The passed-along allegation is that the central idea in Michel Gondry‘s Be Kind Rewind (New Line, 2.22) rips off an eight year-old episode of The Amanda Show on Nicholodeon. I have no dog in this hunt.

MTV’s Josh Horowitz and his creative tech team have thrown together a reasonably ambitious short in which Horowitz has inserted himself into the five Best Picture contenders as a kind of Oscar host. They’ve also thrown in a cameo by MTV’s Kurt Loder. Going for broke here. Not your father’s typical MTV report.

Coming Soon’s Edward Douglas has posted his final Oscar prediction column. Absolutely no surprises (he doesn’t even mention the apparent surge of Juno and Michael Clayton support in the Best Picture category) except for predicting Cate Blanchett to take the Best Supporting Actress Oscar, which I’m 90% convinced will go to Clayton‘s Tilda Swinton. “Hastiliy written,” he says, “but heavily researched. Granted, some of my picks are those who I think should win, but I did think this stuff out, even going against the favorite Juno for original screenplay.”

On 12.16.07 I wondered why Juno director Jason Reitman cast Ellen Page based on her sass and spirit “but with no regard for the fact that in the real world a young woman who looks like Page — midget-sized, scrawny, looking like a feisty 11 year-old with absolutely nothing about her that says ‘alluring breeding-age female’ — most likely wouldn’t exactly be fighting off the attentions of hormonally-crazed teenage boys, including nice-guy dweebs like Michael Cera‘s character.”

I was, of course, mocked and spitballed for saying this in the most respectful terms I could manage. I’m repeating my blurt nonetheless because I believe that fate, the Academy membership and the Movie Gods are not in the final analysis comfortable with the idea of a Best Actress winner being this eflin and pocket- sized, and therefore that the Best Actress Oscar will go to Away From Her‘s Julie Christie or (my personal favorite) La Vie en Rose‘s Marion Cotillard. I say this recognizing that there are many, many Juno lovers out there looking to show their support in some way, but I still say no.

The Envelope‘s Pete Hammond isn’t quite buying into the scenario of an upset Best Picture win (i.e., either the much- loved Michael Clayton or Juno slipping in due to the gnarly nihilist vote being split between No Country and There Will Be Blood), but he’s toying with the scenario regardless.

Uno, the Westminster Dog Show champ on 2.11.08.

Hammond is basically acknowledging that the talk is out there (as I have, as others have) but is saying in the final analysis that he’s not persuaded there’s enough talk to change his prediction about a No Country triumph.
“The tide — and the votes — are in, and anything other than the guilds and critics favorite, No Country for Old Men, would be a major upset,” he states.
“With Crash it was clear in talking to voters in the week leading up to the ceremony that a tidal wave of support was taking place. It was overwhelming and hard to believe, since Brokeback Mountain had been so dominant. But it was real.
“This year there appears to be reasonable levels of Best Picture support for multiple films, including Juno and especially Michael Clayton, even a fairly strong pro-There Will Be Blood faction, but most likely not enough for one or the other to overcome the leading advantage of No Country.
“Unless you believe, that is, in the kind of miracles that have been happening lately in Super Bowls, dog shows, presidential primaries, etc.
“Clearly, hope reigns supreme over at Fox Searchlight, where they are chanting their mantra: ‘If it can happen to Uno, a lowly beagle who became numero uno in the Westminster Dog Show, it can happen to Juno!’
“Or at Warner Bros., where their awards consultants are shouting: ‘Yes We Can! If the country can vote for Barack Obama, the academy can choose our Clooney drama!”‘”

Film Jerk’s Edward Havens has his annual Oscar handicap articles up. Stats, stats, and more stats. The Best Picture article is of particular interest. Havens predicts No Country but personally favors Michael Clayton among the five nominees and picks The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford as the best of all the ’07 films.

David Fincher is attached to direct a film based on Black Hole, the Charles Burns graphic novel about a sexually transmitted virus among teens that causes strange growths and tears in the skin. AIDS yuckfest! Plan B and producer Kevin Messick are developing for Fincher, Paramount Pictures and MTV Films. Beowulf screenwriters Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman wrote a Black Hole screenplay in 2006. Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes, High Tension) was previously attached to direct.

I just ran out onto Melrose to see the lunar eclipse. It’s something like 50% or 55% dark now, but the moon is so low in the L.A. sky right now you need to be out in the open and looking east without any buildings or trees obscuring.

I’m saying nothing about this Rec Show article, which is a full journalistic equivalent of an intimate act performed upon Steven Spielberg. Key statement: “Spielberg is to movies what the Beatles are to music. You can follow in his footsteps, but you cannot top him.” It’s mostly YouTube video clips, so I don’t know what there is to mull over.

The just-up N.Y. Times report about a possibly romantic relationship eight years ago between John McCain and a lobbyist named Vicki Iseman (40 now, 32 then) is a bombshell, yes, but something feels insufficient. The events in the story happened so many years ago with the intimacy angle being denied by both parties — there’s no photo, no salacious evidence — that one wonders what the real-dirt story is.

Upside: doesn’t McCain seem slightly younger now?
The story seems to be primarily saying now that McCain is as flawed as the next guy and maybe given to intemperate behavior in this or that area. Nobody has a perfect record. It’s entirely fair for news reporters to explore character issues of Presidential candidates, but a part of me is feeling badly for the guy. Matters of this nature should be off-limits unless some form of deliberate harm or cruelty was involved, or some form of provable corruption or lack of integrity was demonstrated.
“Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of [McCain’s] top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself,” the story reads, “instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.
“When news organizations reported that Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist’s clients, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.”
If there are concrete facts or at least strong indications that Iseman’s clients may have benefitted with some form of favorable treatment in political or financial matters that McCain had domain over, where are they? There are allegations about “key telecom legislation before the Senate Commerce Committee” but I haven’t absorbed the particulars at this stage. The Drudge Report posted a story last December about McCain trying to get the Times to spike the story.
McCain’s statement about the story: “It is a shame that the New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit-and-run smear campaign. John McCain has a 24-year record of serving our country with honor and integrity. He has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists, and he will not allow a smear campaign to distract from the issues at stake in this election.
“Americans are sick and tired of this kind of gutter politics, and there is nothing in this story to suggest that John McCain has ever violated the principles that have guided his career.”

If MSNBC’s Chris Matthews had asked me to name some of Barack Obama‘s legislative accomplishments (as he did last night with Texas State Senator Kirk Watson, causing him to look like a total doofus when he couldn’t name a single one), I would have said that legislative accomplishment and the give-and-take of relationships within a legislative body is considered to be a different game, requiring differing skills and strengths, than dispensing inspirational leadership and applying organizational focus.
I then would have offered to give Matthews the whole Obama legislative as soon as he names the legislative accomplishments of JFK during his eight years in the Senate. (He did next to nothing of historic proportion — he coasted.) And Bobby Kennedy‘s record during his three and a half years as a New York Senator…same deal. Tell me one drop-to-your-knees thing that Abraham Lincoln did in the Illinois legislature, I would also ask. The issue would be moot.

Carter Burwell‘s “score” and Skip Lievsay‘s sound effects in No Country for Old Men are comprised of “the occasional barely audible hum and whine of undefinable instruments at moments of tension,” writes Slate‘s Jan Swafford. “As in many film scores there’s a recurring motif: the keening and howling desert wind.
“Its meaning is revealed at the end, when Sheriff Moss delivers a mournful soliloquy accompanied by the wind. The last thing we hear before the credits is the wind and the ticking of a clock. It’s not just about death. It’s the desert that is eternal and doesn’t care about all the human messes played out on its surface, and the wind that will outlast us all.
“You could say the rest of the sound in No Country rises from that wind: the flat tones of the voices, the hum of engines and the whoosh of the road, the barely audible drones of instruments that fade in and out of other sounds, or are terminated by gunshots. As the demon killer throttles his first victim, the sound of a locomotive appears out of nowhere; it tells us this guy is a rampaging machine that cannot be diverted from its track by mere human flesh.
“Sometimes the Coens wield a terrifying silence that does the job of, say, Max Steiner‘s old, stabbing threat-and-suspense chords, and does it better. How all this works can be heard in a scene near the end. Sheriff Bell stands before the door of a motel room, knowing the demon may be on the other side. What we hear is the distant wail of wind, a distant train barely audible, a falling hum of motor somewhere, a low drone of music fading to silence.”
All together, there’s only about 16 minutes worth of “music” in No Country.