor Tom Sawyer-ish recollection triggered such profound disgust.

Eddie Murphy‘s decision to bail on his Oscar-hosting gig is unwise, to put it mildly. He got a bounce out of Tower Heist, delivering his funniest performance since Bowfinger, and he obviously could have built on that with some extra-funny Oscar-show material…but no. He just has to be the asshole. Smug indifference to anything except his own mercurial whims is his basic default position.

Eddie Murphy

The decision smacks of the old arrogant Murphy of yore. Ladies and gentlemen, the guy who bolted out of the Oscar ceremony when he lost for his nominated Dreamgirls performance is back! The guy who had that eat-my-ass look in his eyes that said “I’m Eddie Murphy and I’m rich and famous and all that other good shit, and ain’t jumpin’ through no hoops for you or anyone else.”

His decision doesn’t exactly say to the community, “You know what? Maybe rehearsing is for fags.” But he’s kinda vaguely implying that. And he’s certainly not endearing himself to the gay community.

Murphy’s decision also says “you do it to Brett, you do it to me.” In windier terms, Murphy is basically saying, “To hell with that ‘an Oscar producer needs to show a little class and dignity’ stuff. If you like to eat the pussy and want to talk about that with Howard Stern, I don’t see the problem. You want to cut Brett lose because of that, fine. That’s your call. But I don’t hold with that so I’m walking. Yeah, you heard me, Academy. Kiss my ass.”

From Pete Hammond‘s 11.9 Deadline piece about the Ratner departure: “There is some media speculation that, with Ratner gone, Eddie will follow him out the door. I see that as highly unlikely — and I also don’t think Ratner himself would let that happen. Granted, Ratner’s exit caused a big ripple inside Hollywood. But Murphy’s exit would be a high-profile PR nightmare inside and outside Hollywood, creating the impression to the general public that the Oscars is in complete chaos.”

Here‘s the formal apology and mea culpa that former Oscar telecast producer Brett Ratner released yesterday. And here’s my notion of what Ratner probably had in his head as he was writing his statement:

“To my LGBT friends, colleagues, acquaintances and comrades: I’m sorry, guys. And I’m not just sorry I lost the Oscar-producing gig, which happened because of the stuff I said to Howard Stern two days ago and not because I said ‘rehearsing is for fags.’ But I am sorry I pissed you guys off. Really. You know I’m not some homophobic shithead. You know I’m just an amiable, marginally talented, commercially-inclined fratboy director who likes to make popular movies, and that I want everyone to love or like me for having made them. And you know I just stepped in it. I’m not an asshole. I’m just a little thoughtless and lazy from time to time.

“I used a phrase that indicated I equate homosexuality with dainty, sissy-fied, less-than-manly behavior. I guess that’s what straight men of my father’s generation used to think privately or say to each other in the local tavern or whatever, but attitudes have obviously progressed since Stonewall and I was a douche for showing that I’ve been too caught up in my Brett Ratner lifestyle to show respect for that evolution by evicting all homophobic terms from my vocabulary and moving on and…you know, whatever, getting with the Anderson Cooper program. Whoa. Wait…I guess that’s okay to say, right? We’re just being straight with each other. I don’t mean ‘straight,’ of course. From my perspective I do but…well, you know.

“I’m trying to say that yes, okay, I’m obviously a lazy homophobe on a certain level but not in any kind of ardent or seriously committed way. Last Friday’s remark came out in a blurty way, like a fart. I meant that rehearsal is for candy-asses. I meant that tough guys just get out there and hit their marks and do it. But I didn’t mean anything by it…not really. It’s just that like 70% or 80% of the straight guys out there I have these little remnants of old-style homophobia circulating through my head and memory and my system, but it’s a residual thing. It’s a trace, a leftover. And although we’re all living our lives by the social and political realities of 2011, sometimes these traces come out in my speech. Stupidly and insensitively, okay, but not, you know, maliciously. Last Friday’s blunder was due to a lack of maturity, but you know I’ve never been about shitting on anyone. I’m just a guy who loves his life. I’m somewhat talented, and I just want to make movies that people pay to see, and I want to be well paid for that so i can live the kind of life I want to live. It isn’t any deeper than that.

“But those traces are everywhere. I was just watching Robert Altman‘s M.A.S.H. on Bluray the other night and there’s a character, Painless, who’s distraught and suicidal because he suspects he’s a ‘fairy’, and when Donald Sutherland hears this he almost goes white in the face and asks the guy if he’s done anything fairy-ish and the guy goes ‘no, but it’s just a matter of time.’ There’s also a story that Elliot Gould tells the doctors and nurses about a horse who was discovered to be a ‘raging queen.’ Now, if Altman was still with us you could haul him in and grill him and demand that he officially reject that portion of M.A.S.H. and maybe even re-edit it, but you know what Altman would say? He’s say fuck you, that’s the way the film was back in 1969 and ’70, those were the times and I’m not changing a damn thing.

“I’m just saying those little traces are everywhere, and they’re going to pop up among the less sensitive and aware types like myself. I may be less disciplined than I should be, but there are lots of guys like me in this town. Come over to my house for one of my parties and you’ll meet some wealthy kings of this attitude and this lifestyle…serious talents but guys who like to be guys, y’know? Gerard Butler, Gavin O’Connor. We get it, we’re not trying to be assholes. But guys like me are about trying to live our lives with a little straight-guy swagger, a kind of randy, loving-the-ladies lifestyle in the mode of Doug Liman‘s Swingers and paying tribute to the old Frank Sinatra ratpack aesthetic, and you know that Frank…well, he was a man of his time, but he really liked and got along well with Montgomery Clift when they worked together on From Here To Eternity because Monty helped him with his performance. I’m just saying that we live the kind of lifestyle and with that kind of old-time mentality that sometimes allows for little faux pas slippages among the less socially astute. Which would be me.

“So I’m sorry. Really. There’s no place for bigotry in this town, and before last weekend I would have said ‘what, me bigoted?’ but I guess I kind of am in a douchey way because I used that term and I guess that kind of sanctions the use of it with others because I’m famous and rich and all. So I’m trying to say the right things now and also think the right things and get past this nightmare. I’m ready to admit I was a jerk and that I’ll try to be less of a jerk in the future, and you can be damn sure I won’t put my foot in it like that again. But I’m also ‘Brett Ratner’, and I’m entitled to be that guy and live that kind of life.”

Well, that was fast! The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has accepted Brett Ratner‘s decision to resign as producer of the 2012 Oscar telecast. He probably would have survived “rehearsing is for fags” but talking about cunnilingus with Howard Stern yesterday morning did him in. Will Eddie Murphy decline to serve as host in solidarity with Rats, or will he stick? That’s the question.

Ratner’s statement: “As a first step, I called Tom Sherak this morning and resigned as a producer of the 84th Academy Awards telecast. Being asked to help put on the Oscar show was the proudest moment of my career. But as painful as this may be for me, it would be worse if my association with the show were to be a distraction from the Academy and the high ideals it represents.”

Academy president Tom Sherak‘s statement: “[Ratner] did the right thing for the Academy and for himself. Words have meaning, and they have consequences. Brett is a good person, but his comments were unacceptable. We all hope this will be an opportunity to raise awareness about the harm that is caused by reckless and insensitive remarks, regardless of the intent.”

I predicted yesterday morning that the Brett Ratner “fags” controversy would last between 24 to 72 hours. And I honestly though it might start to go away last night when Academy bigwig Tom Sherak told Deadline‘s Mike Fleming that AMPAS would let Ratner slide as long as he doesn’t toss any more verbal stink bombs between now and February’s Oscar telecast.

But less than an hour ago TheWrap‘s Steve Pond reported not only that “a tense silence” is seeping out of the Motion Picture Academy “as the drumbeat of disapproval grows” over Ratner’s public statements over the past few days”, and that the org “declined comment on Tuesday as word spread of a sexually-explicit interview with shock jock Howard Stern on Monday.”

I posted three YouTube audio-only clips of Ratner’s Stern visit yesterday.

Pond also reports that he’s “surveyed a number of Academy members on Tuesday morning, [and that] none were willing to support Ratner. The ones who didn’t shy away from the question altogether said the producer had to go.”

On top of which Salon‘s respected Andrew O’Hehir posted a “Ratner’s got to go” essay this morning. “So far the Academy seems to be standing behind him, after insisting he issue the usual wimpy non-apology,” O’Hehir noted. “[But] that’s not enough: He should quit or be fired, and the Academy needs to hear that loud and clear from the press and the public.

“I’m not proposing blacklisting Brett Ratner, or depriving him of his livelihood or his inalienable right to inflict stupid comedies on us every couple of years. (If rehearsals are for fags, maybe he needs more fags on the set.) It isn’t censorship or prudishness to say that he no longer has the right to be a public face of the film industry, which, amid all its crass commercialism and anti-intellectualism, has long prided itself on providing a nurturing environment for gay people when the larger society was overwhelmingly hostile.

“It isn’t complicated: There’s a line there, a line consisting of common decency and ordinary courtesy, and Brett Ratner has repeatedly crossed it. Let’s make clear to the Academy that he’s got to go.”

When and from where will the next shoe drop?

Clint Eastwood‘s J. Edgar currently has a lousy 45% Rotten Tomatoes rating, and my guess is that this number isn’t going to rise very much between now and opening day (i.e., Wednesday). But a portion of the Friends-of-Clint Club (i.e., NY & LA elites who’ve generally stuck by him and have occasionally found ways to give even his lesser films a pass) are giving their approval. These include N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis, The New Yorker‘s David Denby, MSN critic Glenn Kenny, etc. Richard Roeper is actually calling J. Edgar “one of the best films of 2011.”

“It’s not bad for what it is,” I wrote last weekend. “No, better than not bad. ‘Decent’ is a fair term to use. It’s Clint’s version of Brokeback Mountain, in a sense, and is finely performed and professionally assembled, etc. But for all the things it does right and despite that feeling of rock-bottom assurance that an Eastwood film always provides, J. Edgar is a moderately boring film, at times in an almost punishing way. Mostly because it’s a profound drag to spend time with such a sad, clenched and closeted tight-ass.”

Update: In Contention‘s Kris Tapley has just tweeted “kudos to the precious few willing to review just J. Edgar, [and] not Eastwood’s impressive directorial spryness at this stage of his career.”

Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (Moneyball, The Social Network) has written a short Vanity Fair piece about the personality and temperament of David Fincher, director of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and, of course, The Social Network. Here are the portions that I like the most, in my own order and with edits:

“For three months leading up to the Oscars we’d been going head-to-head with the eventual Best Picture winner, The King’s Speech, and six hours after David lost [the Best Director Oscar] to that film’s director, Tom Hooper, he sent me an e-mail with his unused acceptance speech attached. It began, “We’ve finally answered the question, ‘Apples or oranges?'”

“Off the top of my head I can think of 10 people who cared more than David did when his name wasn’t called. I don’t want to give Academy members the wrong idea — he respects the Academy and its highest honor — he just doesn’t cry over spilt milk. David doesn’t cry over anything. My guess is that his single biggest reason for wanting to win was to avoid having people offer condolences for not winning.”

“David Fincher in a bad mood isn’t easy to discern from David Fincher in a good mood. Fincher tired is the same as Fincher energized. There’s never anything about his demeanor that asks you to ask, ‘What’s wrong?’ This might be what people mean when they talk about strength. Also focus.

“David has great patience with people who aren’t as gifted as he is. What he can’t abide are people who don’t work as hard as he does. And he won’t work with people who don’t care as much as he does. Everyone who works in Hollywood has two personalities: their real one and the one assigned to them by rumor. The rumor about David is that he’s gruff, harsh, and difficult to work with. The truth about David is that he’s warm, honest, and an exceptionally generous collaborator. He’s fine with the rumor.”

Haywire proved again that Steven Sodberbergh kills every time he decides to do a crime-action movie. (Excluding the Ocean’s films, of course.) I realized this morning that the same incandescent mentalities who declared that Haywire is “not very good” (air agnes) or “meh…kind of dry and slow-moving” (Alex Billington) are cousins of those who complained that the warehouse shootout scene in Soderbergh’s The Limey (’99) sucked because it doesn’t show anything.

Yesterday a registered letter arrived from Rome’s Corpo di Poilizia, informing that I owe them 105 euros and change for a traffic violation that happened on 5.23.10. Except I was never pulled over and given any kind of ticket or verbal warning…nothing. I don’t know what I did wrong (the infraction number is 13101230071/10) but whatever my crime it must have been traffic-cammed. Before yesterday afternoon I’d never been handed a special delivery letter from any foreign city or nation informing me of a traffic violation, let alone one that allegedly occured 18 months ago.

I somehow got hold of this early-stab, never-used Sexy Beast poster after catching it at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2000. I brought it home in a plastic tube and had it mounted on foam core. It felt too extreme for framing or hanging on a wall, but it does reflect the horrific madman humor in Ben Kingsley‘s Don Logan character.

Click here for larger version

“Retired? Fuck off, you’re revolting. Look at your suntan…it’s like leather, like leather man, your skin. We could make a fucking suitcase out of you. Like a crocodile, fat crocodile, fat bastard. You look like fucking Idi Amin, you know what I mean?”