The current consensus is that 2007 has come close to being another 1999 — an exceptionally rich and bountiful year in terms of sheer quality. The likelihood, however, is that the Best Picture elimination process that prevailed eight years ago will happen again this year — most of the truly great ones ignored, two or three good ones championed, and a couple of mediocrities working their way into the fold.

The best ’99 films were Election, The Matrix, Fight Club, American Beauty, The Limey, The Sixth Sense, Magnolia, The Straight Story, The Cradle Will Rock, Run Lola Run, Any Given Sunday, The Hurricane, Three Kings, The Insider, Being John Malkovich, The Thin Red Line, Eyes Wide Shut, The Blair Witch Project, October Sky, Open Your Eyes and The Lovers on the Bridge — one of the all-time great cavalcades.

Out of this lot three were Best Picture nominees — American Beauty (which won), The Sixth Sense and The Insider. The other two were The Cider House Rules (pushed into Best Picture status by the legendary Harvey Weinstein promotion machine) and Frank Darabont‘s thoroughly detestable electric-chair drama The Green Mile — a movie I will never, ever see again.

This year we’ve had American Gangster, Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead, No Country for Old Men, Once, There Will Be Blood, Things We Lost in the Fire, Zodiac, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Atonement, I’m Not There, The Bourne Ultimatum, Control, In The Valley of Elah, Ratatouille, Charlie Wilson’s War and Sweeney Todd. Not as many top-grade releases as we had in ’99, but some kind of banner year.

I don’t want to think too strenuously about the likely ’07 Best Picture nominees (there are some who actually want to see Enchantment among the five), but I wouldn’t be surprised if the ’99 strategem repeats itself.

An IMAX-produced featurette is up about the decision to shoot “certain sections” of Chris Nolan‘s The Dark Knight (Warner Bros., 7.18.08) in IMAX and the challenges that went with this.

Warner Bros. publicity has invited elite and geek press to a special screening of selected portions of the IMAX Knight footage at the Universal Citywalk IMAX theatre on or about 12.5. The three talking heads are director-writer Nolan, dp Wally Pfisterand steadicam operator Bob Gorelick.

Nolan: “No one’s every done this before…shooting certain sections of the film in IMAX would give us the biggest possible canvas with which to keep telling the story.” Pfister: “IMAX has the highest resolution you could possibly achieve [but] it’s to four to five times heavier than the camera we’re used to working with, [and] the aspect ratio is taller than it is wide.” Pfister: “I’ve always been interested in shooting on IMAX. It’s really an extraordinary experienc to see an action sequence on the large IMAX screen….just knocks you out of your seat.” Nolan: “It takes you back to the world of a kid, watching a movie that’s larger than life.”

Yesterday’s projected five-day figure for Enchanted was reported as $68 million instead of the correct $58 million. A mistake, plain and simple.

Yesterday’s box-office projection reporting was ridiculous — the rudimentary Wednesday figures led to overblown and misleading three- and five-day figures on the studio-calculator side, and I misheard (i.e., failed to double-check) two figures that compounded the confusion. Hurried, blurred, holiday fatigued…no excuse.

Enchanted then took in $6.8 million yesterday, down 16%, which has resulted in an adjusted five-day projection of $54 million and a three-day weekend figure of $39 million.

But the studio calculators still don’t know enough and won’t have the precise Enchantment skinny in their sights until the figures comes in for today — Friday, 11.23 . Whatever it does today will bring in the focus that has been sorely lacking thus far. For what

This Christmas figures were also wildly off yesterday. Yesterday I was told $28 million for 3 days, $38 million for 5 days. Now they’re saying $19 million for three days and $27 million for five days. Talk about silly. You can only throw up your hands at this level of day-to-day divergence.

Craig (a.k.as. “Goodvibe61”) wrote this evening about No Country for Old Men, and said certain things about it in a cleaner and more eloquent way than I’ve managed so far.

“I really admire this film,” he began. “It’s a truly inspired work of art. What’s really gotten to me are all the complaints on the web from movie fans who are either disappointed with the sudden ending of the narrative, or mad because they don’t seem to understand what happened. I read all this stuff out there and I ask myself why audiences ask so little of themselves when they watch a movie.

“The movie remained completely true to its spirit to the bitter end. And it had something honest and real to say about the way of the world. Something refreshing as hell for a change.

“One of the things I most love about the end of the film is the ambiguity of Tommy Lee Jones’ final monologue. I’m not referring to the film suddenly ending and some not understanding the point the film is making. Instead, I’m referring to the final line of dialogue that Sheriff Ed Tom Bell tells his wife about his second dream.

“I continue to think long and hard about that final line. And I ask myself how I’m supposed to take that line coming from that man.

“Is the story of the second dream supposed to provide a ray of hope, a sense of eventual contentment of a full life lived to its fullest being finally rewarded? Or am I supposed to take the final line as an admission that this kind of hope has been completely, irrevocably taken away? That the good sheriff had that dream of a hopeful place there in the dark, a warm place made by his father waiting for him out there in all that dark and all that cold.

“And then I woke up”.

“And that the events he’s recently seen have removed any possibility of that hope coming to pass?

“To me, this is one of the all-time great endings. I love the suddenness and swiftness of it. It’s beautifully composed, it doesn’t beat you over the head, and it leaves you breathless with the idea that this story has dug very deep under the surface of things indeed. It reminds me of the stunning ending of Vertigo, another ending that is about as swift and sure of itself as anything I remember seeing.

“I am so excited that this film even got made, that anyone had the stones to put such a dark and unconventional perspective into a story of this type. It defies conventional storytelling, it refuses to give the audience what they expect, going in directions you never imagined, and the beauty of not showing Moss’s fate on-screen is a direct comment about audiences that crave violence for their entertainment.

“Rare and well done.”

I don’t feel an obligation to state what I’m thankful for because the calendar says this is the day to put your feelings on the table. I feel thankful 24/7/365. I’m sorry that some people out there feel entitled to their good fortune, but you can’t teach perspective and humility. And with those words…

The trailer for Martin McDonagh‘s darkly comedic In Bruges. The ’08 Sundance opener stars Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleason and Ralph Fiennes. The trailer’s from Alliance; Focus Features will open it on 2.8.08. It would be good to see this before leaving for Boston on 11.30. (I’ll be staying there all through December). Only long-leaders are being waved into screenings as we speak.

“The madness…the music…the movie of the holiday season!” Homey, mom’s-apple-pie narration for a G-rated, family-friendly TV promo for Tim Burton‘s Sweeney Todd. No missing Johnny Depp‘s straight razor in the final shot, but otherwise the truth-in-advertising factor is…well, par for the course.

Red Carpet District‘s…I mean, In Contention‘s Kris Tapley has dinged Rob Reiner‘s The Bucket List by calling it “a heavy layer of schmaltz that doesn’t settle into anything that feels genuine or ultimately enjoyable, given the potential in front of the camera.”

My God…Reiner dishing schmaltz? Doesn’t calculate. I need to step outside and take a walk and kick this around.

“I’m not going to offer a full pan of the film, because it doesn’t really deserve that,” Tapley goes on. “Its heart is in the right place and it should be a fun film for families to enjoy over the holidays, but give Justin Zackham‘s script over to one of the industry’s many gifted ‘doctors’ and [Reiner] might have ended up with something of substance.

“Morgan Freeman is business as usual. Jack Nicholson touches this or that unique note, but mainly it’s just Jack being Jack. And it isn’t the awards-caliber Jack we wouldn’t have been out of bounds to expect. It’s just not that kind of film. It’s not in [the film’s] DNA to rise above a certain level of mere acceptance. But sometimes that’s enough for a casual moviegoer, and so I’m sure The Bucket List will find an audience.”

You won’t find much debate about Roger Deakins being locked to win the Best Cinematography Oscar (for the combination of No Country for Old Men, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and In The Valley of Elah). It also seems as if Tony Gilroy is locked to win the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Michael Clayton (i.e., as a consolation for not winning Best Picture or perhaps not even being nominated), and that Joel and Ethan Coen are locked to win the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for capturing the pruned-down essence of Cormac McCarthy in their No Country screenplay. What others are worth mentioning? Ratatouille for Best Animated Feature?

Here are the first, second and third WGA “Speechless” video spots, conceived by George Hickenlooper and Alan Sereboff. WGAW chief Patrick Verrone has given Deadline Hollywood Daily‘s Nikki Finke an exclusive internet window as a reward for her ceaseless pro-WGA strike coverage.

Laura Linney, Sean Penn, Harvey Keitel, Holly Hunter

Three new videos will show daily throughout Thanksgiving weekend — morning, afternoon and evening. The ones up so far — the first with Holly Hunter, the second with Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss and third with Sean Penn — are pro-level efforts with very high-quality black-and-white resolution.

Hickenlooper is slated to shoot a spot with Woody Allen soon. For purely selfish reasons let’s hope it goes up before the strike is settled. (I’m predicting a resolution by mid-December, or certainly by Xmas.)

“Speechless” #1: (cast) Hunter, Mahadeo Shivraj, Allyson Sereboff, Ashley Smith, George Hickenlooper. (creative team) Hickenlooper, Alan Sereboff, Kamala Lopez, Jill Kushner. (technical team) Joel Marshall, Justin Shumaker, Anthony Marinelli, Clint Bennett.

“Speechless” #2 : (cast) Benjamin, Prentiss. (creative team) George Hickenlooper, Alan Sereboff, Kamala Lopez, Jill Kushner. (technical team) Joel Marshall, Justin Shumaker, Anthony Marinelli, Clint Bennett.

“Speechless” #3: (cast) Sean Penn. (creative team) George Hickenlooper, Alan Sereboff, Kamala Lopez, Jill Kushner. (technical team) Joel Marshall, Justin Shumaker, Anthony Marinelli, Clint Bennett.

In Denzel Washington‘s The Great Debaters (Weinstein Co., 12.25), a primarily true period story (set in 1935) about student debaters from the African-American Wiley College in Texas having a climactic match with debaters from Harvard University, the 17 year-old Denzel Whitaker plays James Farmer, the renowned founder of CORE and civil-rights leader who was one of the Wiley debaters.

(l. to r.) Great Debaters costar Denzel Whitaker; James Farmer in the ’40s; in the mid ’60s

Listen to this recording of Farmer, and you can sense his debating skills quite readily. He was only 15 when the Great Debaters story occured, but had a deep James Earl Jones-type voice and an elegant vocabulary as an adult — qualities he presumably had the beginnings of as a youth. Whitaker (no relation to costar Forest Whitaker) has a thinner, far-from-stentorian voice. Farmer stood well over six feet (which he would have also been in ’35, as most 15 year-olds have reached adult height), but Whitaker stands only 5′ 6″. And Whitaker doesn’t resemble the youthful Farmer at all — he looks more like an adolescent Muhammad Ali.

The likable and appealing Whitaker plays Farmer as well as he can, which is to say satisfactorily. I’m not putting him down, and this is not a forecast of a Great Debaters review. But given the qualities of the Real McCoy, it’s hard not to wonder why Washington cast Whitaker in the first place. The result is a bit like watching Chris Rock portray Paul Robeson.

The real “great debaters” — professor Melvin B. Tollson (played by Denzel Washington in the film) stands in the center.

Complaining once again about not being cast in JJ Abrams‘ Star Trek remake, William Shatner has said “how could you not put one of the founding figures into a movie that’s being resurrected?”

Once again, the answer: In Rob Burnett‘s Free Enterprise (’98), Shatner traded in the legend of the stalwart Cpt. Kirk for the persona of an amusingly deranged septugenarian actor. That was nine years ago, and the wackjob routine — a career rejuvenator — has fed into Shatner’s acting (it’s obviously in his Boston Legal character) and pretty much taken over. His cameo time in Abrams’ Star Trek would be primarily regarded as a hoot.