I’m just hoping that the National Board of Review having given its ’07 Best Picture award to No Country for Old Men (as well as one for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Ensemble Cast) doesn’t…you know, taint things in some way. Let’s not go there. The bad-news group gave their Best Director award to Sweeney Todd‘s Tim Burton, so there was either a big Best Picture scrap between these two or…you know, they wanted Burton bad at the awards ceremony.

Michael Clayton‘s George Clooney was named Best Actor…I give up. Away From Her‘s Julie Christie named Best Actress…fine. Best Supporting Actor award went to Casey Affleck for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford…fine…and the Best Supporting Actress awatrd went to Amy Ryan in Gone Baby Gone Best Documentary: Body of War. Best Animated Feature: Ratatouille.

What’s The Bucket List doing on their roster of ’07’s Ten Best films? I don’t think that’s going to result in Jack Nichiolson showing up for the awards ceremony so why’d they do it? Nobody but nobody is over the moon about this thing.

Wells to “Aguirre,” the ghost of Klaus Kinski — what was all that blah-blah about The Kite Runner being an NBR favorite to win Best Picture?

“Films do a have a tendency to live a long time, and sometimes they even change the audiences so that [viewers] 10 years from now are affected by more unusual films,” Francis Coppola remarked last Monday night at Manhattan’s Paris theatre after a screening of Youth Without Youth. “In fact, I can remember in my own career reading the reviews of the first Godfather film. Even our friends here at Variety gave it a terrible review.”

Really? A terrible review to an all-time classic by the entertainment industry’s leading trade? I did a search and found A.D. Murphy‘s review, published on 3.8.72, and Coppola, it turns out, was exaggerating. Murphy was not a huge fan and was obviously dismayed, but what he wrote was not a savage pan.

“With several million hardcover and paperback books acting as trailers, Paramount’s film version of Mario Puzo’s sprawling gangland novel, ‘The Godfather,’ has a large pre-sold audience,” Murphy began. “This will bolster the potential for the film which has an outstanding performance by Al Paclno and a strong characterization by Marlon Brando in title role. It also has excellent production values, flashes of excitement, and a well-picked cast.

“But it is also overlong at about 175 minutes (played without intermission), and occasionally confusing. While never so placid as to be boring, it is never so gripping as to be superior screen drama. This should not mar Paramount’s b.o. expectations in any measure, though some filmgoers may be disappointed.”

Tip of the hat to the art guy with New York‘s “Vulture” team who slapped together this Sweeney Todd bloodletting chart. The copy claims that “no fewer than ten throats are slit in pretty much the most graphic way possible, with geysers of blood spewing in all directions.” I don’t remember more than seven or eight. I guess I’ll be doing a precise count at today’s 2 pm screening at the Boston Common 19.

I wouldn’t normally predict the National Board of Review‘s picks, which will be revealed sometime around 2 or 3 pm this afternoon, but since I’ll be in a Sweeney Todd screening that will start at 2 pm I may as well take a shot. I’m doing so knowing that the NBR has become an even worse joke than before due to the reported ouster of Annette Insdorf from the executive photoplay committee. The NBR picks will be old news by tonight and all-but-forgotten by tomorrow so I don’t know why anything bothers.

I’m not disputing the ghost-of-Klaus Kinski‘s prediction that The Kite Runner will take Best Picture, but a voice is telling me that it’s a 50-5O teeter-totter between this and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. (They may go even further and give their Best Director award to Julian Schnabel.) It would be right and fitting to start the ball rolling for No Country for Old Men with a Best Picture win…

I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I really can’t do this. Whatever they choose, they choose. The groups that matter are the L.A. Film Critics (who will vote, I think, this coming Saturday), the Boston Film Critics (who’ll vote Sunday) and the New York Film Critics Circle (who will powwow early next week).

Each and every time I re-review the Oscar handicapper favorites, I’m reminded that I’m constitutionally incapable of standing completely off to the sidelines and trying to guess which films and filmmakers that Academy members are favoring at the moment. I try to ask around and listen and “read the town” as much as the next guy — I respect the industry perceptions of guys like Pete Hammond as much as anyone else, and perhaps more so — but I can’t keep my own feelings and convictions out of it. The mindset of the dispassionate handicapper-statistician is too bloodless and clinical.

George Clooney, Benicio del Toro

And frankly, I don’t know how anyone in this game can go 100% dispassionate and still sleep at night. You’ve got to make it personal these days. Or at least half-personal. Dispassionate reporting and sage analysis are so…print. We are all advocates. A columnist or critic is nothing without convictions and cojones that he/she is willing to lay on the line.

One of the things I love about Envelope columnist Tom O’Neil is that he predicts from his heart. He raises the antenna and puts his ear to the rails, but at the end of the day he can’t seem to keep his own passions out of the equation. That’s me also, which is why I had a mild seizure yesterday when it hit me that a majority of Buzzmeter contributors had named Michael Clayton‘s George Clooney as a Best Actor contender while ignoring — as they have been all along — Benicio del Toro‘s wings-of-angels performance in Things We Lost in the Fire.

It doesn’t matter — it can’t matter — that industry Zeligs are saying “Clooney, Clooney” because it’s just too…I don’t know what…insulated? In this context it doesn’t matter if Del Toro has the “votes” or not. The point is that his performance in Fire is at least ten or fifteen times greater than Clooney’s, and I’m saying this with a full acknowledgment that Clooney gave a sturdy, convincing, first-rate performance in Tony Gilroy‘s film. But he’s just not in the same league with Benicio, and it’s wrong, lazy and disproportionate to assert otherwise because some lazy-heads are espousing this view at parties after their second glass of wine.

The Academy chattering class (or is it really the journo-chatterers?) can’t do this, and if they are doing this it is the responsibility of the Oscar-watching columnist-bloggers to split their heads and hearts in the Wells-O’Neil fashion and say “no, it’s wrong. Just wrong. This isn’t a high-school popularity contest, and the Movie Gods will never forgive us.”

It’s all well and good to pass along what is connecting and what isn’t with industry audiences, but if these alleged favorites don’t correspond on some deep-down level with what an observer knows to be genuinely commendable or artful on some level, a columnist-observer is obliged, at the very least, to ask questions. Or, if he/she chooses, argue against the prospective nominee. You can’t just be a lamb in the field and go “baaah.”

The bottom line is not that I haven’t agreed with the calls made by the Motion Picture Academy over the years, but that I don’t respect the myopic and provincial and always political thinking that have so often part of their calls. The only thing I really and truly respect about this racket is the advertising money that comes in during Oscar season.

“No one here is making sport of the emotional discontents of other human beings,” writes The Envelope‘s Mark Olsen in a piece about Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody‘s “Wino Forever”-ing of her husband’s name on her arm tattoo. “But when a public figure’s self-created mythology becomes such a foundational part of their persona — bound up as it is in Cody’s case in confessional self-promotion — it all comes to seem like, well, fair game.”

How can a piece of art that portrays Vice President Dick Cheney as a denial-advocate regarding Iraq and Iran intelligence reports be called “politically inflammatory“? Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese‘s black-and-white prints, now hanging in in a New York Public Library exhibition called “Line Up,” are “mug shot-style diptychs in which a member of the Bush administration appears in profile and face forward, holding a police identification sign and the date on which he or she made a statement of questionable veracity relating to Iraq.” I mean, nobody’s pushing the envelope here.

Israeli film blogger Yair Raveh, writing on his recently launched English-language version of Cinemascope, shares my concern about the Oscar chances of Cristian Mungiu‘s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Raveh isn’t just dubious about this winner of the European Film Award for Best Feature and Best Director (plus the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or last May) not taking the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. He doesn’t even think it’ll be nominated.

“I predict it will not be one of the five nominated Foreign Language films,” Raveh states. “Not because of the abortion theme, but because [Mungiu’s] filmmaking style is all but indigestible to American viewers.” Academy fuddy-duds, he means.

Raveh says a nomination won’t happen for the same reasons that films by Dardenne brothers or Bruno Dumont have never been nominated. 4 Months is “stark, naturalistic, mirthless and devoid of music. It looks like a documentary or perhaps an improvised piece, and it’s easy to miss the stand-out filmic achievements Mungiu has brilliantly pulled off, starting with the movie’s ironic self-referential title.”

Hearing about tonight’s release party for the Criterion DVD of Monte Hellman‘s Two-Lane Blacktop nearly broke my heart. The party is happening right now at Crustacean in Beverly Hills, and the combination of free seafood and the company of people who know and genuinely care about an obscure 1971 road movie would be delightful.

I saw Two Lane Blacktop eons ago in New York. I don’t have a very vivid recollection, possibly due to some kind of hindrance at the time — fatigue, too much wine, bad mood — that dulled my concentration. It’ll be great to see it again all cleaned up, not to mention the loads of extras. We all know Blacktop has a tremendous lore. James Taylor, minimalism, Warren Oates, “the girl,” Dennis Wilson, the quiet of the lonesome highway.

DVD Beaver’s Gary Tooze has said that watching it “is like stepping back into a very cool era that seems farther away every day with our reliance on technology and lack of interaction with our environment and its inhabitants. This is more than a movie about cars. It says volumes about where we have come and nostalgic remembrances of what we have left behind. ‘Amateurish but in a profound way’ seems appropriate.”

I was told tonight by Boston Herald critic Jim Verniere that there are no — repeat, no — cool DVD stores in Boston. There used to be but no longer. No DVD culture, no wandering the aisles of some nook-and-cranny retailer, no atmosphere. It’s like hearing that all the Boston taverns have closed. A way of life is dying. Verniere orders online. Terrific.

The latest Envelope Buzzmeter is out and Juno, a smart and likable comfort-blanket movie, is now in the top five. The problem (and I don’t dislike it — it’s a thoroughly decent domestic dramedy) is that it’s a 7.5 or an 8, at best, and just not in the class of last year’s Fox Searchlight contender, Little Miss Sunshine.

Otherwise, Atonement still leads with No Country for Old Men, American Gangster and The Kite Runner in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th position.

No Country‘s Joel and Ethan Coen are still the leading Best Director contenders with Atonement‘s Joe Wright, American Gangster‘s Ridley Scott and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead helmer Sidney Lumet running 2nd through 5th.

There Will Be Blood‘s Daniel Day-Lewis is still top dog in the Best Actor category, followed by Gangster‘s Denzel Washington, Sweeney Todd‘s Johnny Depp (a new arrival), Michael Clayton‘s George Clooney — what? — and Atonement‘s James McAvoy.

Stop right there. The 25 Buzzmeter contributors (myself excluded) are telling me that Clooney’s performance, which was perfectly solid and convincing, was stronger and more penetrating than Benicio del Toro‘s in Things We Lost in the Fire? I need to say this politely but are they out of their minds? Del Toro has the spirit, the craft and the under-the-skin honesty of Marlon Brando. Wake up, grow a pair, say what’s really true and stop playing political suck-up games, and I’m saying this with the greatest respect for the smarts and wisdom of everyone concerned.

The Best Actress race is still led by La Vie en Rose‘s Marion Cotilard (my choice), followed by Away From Her‘s Julie Christie, Juno‘s Ellen Page, Atonement‘s Keira Knightley and Enchanted‘s Amy Adams. Honestly, really now — would the Buzzmeter gang be voting for Adams if Enchanted had fizzled at the box-office? It’s a fine, live-wire performance, sure, but it’s pretty much a one-note thing…okay, two notes…an enchanting bit…Carol Burnett as Snow White. Get past it.

In the Best Supporting Actor category, Tommy Lee Jones — the sad-hearted soul of No Country for Old Men — has been edged out by The Assassination of Jesse James‘ Casey Affleck. Affleck was awfully good in that film so no complaints. No Country‘s Javier Bardem still leads the pack with Into The Wild‘s Hal Holbrook, Michael Clayton‘s Tom Wilkinson and Charlie Wilson’s War‘s Philip Seymour Hoffman also among the five. Fine by me.

I’m Not There‘s Cate Blanchett still leads the Best Supporting Actress category, as she should. Gone Baby Gone‘s Amy Ryan, Michael Clayton‘s Tilda Swinton, Atonement‘s Saoirse Ronan and American Gangster‘s Ruby Dee also among the top five.

Speaking of the just-released Ford at Fox DVD collection, New York‘s “Vulture” writers have, like me, shared a special liking for Drums Along the Mohawk, one reason being that it’s “maybe the only cowboy-and-Indians flick ever set in upstate New York.”

But not shot there, of course. The IMDB says Drums was filmed in and around Kanab, Utah, where “more western movies and television programs have been filmed…than in any other single location outside of Hollywood itself,” according to a website for Nedra’s Cafe in Kanab.

I earlier mistyped the title as Drugs Along the Mohawk. Great title, I thought, so I Googled it. Lo and behold, there was an actual Mohawk Valley drug-dealing operation that was busted in 1999. A 6.9.99 N.Y. Times story reported that police “managed to cripple but not quite destroy the largest cocaine smuggling and selling operation in northern New York State in a series of rapid early morning raids, state and Federal officials said. The raids netted a few prize suspects, including a 24-year-old Mohawk man who, the officials said, ran the drug network from his home here.”

Before arriving in Boston I told my son Dylan we needed to see Beowulf in IMAX 3-D, and he said forget it — Boston’s two IMAX theatres (the Mugar Omni and the Simons IMAX theatre-aquarium) just show docs and travelogues. Hard to believe. Hollywood flicks projected in IMAX (and especially IMAX 3-D) are delivering big-time thrills like nothing else these days, but if city folk want to catch the IMAX-ed Beowulf, I Am Legend later this month or The Dark Knight next summer, they’ll have to hump it out to suburban Natick or Reading.

New England Aquarium IMAX Theatre

Were Cinerama, CinemaScope and Todd A-O ignored by Boston exhibitors when they hit the scene in the 1950s? In any business you have to go with the flow and change with the times, so why don’t Beantown exhibs have at least least one Hollywood-friendly IMAX house? Get with the program and hubba-hubba, guys.

A local critic offered an explanation. Boston, he wrote back, “is a big-league film town with a severe resistance to change, a sense of entitlement from the cultural institutions, and a belief that people don’t go ‘downtown’ to see movies but rather stay in the ‘burbs where they already live.

“I do think we’ll be seeing more and more 3D downtown in the coming years — basically as the Loews Common
installs more digital projection — but the real estate is scarce for a new IMAX build, and perhaps and the Aquarium and Mugar Omni don’t want to sully their mission (or simply may not be able to, for any variety of reasons).

“In general exhibition has fled Boston proper,” he explained. “The only two movie theaters left within city limits are the Common and the Fenway. That’s not counting the arthouses in Brookline and Cambridge, and the multiplexes of various size in the inner suburbs, 10 minutes from downtown. This is a far cry from the not-so-old days when there were dozens of theaters in Boston.”