The journey to Santa Barbara was stopped in its tracks yesterday by that large crane crashing onto the 405. It took me two hours to travel about 1.5 miles on that awful stretch of road; I finally gave up around 5 pm. Trying again this morning via the much prettier coast highway; hoping to see a couple of films and then attend the Forest Whitaker tribute early this evening.

The Messengers is the weekend’s top film with a projected $14,435,000 in 2522 theatres, $5700 a print. Because I Said So is #2 at 12,228,000 — 4800 a print. Epic Movie, off 60% from last weekend, is third with $7,483,000. Night at the Museum is #4 with 6,617,000. And Joe Carnahan‘s Smokin’ Aces is coolin’ off fast with a 56% drop from last weekend’s debut and a projected $6,369,000 by Sunday evening.

The sixth-place Dreamgirls is in 2700-odd theatres and pulling in only $1400 a print for a weekend tally of $4,084,000. (It’ll probably lose 800 to 1000 theatres next weekend.) Stomp the Yard is #7 with $3,991,000. Pan’s Labyrinth is eighth with $3,587,000. The Pursuit of Happyness is #9 with $3,014,000. Catch and Release is tenth with $2,798,000…down 62%. Forget it.

The Departed has been put it back into theatres and is doing some decent business — $2,700,000 in 1400 theatres. It’s the 11th-ranked film of the weekend.

Wanting in on the Eddie Murphy smackdown, The Envelope‘s Tom O’Neil is recalling some some righteous/conten- tious thoughts that Murphy passed along at the Oscar podium exactly 20 years ago (which would be….uhm, 1987). Murphy “told the audience that he originally planned to refuse the Oscars’ request to present the award for best picture,” O’Neil writes, “because ‘they haven’t recognized black people in the motion picture industry‘ — noting that only three African-Americans had won an acting award over the past 60 years.

“I’ll probably never win an Oscar for saying this,” Murphy remarked. “Actually, I might not be in any trouble because the way it’s been going, it’s about every 20 years we get one, so we ain’t due until about 2004.”

I don’t see how this throws any kerosene on the fire, frankly. More like water. I respect Murphy for standing up and saying what he did — anybody would. But that was then and this is now.

It may be pointless to try and further explain myself, but I’ve just been saying what any veteran of this town would acknowledge and then chuckle about at a party, buzzed or sober. Murphy is a pissed-off, guarded, obviously gifted comic performer who has never laid it on the line in terms of heavyweight acting, and there’s no absolutely way he’s laying it on the line in Dreamgirls. Like Peter Howell said, he’s doing his SNL James Brown shtick. Plus the part isn’t written with any third-act payoffs. It’s one of the most bizarre and groundless acting nominations in Oscar history.

It’s not just the calibre of a performance — substantial character construction and some kind of semi-meaningful arc (or journey) have to be there also. And the writing in the Dreamgirls script that would accomplish this just isn’t there. James Thunder Early is an amalgam of famous black performers — barely a character, and certainly not a character with any intriguing turns, deepenings and/or crescendo moments — this is who I am, what I want, what I need, please love me, I don’t care if you love me…anything along those lines.

The Oscar nom is much more of a referendum on Murphy himself — some half-assed notion of a career comeback, his likability in the early to mid ’80s, his current asshole-ishness (see the Razor item), the p.c. positiveness that comes with giving an Oscar to any person of color, etc. And in that light, the thought of him winning the Oscar almost gives me indigestion. I’m serious…I can feel the turbulence building in my stomach as I write this. And the Oscar goes to….Norbit!

Anyway, O’Neil’s thing works for today, there’s the New York Post story (allegedly) coming out tomorrow…but then what? Burnout, most likely.

The Bagger (a.k.a., N.Y. Times Oscar guy David Carr) is is looking at language wrinkles regarding Babel‘s eligibility for the Golden Globes Best Picture Drama (which it won), and also the Academy’s for Best Picture and Best Foreign Language Feature.

A Paramount Vantage spokesperson tells Carr that 45 minutes of Babel is spoken in English, 33 minutes in Japanese, 24 in Arabic, 23 in Spanish and 10 seconds in French — a total of 80 minutes spoken in foreign tongues, or nearly double the time spoken in English. Carr reportss that the Academy rules state that “a foreign language film is defined as a feature-length motion picture produced outside the United States of America with a predominantly non-English dialogue track.” The rule, however, is only used for deciding what movies can be nominated in the best foreign film category. For best picture, any movie, in any language, or languages, is eligible for The Win.

The Babel eligibility issue “never came up,” says Hollywood Foreign Press Assocation president Philip Burke. “It was submitted as an English language film by the studio and it never occurred to anyone that this was a foreign language film. The predominant language is English. The film begins with Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, who are obviously tourists speaking English in a foreign country.”

“Sarah Silverman has proved that she is in a league of her own by generating two longish New Yorker pieces within a 16 month span– a detail-rich 5,066 word profile by Dana Goodyear (pegged to the release of Jesus is Magic) that ran in the October, 24, 2005 issue, and this week’s 1,408-word review of her new show by Tad Friend (he neither loved nor hated it).

“This is a feat that’s rarely been achieved by the highest lords of literature, let alone a stand up comic who jokes about, well, bowel movements and her vagina. The steadfast, rock-solid New Yorker is notoriously parsimonious about covering the same cultural occurrences more than once (for good reason: they’re The New Yorker, after all), which makes Silverman’s coup all the more spectacular. Nearly 6,500 words of coverage from the the New Yorker? The closest most of us get to this is having two words (our name) on the subscription label.” — from Peter Hyman‘s Huffington Post piece.

Driving up to Santa Barbara again this afternoon, hopefully in time for the Inconvenient Truth shebang at the Arlington and some possible face time with Al Gore (who was just nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize) and Davis Guggenheim.

“When Ralph Nader was a child, his father asked him, ‘What did you learn in school today? Did you learn how to believe or did you learn how to think?’ The long interview with Nader that is dispersed throughout An Unreasonable Man suggests that he became, in later years, a thoughtless man who believes only in himself.” — from David Denby‘s review in The New Yorker.

The L.A. Times Deborah Netburn has put up a chart chronicling the rise and fall of Russell Crowe. Is that a given? Has he in fact fallen? I’ve been getting hammered over the last couple of days for suggesting that one reason not to vote for Eddie Murphy is that he’s a flagrant asshole. Crowe, obviously, is coping with that reputation also. Crowe and Murphy both have immense talent, but the former has authority, presence, conviction, creative cojones…he’s a real actor, the real deal.

This is a week old, but Peter Howell‘s review of the Oscar nomination disappointment factor among IMDB readers is interesting, especially considering there were more people dismayed that Children of Men failed to be Best Picture nominated than for any other film.

The word from three well-placed distribution execs — one here, two from Manhattan — is that Fox Searchlight closed a deal last night with Summit Entertainment’s Patrick Wachsberger for domestic distribution rights to John Carney‘s Once. Naturally, neither Fox Searchlight nor Wachsberger is confirming — they’d rather give the story to Variety.

It sure as hell sounds true. “I heard Fox Searchlight, but that’s all I know,” a guy told me an hour ago. Do you know how much the deal was for? “No,” he said. When did you hear? “Last night.” Another top exec also said that “the deal closed last night — I heard it was Fox Searchlight or Sony Pictures Classics.” I called SPC right after this and was told by another highly-placed person that “we haven’t bought anything since before Sundance.”

I know that Thinkfilm and First Look were in negotiations earlier this week, and that one bid was in the vicinity of $500,000. One of the disappointed bidders just told me that “they” — Fox Searchlight — “were at $600,000. We lost it because of their significant pay deal….shit!”

Hollywood Shuns the ’07 Super Bowl Ad Blitz…blah, blah. The 300 trailer is one of many you won’t be seeing during the usually clip-strewn Super Bowl this year…blah, blah. I don’t know why I’m saying this — the TV ads that run during the Super Bowl are often superb.

Risky Biz blog’s Anne Thompson has written that a “juicy Rush & Molloy gossip [item] about Sienna Miller‘s Factory Girl canoodling with Hayden Christensen” — the item alleged that Miller and Christensen literally did the deed while filming a love scene — “reeks of a gossip column plant designed to drive curiosity seekers to check out the movie.”

Maybe, but not on George Hickenlooper‘s part. I checked with the Factory Girl director about Rush & Molloy’s reporting, and he says (a) it’s dead wrong and (b) running such an item degrades Miller and Christensen’s dignity.

“This story in the Daily News is completely untrue,” he said. “There was no sexual intimacy during the filming of this scene. Sienna and Hayden are actors. The physicality of the scene was completely simulated. So I completely deny the claims. I know — I was in the room with them.

“Here are the details of how I was misquoted. After the Factory Girl premiere, I went to the part where I was cornered by George Rush. There he kept persisting that there were stories about Hayden and Sienna having sex while we were shooting. What I told him is that I don’t ever deign to comment on questions like that because they are insulting. He kept asking about Hayden and Sienna’s romantic relationship and I said to him I don’t comment on the personal lives of my cast (as I have consistently done with respect to Sienna over the past two years). He asked if Sienna and Hayden were close, I replied that we were all close while making the film.”

Rush & Molloy reported today that that “of course, Sienna Miller [has] denied she and her Factory Girl co-star and then-boyfriend Hayden Christensen actually had sex on camera, as several knowledgeable sources told us this week. She was standing next to her parents when we asked her.

“We suggest anyone who doubts it go see Hickenlooper’s vision of Warhol girl Edie Sedgwick, which opens today. We freeze-framed the movie’s hot spots (as rigorous journalism demands), and there’s no question Sienna and Hayden are deep into their roles.”