“I find it distressing that we now live in a film-culture climate where a number of very talented film critics find their column inches reduced or themseves out of work at publications that think nothing of devoting reams of print and/or online space to awards-season speculating — most of which, as I further point out, isn’t so much concerned with the quality of the awards-season films as whether or not they’ll be to the Academy’s liking.” — L.A. Weekly critic Scott Foundas in a 12.11 posting.

As I’ve said numerous times, trying to make shrewd calls about likely Oscar contenders while knowing in my film-worshipping heart of hearts that many of the year’s real champs in terms of quality are being completely ignored by the Academy prognostication crew is…agonizing. Agonizing to watch this process in slow motion, I mean. A voice from deep in my chest says to me over and over, “You have to do this differently somehow because the usual-usual is wrong…the Academy decisions about some matters (like foreign-film qualification) are sometimes woefully ignorant and small-minded…you need to do what you can to try and lessen the noise and cut through the crap.”

But I’m trying to speak up for the right movies, at least. At least I’m not writing how wonderful and heaven-sent Amy Adams is in Enchanted — she’s very fetching and spirited but c’mon, calm down. Or how sublime George Clooney is in Michael Clayton. He gives a very noble and well-cut performance in a very well-crafted and 90% satisfying film, but is it right and proportionate to call it the stuff of legend?

This is a gig, a passion, a racket, a calling…and the advertising money that stems from the mythology of Oscar prognostication is very nice. Essential, I mean to say. I don’t know what else to say. It’ll be great, at least, to see at least some recognition for the right people and the right movies next February.”

Two days ago I was told that I Am Legend would make $44 or $45 million for the weekend. The 12.14 release date, I was told, would be a bit of an issue. If it wasn’t opening in the Thanksgiving-to-Xmas dead zone (i.e., a period when people pass up films in order to save money for Xmas gifts and preparing feasts for the in-laws), it would make a lot more. Plus the northeastern snowfalls would slow it down a tad. All hooey, it turned out. The big-canvas Will Smith sci-fi drama earned $28 million yesterday and is looking to nudge $70 million by Sunday night.

The weekend’s #2 film is Alvin & the Chipmunks (20th Century Fox) did close to $13 million yesterday. The Saturday box-office surge that family-audience movies always benefit from should kick in, and it should end up with at least $35 million by tomorrow night. I saw the trailer a while ago and was flat-out horrified. I won’t see this film under any circumstances, ever. I wouldn’t watch it with a loaded gun pointed at my head. “Go ahead…shoot!” I would calmly reply. “I regret that I have only one life to give in the cause of renouncing insipid family movies.”

The Golden Compass made roughly $3 million yesterday and is looking at $10 million for the weekend. The projected haul will mean a 60% drop from last weekend, give or take. The Golden Lion of the Rings & the Wardrobe & the Order of the Magical Polar Bear is dead, dead…deader than dead. If this were Japan, certain New Line executives would be getting out their samurai swords in preparation for ritual seppuku.

A new HD trailer for George Clooney‘s Leatherheads (4.4.08) — clearly a jaunty, light-hearted thing, directed by and starring Clooney. I was going to say “comedy” but a voice tells me that’s not quite the term. Renee Zellweger, John Krasinski, Tommy Hinckley and Wayne Duvall costar.

Now playing on myspacetv.com, the worst bootleg cell-phone video of a movie trailer ever captured. If there’s a God, the person who took this will never be a cinematographer. The image is lopsided, it wobbles from time to time, somebody’s head is in the way. Oh, yeah…the trailer is about Chris Nolan‘s The Dark Knight.

Just as I was heading out a big white box arrived with the best Oscar-season swag I’ve received in years…perhaps ever. A shoulder-strap saddlebag made of tanned leather (called “tribe leather” and sold by Roots) with a subtle branding on the backside of the No Country for Old Men logo…very cool. Thanks to the Miramaxers for this. An excellent thing to have and to hold from this day forth.

Outta here, second try…the highways paved and recovered from yesterday’s blizzard. I may file a few things from a Syracuse University Starbucks in the early evening.

I’ve watched a DVD screener of Rob Reiner‘s The Bucket List (Warner Bros., 12.25) three times over the last week and a half — once for my own reasons, and the other two times to show it to friends. Nobody liked it very much. A director friend called it “a lazy, complacent old man’s film.” That’s pretty close to my reaction. It’s a mild-mannered movie about dying from cancer — not awful or painful but nothing all that special.

Fox 411’s Roger Friedman recently called it the “downer movie of the year.” Not really — it just has tired blood.

I have to get back on the Mass Pike again and head for Syracuse, but allow me to impart two things before leaving. One, the above shot is an fair approximation of my own facial expression as I watched The Bucket List. And two, here’s the best line in the entire film — spoken by a bed-ridden Jack Nicholson to a bed-ridden Morgan Freeman right after Freeman’s “wife” has left their joint hospital room.

This five-minute Cloverfield clip is nothing new. I say enough with the tease clips. The movie opens in four and a half weeks — it’s time to start showing it. It just hit me that Cloverfield (Paramount, 1.18.08) would actually be a work of genius if they never show the beast. Let the 9.11 metaphor speak for itself and just go with the panic…the sounds, screams, explosions, etc. It could be phenomenal on this level.

Several I Am Legend video clips, available on Yahoo.com, present the case better than any review: the dozens upon dozens of images of an evacuated and wasted Manhattan, overgrown with weeds and tall grass and populated with wild deer and the occasional lion and littered with rotting cars and buses, are worth the price of admission in themselves.

I’m a fool for CG fakery when it’s this good, and each and every shot of post- apocalyptic desolation in this film — the pastoral still-life stuff, I mean — is as good as it gets these days. I believed it. I was there. Hats off to production designers David Lazan and Naomi Shohan, art directors William Ladd Skinner and Patricia Woodbridge and the various CG supervisors from Sony Picture Imageworks, New Deal Studios and CIS Hollywood.

In this respect I Am Legend is very nearly the equal of Alfonso Cuaron‘s Children of Men, and that’s saying something.

It’s too bad that the biological movement stuff — especially the CG “deer” and the nocturnal ghouls — aren’t up to snuff. In fact, forget the ghouls entirely. They’re cartoon dreadful. One look at these fiends and you’re out of the movie and thinking about checking your e-mails. It’s hard to tell who did what, but the bad guys in this respect, apparently, are senior character animators Tom Bruno Jr. and Stephen A. Buckley.

Why didn’t director Francis Lawrence just hire a first-rate ghoul makeup team and go the Tom Savini route? The person responsible for the CG ghouls — the person who said “don’t hire actors” — is an idiot. He doesn’t understand the Werner Herzog rule that movies are worthless if they encourage you to be cynical about what you see. Anyone who knows anything about visual effects is going to mutter “bad CG” when the Legend ghouls appear. They aren’t in the least bit scary because they’re not in the least bit convincing.

CG animals are also a big problem these days. The only poor aspect of Beowulf were the CG horses. You can tell from the first Legend clip that the deer are way too hard-drivey. They move too fast, can’t really “see” them, don’t seem biological.

The live human aspect of I Am Legend — the “story” about scientist Will Smith and his dog (a German shepherd) roaming around Manhattan as he tries to solve the mutant problem from his home-base laboratory — isn’t a huge problem. I found it slightly better than passable. It doesn’t go off the rails until the final act, and Smith seems much less concerned than usual about the audience loving him this time. He’s just “there” and working it — focused on survival, not being stupid, dug in, unaffected.

His character, Dr. Robert Neville, is too rich for a guy who once worked for the government, but movies like this are always absurdly indifferent to monetary realities. Before Manhattan was evacuated due to a lethal virus (a lot like the one that ravaged England in 28 Days Later) Smith and his wife and daughter lived in a Washington Square townhouse that only guys with Sultan of Brunei-type incomes would be able to begin to afford in real life. On top of which Smith mentions a second home (“the farm”)…what is this?

The only other thing that irritated me is a last-act element which I’ll get yelled at for discussing, so forget it. Suffice that the most touching scene in the film is a death scene in which Smith’s character does a kind of Jack Kervorkian thing.

It appears that Smith, who’s only 39, is starting to go seriously gray. His closeups in this film show he’s got a major salt-and-pepper thing going on. He was a young- looking guy only three or four years ago. Now he looks like a buff 49 year-old.

This latest Boston blizzard video, taken about 90 minutes ago, is the best yet because the snowflakes are illuminated by streetlights…important visual distinction!

Blizzard burger, Harvard Ave. in Brookline — Thursday, 12.13.07, 8:15 pm

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Now this is a Best Picture lineup I can totally live with! All hail the London Film Critics for coming up with a list that makes more sense than any I’ve seen this month — No Country For Old Men, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, There Will Be Blood, Zodiac and The Bourne Ultimatum.

Director of the Year noms are for Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (The Lives of Others), Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood ), Joel and Ethan Coen (No Country For Old Men), David Fincher (Zodiac) and Cristian Mungui (4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days)

The Attenborough Award for British Film of the Year nominees are Once, Control, Atonement, Russian Penis Movie and This Is England.

The British Actor of the Year nominees are Sam Riley (Control), James McAvoy (Atonement), Christian Bale (3:10 to Yuma), Jim Broadbent (And When Did You Last See Your Father) and Jonny Lee Miller (The Flying Scotsman).

It just goes on and on like that…great. I couldn’t find the original website or link so I had to link to MCN’s page.