The two conversation points in this morning’s announcement of the Producer’s Guild of America nominations are, of course, the inclusion of JJ Abrams‘ Star Trek as a contender for the Daryl F. Zanuck Producer of the year award, and the omission of Rob Marshall‘s Nine in this category.

Not that anyone expected Nine to make the cut, but this is the first official statement from the community about its Oscar chances. Again — I feel badly for the Nine team because at least they showed balls in making their film in the first place. They knew that a screen version of a stage musical based on a Federico Fellini classic was, at heart, a jaded European-elite mood trip movie — hot women, Raybans, cigarettes, sports cars, Amalfi coast, Cinecitta — that would have trouble attracting the Middle-American Eloi who went to see Chicago, and yet they made it anyway. And out of this came an appealing, spirited and reasonably decent film.

It just seems to me that (a) putting your money where your heart is and (b) betting on a project that you know will be a dicey commercial endeavor from the get-go should be at least ceremoniously acknowledged, if only to give the makers a pat on the back — a little “good on you, homie, for going with your gut and giving it your all.”

I loved watching Star Trek for the rousing popcorn movie that it was and is, but c’mon…a possible recipient of a Zanuck Award? It’s very, very hard to make any film work, and a huge investment was required to make a wow-level, grand-scaled enterprise like Star Trek really take flight, but everyone knew it was a safe bet from the start, and that it was always primarily a movie that was first and foremost about the making of money and the eating of popcorn, which is fine. But the risk factor that Abrams faced was almost nonexistent compared to what Harvey Weinstein and Rob Marshall were dealing with.

Abrams is fine. He’s loaded and well-liked with the world at his feet. He’s got it made in the shade. What does he need a PGA Zanuck nomination for? It’s a garland, a bauble, a rose petal tossed at his sneakered feet. But poor Harvey is battered and struggling — he’s Jake LaMotta on the ropes. (“Ya never got me down, Ray…ya never got me down.”) If I could wave my hand and take back Star Trek‘s PGA nomination and give it to poor Nine, I would.

The other nine PGA best Picture nominees are Avatar, The Hurt Locker, Up in the Air, Precious — Precious?? — Inglourious Basterds, An Education, Invictus — Invictus?? — Up and District 9.

PGA’s documentary award nommmies went to Burma VJ, The Cove, Sergio and Soundtrack for a Revolution. They blew off Anvil! — The Story of Anvil because…? And who the hell has even heard of Sergio? They also gave the go-by to Capitalism: A Love Story, Food, Inc. and James Toback‘s Tyson.

Having recently addressed Mo’Nique‘s decision to snub the New York Film Critics Circle awards ceremony, Newark Star Ledger critic Stephen Whitty summarized his thinking in an e-mail sent today:

“Have you noticed — as I have — that folks who don’t bother to pick up their New York Film Critics Circle awards generally don’t win the Oscar that year? Such as, in past years, Heath Ledger (Brokeback Mountain) or Julie Christie (Away From Her). I’m not sure, but I think Bill Murray may have skipped picking up his Lost in Translation NYFCC award. I do know Bill Hurt didn’t show for A History of Violence.

“The Mo’Nique snub doesn’t matter much to me. Really. If folks don’t want to come to pick up an award, that’s their choice. Because we’re honoring the performance, not the performer. And most of us are, I suspect, way past getting starstruck by meeting the co-lead of Soul Plane.

“But it also seems to me that folks who aren’t willing to do our high-profile yet very low-key events like the NYFCC are people who don’t give much of a shit about the Oscars either, or the traditions surrounding them. Who are also the people who, unfairly or not, generally don’t win.

“Yes, folks can be legitimately busy, and that’s cool. And lots of nice folks pick up our little certificate and never get within miles of Oscar anyway. Appearing is no guarantee. But just blowing it off? Honestly? Bad decision, Mo’Nique.”

Ohhh-din! Ohhh-din! Send a wind and turn the tide!

In Contention‘s Kris Tapley spoke to Up In The Air director Jason Reitman earlier today about a suspicion voiced in a 1.3.10 HE story (“Bingham vs. Cancer”) that Reitman might have shot the film with an undercurrent of fatality in mind. Here’s how Reitman responded:

“You find out at the end of [Walter Kirn‘s] book that Ryan Bingham is dying of terminal disease and that he’s going to the Mayo Clinic. That’s something I never really wanted to include in the movie. I never shot a scene that suggested that the character was dying. For me, at the end of the movie, he’s making a choice about where he wants to go for the rest of his life, and he certainly does have a rest of his life.

“The ‘do you want the can, sir?’ scene came out of a real moment in which I was on a plane and I overheard a flight attendant ask someone, ‘Do you want the can, sir?’ and I literally did a double take, then I realized what she was saying.

“It’s inclusion had to do with two things. One, I thought it would be a cute nod to the people who’ve read the book, and two, more importantly, it kind of speaks to the idea of how Bingham collects things and the way we obsess over travel in the sense that it’s a disease, being that addicted to traveling and the obsessiveness over miles or any kind of fruitless collection is like having a disease.”

The New York Film Critics Circle has relented and decided to allow reporters and columnists to attend the NYFCC Awards on Monday, 1.11, at Crimson (B’way and 21st). Budgetary concerns had prompted an earlier decision to politely say “sorry fellas..no can do.” The turnabout comes with a condition that said observing journos will have to sit in an isolated area upstairs with no food. (Like the kids table during a Thanksgiving dinner.) I’ll be bringing my own Chinese takeout and a bottle of wine.

Every time a larger company buys a smaller company, the participants are all smiles and optimism. Somebody always says “we’re a good match, a great fit,” etc. And within a few weeks or months, the larger company always starts modifying and making changes (streamlining, refining, cost-cuttings) to the smaller outfit. It’s a genetic jungle paw-print thing — the dominant must somehow imprint itself upon the submissive.

One way or another, this dynamic will manifest in the wake of the Flixster purchase of Rotten Tomatoes. Somehow, some way, some high-up hotshot will figure a way to “improve” Rotten Tomatoes that will very gradually diminish the brand. They might even fire a person or two. I’m not saying that the buyout/merger won’t improve revenue for all concerned….for a while. But sooner or later someone or something good will get brushed aside.

The subtle chills in Mark Pellington‘s direction of The Mothman Prophecies (’02) makes him an excellent choice to helm the English-language remake of The Orphanage for New Line Cinema. American mainstream moviegoers weren’t all that interested in seeing Juan Antonio Bayona‘s brilliant 2008 Spanish-language original because…let’s see, what was the reason again?…oh, right, because it had subtitles. Naturally!

Pellington will direct with Guillermo del Toro (the godfather of the ’07 original) and ContraFilm’s Beau Flynn and Tripp Vinson attached to produce. The Ebnglish-language script is by Del Toro and Larry Fessenden.

After seeing Bayona’s film in the 2007 Cannes Film Festival I called it “the creepiest sophisticated ghost story/thriller to come along since Alejandro Amenabar‘s The Others, and if you ask me (or anyone else who’s seen it here) it absolutely deserves a ranking alongside other haunted-by-small-children classics as Jack Clayton‘s The Innocents and Nicolas Roeg‘s Don’t Look Now. It also recalls Robert Wise‘s The Haunting, although the ghosts in that 1961 film were all over 21.”

Wells to British journalists & inside-trackers: I ask again, what’s the poop on Mat Whitecross‘s Sex and Drugs and Rock & Roll, the Ian Dury biopic that opens in England four days hence (1.8)? The London media has seen it but I’m finding no reviews. Andy Serkis is most likely phenomenal as Dury, but something must be wrong because the film isn’t showing in the World Cinema section at Sundance 2010.

I don’t trust the 12.13.09 review on the IMDB page.

If there’s a problem with the film (and I say “if”), it may be suggested in the trailer. Very little quiet is indicated. No intimacy or character hooks. The film seems to be all about bellowing and howling and pouring of milk into mixing boards — i.e., outrageous behavior of one form or another.

Congratulations to Mr. and Mrs. David Poland on yesterday’s arrival of Cameron Poland. A journey of many decades begins!

Today the Kansas City Film Critics Circle chose Christoph Waltz — Waltz! — as their Best Supporting Actor for 2009. The echo chamber of critics’ group choices has been lampooned in this space repeatedly and still the KCFCC fell in line. Okay, Up In The Air for Best Picture is a wee bit afield but they went for Kathryn Bigelow as Best Director, Meryl Streep for Best Actress, George Clooney as Best Actor, Mo’Nique as Best Supporting Actress, Jason Reitman‘s Up In The Air screenplay for Best Adapted, Quentin Tarantino‘s Inglourious Basterds screenplay for Best Original, etc. Shameless.

Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil has reported the balloting particulars about today’s National Society of Film Critics voting. Meryl Streep and Jeff Bridges led on the first ballots for best actress and actor, but then lost to Yolande Moreau and Jeremy Renner when proxy votes could no longer be counted after the initial round, etc.

Irked by salacious excerpts that have appeared here and there (like in Sara Stewart‘s story in today’s N.Y. Post), Warren Beatty has issued a statement through his attorney that Peter Biskind‘s “Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America” is “not an authorized biography.”

Biskind hasn’t responded to an e-mail I sent him a while ago, but as far as I can discern he’s never claimed that the book is authorized. He’s been a little vague about it (like Beatty tends to be about many things), but has written that Beatty spoke to him off and on, but not, apparently, in a way that added up to very much. My impression is that Beatty’s input wasn’t substantial.

Biskind says in the introduction that he’s talked with Beatty many times over the years and that he “sat down [with Beatty] a few times” as part of his research. He also writes that during these sessions Beatty “was clearly uncomfortable, watchful about what he said, dispensing his responses one grain at a time, telling me nothing I didn’t already know.”

He also says Beatty told him during a lunch “that the only reason he had agreed to do the book was because he thought that once word of [the] book spread around, the other writers with books in progress, specifically Ellis Amburn and Suzanne Finstead, would just go away…in other words, he was just using me to scare other writers off.”

In a statement to the Huffington Post, Beatty’s attorney Bert Fields states the following: “Mr. Biskind’s tedious and boring book on Mr. Beatty was not authorized by Mr. Beatty and should not be published as an authorized biography. It contains many false assertions and purportedly quotes Mr. Beatty as saying things he never said. Other media should not repeat things from the book on the assumption that they are true or that the book is an authorized biography.”