No Best Picture nomination for The Dark Knight or WALL*E, but 13 nominations for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button? Okay, fine, what’s done is done…but in this respect the Oscar nominations are feeling a bit tepid to me.

Whoa, wait a minute, whoa…Brad Pitt has been nominated for Best Actor for playing a passive sponge man with two and a half expressions? This is a performance abour makeup and CG. Button is very worthy film in some respects, but this is comic relief. This is ridiculous. Nobody in the movie-savvy world has even flirted with medium-level (much less high) praise for Pitt’s performance in this film.

The Best Picture nominations went to Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Reader and the all but certain winner, Slumdog Millionaire.

I’m just going to post the nominations plain and straight and then run commentary in a subsequent post. My shuttle taking me to Salt Lake City arrives at 8:10 am — less than an hour from now! — so let’s just do this.

Best Actor: Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon, Sean Penn, Milk; Brad Pitt, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler; Richard Jenkins, The Visitor.

Best Actress: Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married, Angelina Jolie, Changeling, Melissa Leo, Frozen River, Meryl Streep, Doubt, Kate Winslet, The Reader (but also for Revolutionary Road).

Best Supporting Actor: Josh Brolin, Milk; Robert Downey Jr., Tropic Thunder; Philip Seymour Hoffman, Doubt; Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight; Michael Shannon, Revolutionary Road.

Best Supporting Actress: Amy Adams, Doubt; Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona; Viola Davis, Doubt; Taraji P. Henson, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; and Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler.

Best Director: Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire; Stephen Daldry, The Reader; David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon; Gus Van Sant, Milk.

Best Foreign Language Film: The Baader-Meinhof Complex (Germany); The Class (France); Departures (Japan); Revanche” (Austria); Three Monkeys (Turkey); and Waltz with Bashir (Israel).

Here are the rest of the nominations. I have some commentary to post and a shuttle to catch in 20 minutes.

The New York Post reported a little while ago that Caroline Kennedy has folded her bid to seek appointment to the New York Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton.

To go by an e-mailed statement received a couple of hours ago, I think I understand the gist of Jeff “the Dude” Dowd‘s objection to the negative feelings about Dirt! The Movie expressed by John “knuckle sandwich” Anderson .

Dowd is basically saying that in the case of documentaries exploring the ruination of the planet and what can be done about this, film critics should get with the new spirit of the nation under Barack Obama and double-track their reviews.

In short, don’t just say if the film is well-made or not, but also give credit where due if the film is providing important and constructive information.

“Rather than precluding their opinions about anything they find negative in the film’s construction or execution,” Dowd says, “they [should] at least support any enlightening ideas and solutions.”

In other words, in the same way that the modern art trends in painting were “called off” during the government-sponsored WPA period of the 1930s, Dowd believes that film critics should, in the case of well-meaning docs looking to help turn things around for the planet, include a kind of WPA attitude in their analysis and criticism.

“My disagreement with John Anderson was not over his critical reaction to Dirt!, which he has every right to and which I find enlightening, but his statement that the film wouldn’t appeal to the public.

“I suggested he come back into the theater for the q & a and he would observe what we had seen at all four screenings — that audiences felt the film had all kinds of new information and practical solutions. It wasn’t homework, but hope made pragmatic on how we can change the planet in keeping with Obama’s Inauguration speech.

“I told Anderson one of scores of examples of this was when John Densmore of The Doors stood up at our first screening (after a sustained audience applause at the end) and said ‘I have my own film here–which I clearly care about–but here is my ballot which I marked 4 stars because Dirt! is the film that should win the Sundance Festival.’ That was emblematic of all the great feedback. I just asked Anderson to put that in the mix before making assumptions that audiences would respond negatively.”

“It should also be said that a vast majority of audience members liked the film not just because they ‘support the cause.’ We have heard dozens of comments about the quality of the filmmaking and storytelling as well. In the spirit of John Waters we even had smell-o-vision at one screening where you could smell the sweet earthy scent of dirt and mother earth.”

“Film criticism is fine but ill-informed assumptions are not what is best for the planet and not in the spirit of the dialogue that goes on at Sundance. He simply didn’t do a reporter’s homework and listen to audience members, before saying, ‘People will not respond to this film.” How can Anderson say those who responded so favorably are ‘just sheep‘, when most of the audience excitedly remained to discuss, and were clearly moved and inspired? I know that by the shank of the fest, critics are justifiably burnt-out, nonetheless he simply didn’t allow himself to see the reality here.

“We are at a historic time when information and dialogue are the life-blood of democracy and are essential to the future of the planet. In such a time informative and hopeful movies like Dirt! The Movie deserve discussion, not the simple dismissal John was unfortunately giving it.”

Because I did the right thing and focused on seeing two films I needed to see — The Greatest, which played at the Library at 11:30 this morning, and Humpday, which I saw and quite loved at a Racquet Club screening that began at 2:15 pm — I missed the noon dustup between John “knuckle sandwich” Anderson and Jeff “the Dude” Dowd.

The dining table in the Yarrow hotel’s restaurant where Variety critic John Anderson was allegedly sitting before standing up and face-punching Jeff “the Dude” Dowd earlier today.

As I’m seeing Shrink at 6:15 pm, I don’t have time to talk to investigate and re-report the episode chapter-and-verse. Here are reports from Variety‘s Anne Thompson, Spoutblog‘s Karina Longworth and MCN’s Kim Voynar.

It’s not permitted to hit someone, but we all know how we sometime get when we’re tired and stressed from over-work. I think it’s very decent of Dowd not to have pressed charges. And of course, it’s very good for Dirt! The Movie, which is what the fisticuffs were more or less about.

I suggested a year or so ago that it might not be a bad idea to have an organized Movie Critics Fight Club, in which anyone who disagrees with the view of a critic would put on a pair of trunks and try to defeat the critic in the ring. Gloves, no bare knuckles. Whoever lost would be wrong and whoever won would be right by the law of divine ordinance. I offered to fight somebody over In The Valley of Elah…well, not really. I said I’d fight a New York critic who hated it, but I wasn’t sincere because I wouldn’t want to bang my hands up and not be able to write. I’m just saying that the concept of fighting for your film-loving (or hating) make sense on a certain level.

For the first time since arriving in Park City last Thursday I got lazy and slept until 7:30 am. So now I’m behind the clock and unable, for now, to post reactions to Dirt! The Movie and Don’t Let Me Drown. I have to hike down to the Library where I’ll be trying hard to bum a ticket to The Greatest (need to catch Carey Mulligan‘s other stand-out performance), and then it’s right over to the Racquet Club and Humpday.

I hate standing around and asking publicists for tickets to anything. All my journalist pals have that super-cool red pass that gets them into anything anywhere, and I’m stuck with a proletariat green pass that requires finagling and begging. Thanks, Sundance press office.

With the cat out of the bag after last night’s screening of The Girlfriend Experience , Some Came Running‘s Glenn Kenny has written about his cameo role as a sleazy website manager. And he confirms that yes, he “did write that nasty voice-over ‘review'” himself, and that “all of the dialogue of the film was in fact improvised.”

Reactions to Kenny’s cameo as well as the film have been generally favorable thus far. The best line has come from Cinematical’s James Rocchi (actually quoting someone else), to wit: that The Girlfriend Experience is “a period piece from October 2008.”

Here are reactions from N.Y. Post critic Lou Lumenick and Spoutblog‘s Karina Longworth. I put mine up last night, of course.

“I’ve seen many presidents come and go, but I’ve never watched a tableau like the one Tuesday, when four million eyes turned heavenward, following the path of George Bush‘s helicopter out of town. Everyone, it seemed, was waving goodbye, with one or two hands, a wave that moved westward down the Mall toward the Lincoln Memorial, and keeping their eyes fixed unwaveringly on that green bird.

“They wanted to make absolutely, positively certain that W. was gone. It was like a physical burden being lifted, like a sigh went up of ‘Thank God. Has Cheney’s wheelchair left the building, too?'” – from Maureen Dowd’s 1.21 N.Y. Times column, called “Exit the Boy King.”

Steven Soderbergh‘s The Girlfriend Experience — a not-half-bad indie-scaled pic about the life of an upscale Manhattan prostitute — had a sneak preview at Park City’s Eccles early this evening. Apart from the usual Soderberghian textures and intrigues, it should be immediately noted that Some Came Running‘s Glenn Kenny plays a sleazy erotic website guy who exploits the main hooker character ( Sasha Grey). He has the funniest lines in the film and, if I’m not mistaken, wrote the smart-ass erotic review that we hear in voiceover.

Steven Soderbergh during q & a at the Eccles theatre following showing of the not-half-bad The Girlfriend Experience, a recently shot lowball indie (it cost around $1.4 million) which he called a “work in progress.” It seemed fairly complete to me.

I was pretty okay with The Girlfriend Experience. It smacks of right-now verite, is smartly written and very well made. (And recently shot also with all kinds of references to the Obama-McCain race and the economic meltdown.) No one would call it the stuff of high Shakespearean drama, but I wasn’t bored for a second. It’s smallish and low-key like Soderbergh’s Bubble but set in Manhattan and focusing on a very pretty upscale prostitute and the various men in her life — boyfriend, journalist, high-rollers looking to buy her favors, Kenny’s character, etc.

I presume that everyone reading this knows that Soderbergh is far too dry, ironic and circumspect to be a provider of hot sex scenes or even mildly suggestive ones (as in, say, Alan Resnais’s Hiroshima Mon Amour). He maintains a cool distance in this regard at all times, which is welcome considering the appearance of Grey’s clients. Some of them, I mean. Two or three inspired a prayer from yours truly: “Please, God, I don’t want to see any middle-aged butt cheeks or bloated stomachs or funny-looking feet.”

Soderbergh frames most of The Girlfriend Experience with static medium and long shots — there are almost no close-ups. He said during the q & a that the photography in Michelangelo Antonioni‘s Red Desert was an influence.

Grey, a real-life porn star, isn’t as much of an actress as she could be. Scene after scene requites her to keep it all locked inside, and she’s good at that. Grey’s live-in boyfriend is played by 30 year-old Chris Santos, who delivers reasonably well in a somewhat layered and mildly challenging role.

I didn’t know what the title meant until I looked at The Girlfriend Experience IMDB page. A trivia notes posting says that “a call girl advertising the provision of a ‘girlfriend experience’ is implying that she provides deep French kissing, ‘full service’ intercourse with protection, and oral sex without protection.”

This reminded me of the services that Ashley Alexandra Dupree allegedly provided (or were sought out by) former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. I wonder if the Spitzer scandal inspired this film to any extent.

“Coming into Sundance, we had a feeling the coming-of-age dramedy An Education would probably be pretty good,” Defamer‘s Stu Van Airsdale wrote yesterday afternoon. “But as 282 lucky ticketholders at Sunday’s premiere soon discovered, ‘good’ isn’t the half of it.

“An Education all but blew the marquee off the Egyptian Theater, where over 100 latecomers were turned away onto a swarming Main Street before director Lone Scherfig nervously announced not even she had yet seen her film outside the lab. She had nothing to worry about:

“Led by 23-year-old Carey Mulligan in a breakthrough that makes Ellen Page‘s Juno turn look like a Lifetime reject, Scherfig’s ensemble cast wrings a spry, otherworldly beauty from Nick Hornby‘s script and its corrosive glare at early ’60s London. We have no idea if it’s the festival’s best film, as some have said, but if there is a likelier candidate for life beyond Park City — as in awards-season, even canonical immortality — let’s have it.”