Control‘s Sam Riley having won the Chicago Film Festival‘s Silver Hugo Best Actor award tells us three things. One, there are others besides myself who believe Riley’s performance as Ian Curtis is not just phenomenal but award- worthy. Two, Chicago Film Festival voters are clearly too eccentric to influence industry thinking about ’07’s Best Actor finalists. And three, this “Chicago flake” factor will allow the Gurus of Gold and Envelope prognosticators to continue saying, “It’s very nice that you admire Sam Riley’s acting, Jeff, but c’mon, get real…we’re talking likely winners here.”

Control director Anton Corbijn, star Sam Riley in Toronto last month.

If a performance like Riley’s is imbued with that special something (which it obviously is), nothing else should matter. Certainly not at this stage of the game. The only reason people are saying “Riley’s too new” or “he’s not a serious contender” is because the Weinstein Co. is seen as a precarious player these days and particularly because they’re not spending big money to support Control and its makers.

Being new to the business doesn’t matter if there’s money behind you. Did people say 45 years ago, “Forget Peter O’Toole as a Best Actor contender for his Lawrence of Arabia performance…he’s too young and too unknown”? No, and the reason they didn’t is because Columbia Pictures was behind the Oscar campaign big-time, and so the industry sat up and showed obeisance before power and nominated O’Toole. It was that simple, and it’s this simple here and now. Sam Riley is, in a manner of speaking, the wet-behind-the-ears Peter O’Toole of 2007. He just doesn’t have big-studio pockets backing him up. That’s the only real difference.

On top of which is my old saw about there being plenty of time to play the status-quo Oscar prediction game after Thanksgiving. Now is the time for prognosticators to stand up for people who deserve the awards-consideration attention. Right now, I say to hell with the Academy fuddy-duds. Wave away all those people who “don’t know who Joy Division was and who will never see this movie.”

If I were king with dictatorial powers I would have all the Academy know-nothings identified and marginalized, if not expelled. Every organization is only as brave and vibrant and visionary as the amount of deadweight in its midst. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Purge the slackers and deadheads and the fog will lift.

The Chicago Film Festival website says the fest ends tonight (10.17), but the festival awards were announced last Sunday (10.14) on Michael Phillips‘ Talking Pictures blog/column, which is found on the Chicago Tribune site, and yesterday on Adam Fendelman‘s HollywoodChicago site.

“In another sign that kudos campaigns are getting innovative in a jam-packed season, 6,000 Oscar voters will receive a screener of DreamWorks-Paramount’s Things We Lost in the Fire on Friday — the same day the film opens in theaters,” reports Variety‘s Pamela McLintock.

“Par will also send screeners of the director’s cut of Zodiac, helmed by David Fincher, to the Producers Guild of America, the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild, instead of the official release version. Move reps the first time Par has sent out a director’s cut.

“The day-and-date mailing of Fire is unprecedented at this time of year. Traditionally, studios like to wait a month or two after films’ autumn bows to issue screeners.”

This November cover of Radar doesn’t strike me as all that outrageous. The suggested comfort or at least familiarity between Hillary and Rudy says something (I think) about under-the-skin allegiances, “all politics is local” or something along those lines. If Hilary looked this fetching in reality, the election picture (along with the easily manipulated allegiances of fellows like myself) would be, I suspect, reconfigured to some degree. “Who would Jesus vote for?” the small headline reads. I’ll tell you who Jesus would vote for. Jesus would vote for Dennis Kucinich.

“Furthering the influence of the internet on filmmaking in the 21st century, Juno has hyper-thought cleverness and the distinct personality of voice that comes from the personal blogging set. It’s the first LiveJournal or Blogger film.

“Under the razor-thin direction of Jason Reitman, Juno — unlike Hot Rod or Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters — is a pure movie. It dispenses any obtuseness and has the instincts of an audience-pleaser.

“Where an average movie about pregnancy turns its water-breaking scene into a dramatic, third-act starter (which even Knocked Up did), this film’s screenplay (scribed by hilarious blogger and memoirist Diablo Cody) has its eponymous character signal everyone in the house with a pop-culture reference: ‘Thunderbirds are go!'” — from a review by HollywoodChicago‘s Austin-based Shane Hazen.

Hollywood producers this morning withdrew their inflammatory proposal to eliminate residuals, which was the biggest sticking point in the three-month-old, going-nowhere negotiations between the cruel, selfish suits and the riff-raffy Writers Guild. Now there’s a decent chance of reaching some kind of accord before November 1st. AMPTP honcho J. Nicholas Counter III told the N.Y. Times‘ Michael Cieiply that “we now expect the W.G.A. leadership to get down to the business at hand and do what it takes to reach a new labor agreement.” So Terry George…thoughts?

Dylan Baker, 48, is one of our very best character actors. He’s performed in 79 features, TV movies and series episodes over the last 20 years. I’ve greatly enjoyed his performances in The Road to Perdition, Thirteen Days and Happiness, but the best thing he’s ever given the world has been “Owen,” the tobacco-spittin’ hayseed in Planes Trains and Automobiles, which was only his second acting job.

Can someone explain why the new double-disc DVD of Stanley Kubrick‘s The Shining, which comes out on 10.23, runs 119 minutes while the old 2001 single- disc DVD runs 143 minutes? The film’s IMDB page says the running time is 119 minutes” but also that the “normal USA version” runs 143 minutes. I’m confused. What’s going on?

On top of which the 2001 DVD was presented in 1.33 to 1 (in line with Kubrick’s vision, I love all that extra head space) and the new double-disc version is matted at 1.78 to 1.

The film’s IMDB page also notes that the “original” version — the one with the final scene in the hospital between Shelly Duvall and Barry Nelson — ran 146 minutes. I saw this version at a plush Warner Bros. screening room in Manhattan a few weeks before it opened. Kubrick cut it out after some complaints came in.

This, according to a Mammoth Advertising announcement, is the official one-sheet for Julian Schnabel‘s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Miramax, 11.30). You’ll have to search long and hard to find a poster that misrepresents the content of a film more flagrantly. That said, I would probably try something like this if I were in charge of Miramax ads. They can’t sell what the film actually is. Like Diving Bell‘s main character, they have no choice but to dream and fantasize.

Despite Schnabel’s rich imagination and a masterful technique, despite Diving Bell‘s longings, passions and immaculate compositions, this is a landmark bummer film — a movie about being paralyzed for life and having nowhere to go or nothing to do except blink your left eyelid.

Give me a loaded .45, please. Take it off safety, place it under my chin and pull the trigger. Sorry for the mess but thank you. Now I can be with the angels.

Schnabel’s sad, bittersweet drama deserves respect. Those who have praised it are not wrong, although I can’t for the life of me understand how anyone could recommend it to a friend without saying, “It’s really great — you get to experience what it’s like to be totally paralyzed for two hours. Naturally, this leads into all sorts of observations about the things that make life joyful, delightful, eternal…worth cherishing. You do have to sit in that French guy’s body for two hours, though. You need to understand that. Clearly.”

It is the lamentable but necessary task of Miramax marketers to obscure this aspect of the film. I don’t blame them for trying. And I hope that people who, unlike myself, have the spiritual constitution to watch Schnabel’s film and truly enjoy it without suffering from a claustrophobic panic attack will check it out. I’m in the minority here, after all. 76% of the Rotten Tomatoes gang has gone for it hook, line and sinker.

This First Assembly of God sign was created by yours truly with an engine provided by Church Sign Generator. The problem is that the template photos aren’t large or dense enough. Either the guys who threw this site together aren’t hip enough to realize this defect, or they’re cheapskates.

I have to see a film at 12 noon…back in the trough by 3 pm or so.

A journalist friend agrees that the Love in the Time of Cholera trailer “sucks, but hold your judgement. It’s a decent shot at a difficult book, and two guys I know — real men, I should add, not wussy types — actually found the film quite moving. So maybe it will play to manly men, if their wives or girlfriends can convince them to see it.” I repeat yesterday’s question: if New Line marketers thought they could get regular guys to see this thing, why did they send out a trailer that almost begs them not to?

“Keeping your BlackBerry on isn’t just acceptable, it’s a life-affirming action,” Nicole LaPorte declared in a 10.14 L.A. Times piece about industry cell-phone status, etiquette, penetration. “To turn off your BlackBerry is to be dead,” she says. Which means, of course, that notions of biological, genetic or spiritual identity are passe. In short, “you are your phone.”

If it’s a bare-bones model with no e-mail capacities, you’re an embarassment…a Luddite. If it’s BlackBerry Curve, “you’re someone who lives in the moment and ‘gets’ it, as opposed to those still stuck with the BlackBerry 8700,” LaPorte says. “Treo (any model)? You’re an amateur, I’m afraid, not to mention living in 2006. IPhone? An artiste with vision, as long as you weren’t suckered into buying it at $599. BlackBerry 8830 World carrier? See you in Cannes!”

I went looking on Craig’s List last week for somebody who could fix it so I can access my Verizon account with an iPhone, instead of having to start up a whole new account with ATT/Cingular. There are hackers out there who do this for a fee, but nobody responded. When are the iPhone techies going to open up their device to other carriers? And when is the iPhone 2.0 model coming out?