We all love the nerve and passion that led The Envelope‘s Tom O’Neil to declare yesterday that Tim Burton‘s Sweeney Todd “will win Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor” and is “a good bet to sweep the Oscars.”

I think I know what led Tom to this point — “voices” (not unlike the ones that spoke to Joan of Arc and Howard Beale) have come to him in the middle of the night and said, “Tom…psst, wake up! It’s looking like a Sweeney Todd sweep could happen…seriously!” I know those voices. They came to me last January and said, “Eddie Murphy doesn’t have it locked for Best Supporting Actor.”

Some are doubting Tom’s vision, of course. These are the non-believers, the John Gielguds and Richard Widmarks of the Oscar-handicap world. (Reference: Otto Preminger‘s Saint Joan.) New York magazine’s “Vulture” guys aren’t saying O’Neil needs to be burned at the stake, but they’ve come out against his vision foursquare.

I’ve heard and read the same encouraging buzz everyone else has. The second biggest impression was that recent screening on the Universal lot that led to a Cinefantastique.com review that called Tim Burton‘s film, in part, “a very satisfying musical horror film. Not a gothic London period tragedy but a classic horror flick in the vein of Phantom of the Opera…[that] occasionally morphs into an out-and-out blood bath.”

My strongest impression is still that publicist telling me a few weeks back that “it’s too bloody” to be an Oscar film, along with my own conviction that Tim Burton doesn’t make Oscar-type films because of his skewed taste, temperament and attitude.

I remain convinced that Burton’s peak period was from the mid ’80s to mid ’90s– a time when he could do no wrong and made films like Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Xmas and Ed Wood. The Big Downturn began with Mars Attacks and then bottomed out with Planet of the Apes. Big Fish was going to be the Big Turnaround (David Poland was a big fan) but then the balloon collapsed and then along came Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which many people regarded as the final nail in the coffin of the man who directed Beetlejuice.

In Sunset Boulevard William Holden said that the shoeshine guy across the street “never asked any questions…he’d just look at your heels and know the score.” With Burton all you have to do is look at his jowly, Orson Welles-ian appearance. He used to be this cool effete thin guy with the odd visions and frizzy hair who was ahead of the curve. What happened?

A damp and bedraggled Tom O’Neil strides into the Los Angeles Times building on Spring Street. A security guard watches him approach the elevator bank. Security guard: “Good evening, Mr. O’Neil.” O’Neil: “I must make my witness!” Security Guard: “Sure thing, Mr. O’Neil.”

Universal Pictures isn’t exactly pushing Steven Zaillian‘s screenplay for American Gangster in the Best Original Screenplay category — the decision on these matters is made by the Writers Guild — but the trade ads will reflect this nonetheless, which will blow off any notions that the film is largely based upon Mark Jacobson‘s New York magazine article “The Return of Superfly.”

Likewise, Warner Independent is pushing Paul Haggis‘s script for In the Valley of Elah as a candidate for Best Original screenplay, which will blow off any notions that the film is largely based on Mark Boal’s Playboy magazine piece called “Death and Dishonor” that came out in 2005.

The view seems to be that the scripts for these films involved a lot more dimension, intrigue and detail than was provided by the initial magazine pieces, hence the claims of originality. (Original observation from Kris Tapley‘s Red Carpet District blog on 10.29 and New York magazine’s “Vulture” column on 10.31.)

Director-writer Tony Gilroy has built upon the industry’s admiration and respect for Michael Clayton, his still-in-play corporate thriller with George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Tom Wilkinson and the great Sydney Pollack, and landed a followup gig as the director-writer of Duplicity, a Julia Roberts-Clive Owen thriller for Universal.

Sincere congrats on an excellent career move, but my God…that title. You hear it and without a second’s hesitation your mind says “second tier,” “Netflix,” “seen it before,” “disposable,” etc. I can see the DVD on the shelf at Laser Blazer as I write this. Michael Fleming‘s 10.31 Variety piece says Owen and Roberts will play amorous corporate spies employed by opposing companies “who team up to stage an elaborate con to rip off corporations and steal a valuable product.” I’m sorry, but that sounds a little too much like a Ryan O’Neal-Farrah Fawcett movie from the early ’80s.

Half of the problem will go away if Gilroy just changes the title. Any song or movie title with the letters “ity” at the end suggests roteness, boredom, disengagement. Multiplicity, synchronicity, plasticity, absurdity…all bad.

General-principle apologies for showcasing a Fox News report, but it contains fairly persuasive evidence that Barack Obama definitely won Tuesday night’s debate.

Because Pixar/Disney’s Ratatouille is said to be the year’s best- reviewed film that has also earned more than $500 million worldwide, Envelope columnist Pete Hammond is floating a fanciful notion that it might end up as a Best Picture Oscar contender.

“In a season of dark, depressing dramas, Ratatouille may seem like an alternative — lighter, more optimistic and audience-pleasing,” Hammond suggests. “Bloodshot, gun-shy academy voters looking for something different might come back to this one after trying out some of the newer films in the awards mix.”

It’s only November 1st and I’m already starting to hate this kind of talk. Hating the flabby mentality behind it, I mean. American Gangster isn’t dark or depressing in the least — it’s a sprawling urban crime drama that never bores and in fact leaves you wanting more at the end. Atonement is very sad, yes, but teh last time I looked sadness wasn’t synonymous with depressing. Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead is an ancient Greek tragedy set in contemporary Manhattan and a nearby suburb, and it’s impossible for a film as decisively directed and stunningly well-acted as this to be depressing. Charlie Wilson’s War (if it’s good enough to be considered) isn’t in the least bit d & d, to go by the script. No Country for Old Men is a genius-level chase thriller with a powerful theme (i.e., present-tense indecency overcoming the decency of the past) that anyone over the age of 10 will recognize as truthful. And The Kite Runner is a touching and compassionate film about redemption.

If more tea-leaf readers had the cojones and 20/20 vision to stand up and recognize that Zodiac is perhaps the most deserving Best Picture contender of them all (or is certainly one of the stronger ones), I would add that it too is neither dark nor depressing. It is simply too brilliant and above-the-pack to warrant any such terms.

Anyone reading this who’s also whispered to Pete Hammond that too many of the leading Best Picture contenders are dark and depressing is hereby requested to zip it and keep it zipped until the ’07 Oscar race is over and done with. Thanks — your cooperation is much appreciated.

“[Simply] making people laugh is the lowest form of humor.” — the late humorist Michael O’Donoghue.

Longtime Time magazine reporter Jeffrey Ressner has joined the Washington, D.C.-based Politico as its Hollywood corespondent. Obviously the idea will be to report stuff that straddles the interests of the film industry and the governmental/political realm. The kind of thing you might run into on the Huffington Post, only….I was going to say “only different” but maybe it won’t be. Hopefully Ressner won’t file too many stories about gun lobbyists and the like.

I’m not saying this means anything as far as cineastes or animation aficionados are concerned, but a friend spoke to a Hollywood Foreign Press person about having seen Robert Zemeckis‘ Beowulf, and the HFPA guy expressed his feelings by putting his finger in his mouth. Is it fair to even repeat something like this? I don’t want to acknowledge the opinion of an HFPA whore and pass it off as valid, but I heard this from a trusted source and I can’t brush it off. The first Beowulf screenings are happening this weekend.

CHUD’s Devin Faraci says he’s seen “the” trailer for the monster movie coming from producer J.J. Abrams on 1.18.08. The trailer “lasts 2 minutes and 16 seconds, and will debut in front of Beowulf on 11.16,” he says. Faraci also reports that “the version of the trailer I saw had the title attached at the end, so unless this title card was a temporary placeholder for the real title, this movie is called…wait for it…Cloverfield.”

I have an explanation as to why Jerry Seinfeld‘s Bee Movie (Dreamamount, 11.2) isn’t all that good or funny, and another about why it simply doesn’t work. The answer to the second question is that deep down it’s a movie about death waiting just around the corner, which is obviously a depressing thought for most of us. But that’s a thematic issue that can wait.

The main problem with Bee Movie is the system under which it was made, which is to say the political conditions. The movie is so Seinfeld-y that it’s clear that the men and women who helped this enormously wealthy and super-famous comedian make the movie indulged in too much kowtowing and boot-licking. They did the “right thing” politically, and they made a bad film as a result.

Writing a good screenplay — including an animated fantasy-comedy aimed at the easy-lay family crowd — is a very difficult thing to do. You can’t just “attitude” your way through it, and you can’t just throw material at the wall and use whatever sticks. You have to create an imaginary, spherical, super-detailed world that a typical audience is willing to believe in on its own terms. You need to create a world with rules that make basic sense.

The Bee Movie problem is that Seinfeld — the producer, co-writer and star, and therefore the dominant Big Kahuna — never did any serious undercurrent work on the script. (Which, when done properly, conveys the “things that are there but aren’t said” element that all good films have.) The evidence suggests that Seinfeld and co-directors Simon J. Smith and Steve Hickner and the various co-writers (Spike Feresten, Barry Marder, Andy Robin, Chuck Martin, Tom Papajust) just sat around and cooked up two or three hundred clever lines and jokes and said, “We don’t need to get too deep here…this is just a family movie and we’re trying to have fun and entertain.”

Wrong mentality! A good comedy is a murderously hard thing to get right. You have to approach it the way Anton Chekhov approached the writing of The Cherry Orchard. Ask Billy Wilder, ask Preston Sturges…you can’t just goof your way through it.

It seems as if one of the basic ideas was “this is Jerry’s movie, so nobody stand in the way of his humor flow.” Apparently that meant not matching him up with a Brad Bird-level director — a sharp taskmaster who knows what a tough job it is to make a script really work, and would have stood up to Seinfeld every so often and said, “Uhhn, Jerry? This isn’t working. This is a Laugh Factory act, not a movie.” Instead, everyone from Jeffrey Katzenberg on down just stood back and said, “Whatever Jerry wants…!”

Eric Darnell and Tim Johnson‘s Antz (’99) was silly and comical, of course, but the ant world it created for itself had a certain recognizable logic and rhyme and symmetry. But no one did any heavy lifting on Bee Movie. None of it means anything or goes anywhere or digs into anything solid. The result isn’t a “bomb” — Bee Movie going to make lots of money this weekend — as much as a so-whatter.

Nobody laughed very much at last night’s all-media screening. They tittered, chuckled and guffawed here and there….but no haw-haws and no shrieks. And no emotional currents whatsoever. Seinfeld’s quirky-peculiar humor is all through it, of course, and that gives it an amiable personality and all, but the movie has no theme, no bones, no arc and no soul. It’s a Bee Movie about next to nothing.

All it says is that bees shouldn’t involve themselves in litigation against honey companies or worry in general about ownership or worker exploitation or any of those business-labor issues that concern human attorneys. It says that bees should be just be busy, and that they should be content with that.

One of the big Bee Movie problems was a decision not to worry about the believability of inter-species communication through the English language. I didn’t believe it last night and I don’t believe it now. (And I don’t care if Ratatouile had the gourmet rat speak English — I didn’t like that either.) It’s not an agreeably silly idea — it’s seriously moronic. Nor do I believe that the courts would allow a bee to sue the honey companies for stealing honey from bee colonies. Nor do I believe that bees the world over would decide to kick back and become slackers because Barry has been victorious in his lawsuit and therefore forced the honey companies to return all the honey to the hives. Nor do I believe that thousand of bees could lift up the wings of a jumbo jet and help it land at a major New York airport.

I know what you’re thinking — lighten the fuck up, it’s a cartoon movie about bees! But movies like this don’t work unless you can say to yourself, “Yeah, I can roll with that.” I have no problems with a deer being able to talk to a skunk and a rabbit. I have no difficulty with members of an ant colony sounding and reasoning like Woody Allen and Sylvester Stallone. But I had huge issues with almost every story element in Bee Movie.

There’s a deeper, more fundamental reason why this thing doesn’t work, though. Seinfeld riffs about everything in the bee world except one huge thing — the fact that worker bees (like his own character, Barry B. Benson) have an average life span of nine to twelve months. Bee Movie is therefore about a character who’ll be shaking hands with the grim reaper fairly soon. It’s The Bucket List without Jack Nicholson or Morgan Freeman acknowledging their cancer. It’s Edmond O’Brien in D.O.A. without his knowing he’s been poisoned. How can anyone identify with a bee who’s going to be dead by next August?

That said, the animation is bright and lively, and Seinfeld and all the the voice actors (Renee Zellweger, Matthew Broderick, John Goodman, Chris Rock, Patrick Warburton, Kathy Bates, Barry Levinson, Larry King, Ray Liotta, Sting, Oprah Winfrey, et. al.) do a fine job of reading their lines.