In a 2.23 Washington Post story, an anonymous Clinton campaign adviser tells reporters Anne Kornblut and Shailagh Murray that Barack Obama‘s 17-point Wisconsin victory last Tuesday “[has] started to sink in as a decisive blow, given that the state had been viewed weeks earlier as a level playing field.”

“‘The mathematical reality at that point became impossible to ignore,’ the adviser said. `There’s not a lot of denial left at this point.’ He added that despite Clinton’s public pronouncements of optimism, `She knows where things are going. It’s pretty clear she has a big decision. But it’s daunting. It’s still hard to accept.'”
“Some Democratic political sources said discussion has begun about encouraging Clinton to transition into a different party leadership role, one that could carry her on a path to becoming Senate majority leader.” Obviously this scenario could be adversely affected if Clinton continues the battle past the point of numerical reality and assumes the role of a spoiler.
It’s at least comforting to realize, considering the gist of this story, that Clinton advisers with their feet on the ground have managed to scotch the idea of burning the house down by fighting all through the summer for every last delegate and super-delegate. Thank God for cooler heads. If Clinton splits the Texas vote with Obama and just narrowly edges Obama in Ohio, it’ll be time to hit the showers. She’ll withdraw on March 6th or 7th. The Pennsylvania primary will not be hotly contested.

Vantage Point did about $7,963,000 last night with a projected weekend tally of $24.6 million, and it’s a total piece of shit. (Doesn’t matter, nobody reads reviews, America the Beautiful.) But three other openers have completely tanked. Be Kind Rewind will do about $4 million, Witless Protection will grab a pathetic $1.9 million, and poor Charlie Bartlett will only do about $1.6 million.
The Spiderwick Chronicles will come second in Sunday night with $12.7 million. Jumper will be third with $12 million even. Step Up will do about $9.2 million. Fool’s Gold is expected to take in $6.1 million. Definitely Maybe is $5 million even. Juno should do about $3.9 million.
Fantasy Moguls’ Steve Mason is reporting similar but slightly different figures.

“With the pressure to recognize big films declining, the Oscars’ role in movies has become more like that of Oprah’s Book Club in promoting literature: highlighting the obscure, unusual or unexpected.

“‘The academy is more concerned with rewarding the best film now than they ever have been. They’re less concerned with rewarding popular entertainment,” says Sasha Stone, who runs the industry blog AwardsDaily.com.
“That trend expands the eternal disconnect between the tastes of the academy and the tastes of the public. Would even fans of last year’s top box office-earner — Spider-Man 3, which took in $336.5 million — call it the best of the year?
“There Will Be Blood has to have awards success to do anything. It has to prove itself within that landscape,” says Kristopher Tapley, who follows award season for Variety‘s Red Carpet District column. “You can’t ignore that Juno is the biggest (platform release) since My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” the 2002 film that took in more than $240 million.
“No Country for Old Men, which has taken in $61.3 million, ‘is the Coen brothers’ highest-grossing film to date,’ Tapley says, referring to filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, known for their offbeat storytelling. ‘So there is obviously box-office bulk to be had (from the Oscars). There is an algorithm there.'”

I spoke earlier today about various Oscar matters with And The Winner Is blogger Scott Feinberg. Here’s the file. (It didn’t load for me — it just kept buffering and buffering and buffering.)

As a sentimental gesture to one of the late Roy Scheider‘s best performances, this afternoon I bought an old DVD of William Freidkin‘s Sorcerer (’77). It looked much worse than expected. Released by Universal Home Video in November ’98, the disc has muddy sound, a 1.33 to 1 aspect ratio that seems to trim out a fair amount of what was originally shot, and a crudely mastered appearance that’s way too coarse and grainy. I saw Sorcerer at a good theatre when it first came out. The DVD is a desecration.

Some think Sorcerer is a masterpiece. It’s not, but it has a wonderfully intense atmosphere (sweat, mud,humidity, mosquitoes) and more than a few great scenes. The ten-minute-long scene with the two trucks crossing the rope bridge in the rainstorm is worth the price alone. It should be re-mastered and re-issued with a voice-over commentary from Friedkin and a making-of doc, at the very least.
It’s Friday night and the Universal Home Video team has gone home, but maybe a new DVD is in the works. An IMDB chit-chatter wrote last summer that Freidkin said during a visit to the ’07 Munich Film Festival (which did happen) that “he had [recorded] an audio commentary” for a new Sorcerer DVD.

Mini-shakes at last night’s Paramount Vantage party at STK for There Will Be Blood and (sort of) Into The Wild. At the moment this was taken (around 9:25 pm), original slurper Daniel Day Lewis and wife Rebecca Miller were standing about 45 or 50 feet away.

Collider’s Steve Weintraub is reporting that Steven Spielberg has bailed out of directing the Trial of the Chicago 7 movie, but Deadline Hollywood Daily‘s Nikki Finke is reporting that Spielberg “has backed off setting an April start date…and won’t finalize a new start date until the Screen Actors Guild and AMPTP agree on a deal,” in part because he feels that Aaron Sorkin‘s script needs more work.

(l. to r.) Steven Spielberg, Abbie Hoffman, Sacha Baron Cohen, Will Smith

I called Spielberg spokesperson Marvin Levy at the start of lunch hour to check on this, but all I got was a message machine. And then Levy didn’t feel obliged to call back. Nice!
I’ve been saying that the marriage of Spielberg and the Chicago 7 story is a bad idea since early January. (Even with a reputedly “great” script by Sorkin and rumors about Will Smith playing Bobby Seale and Sacha Baron Cohen playing Abbie Hoffman, etc.
Finke seems to have a more acurate version of the story. Weintraub says he’s (a) confirmed the Spielberg bail-out with two sources and (b) believes that CHUD’s Devin Faraci having written that Spielberg was the wrong guy to direct it may have been a factor. (Don’t think so!) The movie has been listed on the IMDB as being in pre-production, which of course means nothing.
Interesting timing (if the story’s true) in view of the opening of Brett Morgen‘s Chicago 10, which tells the same story with animation and whatnot, opening just around the corner on 2.29.
Make the Abraham Lincoln movie with Liam Neeson. Make the Abraham Lincoln movie with Liam Neeson. Make the friggin’ Abraham Lincoln movie with Liam Neeson already!

Baird Jones, an event-party guy, a Webster Hall art curator and a former freelance gossip columnist who worked for the N.Y. Daily News‘ Rush & Molloy in the mid ’90s, was found dead last night. I knew and liked him a lot (I especially loved that N.Y. Yankees hat he always wore), and I’m very sorry for his close friends and family right now.
I last talked with Baird in December ’07 at a party he invited me to that was somewhere in the west 20s. I don’t get how a guy in his early 50s (a N.Y. Daily News story says he was 53) dies of natural causes, but we’ll let that go for now. Breaks my heart. Really, really sorry.

Kidding or half-serious, Paul Thomas Anderson let N.Y. Times Oscar blogger David Carr have it right between the eyes last night during a brief chat at a Paramount Vantage party (which I also attended) at a sprawling joint called STK or SKG or DMT….something along those lines.
Carr (a.k.a., “the Bagger”) said something or other about the Best Picture candidates he likes, admitting that There Will Be Blood isn’t quite at the top of his list, and Anderson said, “You know, you don’t know a fucking thing about movies!”
Anderson then said There Will Be Blood “[is] the best movie of the year. Except for maybe Juno. And Clayton. And Atonement. Other than that, it was the best movie of the year.”
When Carr touted the virtues of No Country for Old Men, Anderson said, “You really think No Country for Old Men…that movie was better than ours? C’mon, do you really believe that?”

Australian artist-hustler Vincent Fantauzzo has gotten PageSix.com to help raise the value of a just-completed Heath Ledger painting. Fatauzzo persuaded Ledger to pose not long before the 28 year-old actor accidentally died last month. (People sit for paintings these days? What for?) Ledger’s hair is black because that was part of his appearance in Terry Gilliam‘s Dr. Parnassus, but why does he seem to be wearing dark body makeup, like he’s playing a Sicilian gigolo in an early ’60s film?