You know a movie is a formidable Oscar contender when a whisper campaign starts making the rounds against it. Or: if they aren’t whispering against you, you’re not really in the game. What are the current whisper campaigns? I was told this morning that some are calling Little Miss Sunshine “this year’s Sideways“…in other words, too marginal, too blue-state-ish, doomed to lose, etc. Dreamgirls, they’re saying, “is entertaining but isn’t all that good.” The Departed “isn’t about anything.” Remove the aura of Helen Mirren‘s performance and The Queen is “just a pretty good British TV movie.” None of these are very mean or ugly. Has anyone heard any that would qualify as deplorable?

In an absolutely brilliant display of political gamesmanship and striped-pants diplomacy, New Line CEO Robert Shaye has told SCI FI Wire that the studio won’t work with Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson on that film or any other film. Ever. As long as Shaye is still running things, at least.

Robert Shaye, Peter Jackson

“It will never happen during my watch,” Shaye is quoted as saying. He said this during a promotional tour promoting The Last Mimzy, a New Line fantasy-family flick. “”I do not want to make a movie with somebody who is suing me.
Inside Jackson, he feels, is “a kind of arrogance. Not that I don’t think Peter is a good filmmaker and that he hasn’t contributed significantly to filmography and made three very good movies. And I don’t even expect him to say ‘thank you’ for having me make it happen and having New Line make it happen.
“But to think that I, as a functionary in [a] company that has been around for a long time, but is now owned by a very big conglomerate, would care one bit about trying to cheat the guy… he’s either had very poor counsel or is completely misinformed and myopic to think that I care whether I give him [anything].”
In other words, Shaye feels personally slighted about Jackson having more or less called him, a chiseler, and his dander is up, his honor has been challenged, and, in the words of the great Tom Petty, he “won’t back down.”
Jackson told TheOneRing.net last November that he and partner Fran Walsh were cutting ties with New Line after learning that the studio was moving ahead with The Hobbit without them. Jackson has said he won’t discuss The Hobbit until a lawsuit against New Line over Rings accounting practices is settled.

The Envelope‘s Tom O’Neil is announcing that Peter O’Toole landed yesterday in New York City. On U.S. soil! And hitting Los Angeles sometime later this week! “You can imagine how nervous his Oscar campaigners have been about getting him stateside for the Globes ceremony and his Oscar campaign,” O’Neil writes. “But he made it — to cyberscreams of joy. Yesterday I got a Blackberry message from one of his campaign chiefs, exclaiming, ‘He’s on the plane!'”
O’Toole “landed in New York yesterday for an appearance on ‘The David Letterman Show’ tonight. Today he’s also shooting a photo session for Vanity Fair‘s Oscar issue and is taping an interview with ‘The View’ that will air on Friday. While in town he’s also doing interviews with Charlie Rose, Today, Nightline and with Jon Stewart for The Daily Show. Plus print interviews with the likes of USA Today and radio chats with All Things Considered on NPR.
“Then he heads west to attend the Golden Globes. How long will he remain in Hollywood? Nobody knows, probably not evenly charmingly cranky O’Toole himself.”

I’m kind of Factory Girl-ed out, but a chance to speak with Sienna Miller was offered last week and I said sure, shit yeah. I don’t care what anybody says about the movie — Miller’s performance as the fluttery but damaged Edie Sedgwick is a hardcore burrow and totally bulls-eye. And it’s led her, at age 25, to a key realization: “I’m not good at being ‘the girl’, I figured out….it’s got to be more character-y.”

Factory Girl star Sienna Miller in the patio garden at the Chateau Marmont — Tuesday, 1.9.06, 3:12 pm; ditto; ditto; and ditto once more

Every actress in the world realizes this sooner or later, of course. The fact that Miller woke up to it at age 25 (or 24, presuming it sank in sometime early last year) is the noteworthy thing. A lot of actresses who also happen to be very hot blondes tend to wait until they hit their 30s or sometimes even later to absorb this attitude.

Miller, in any case, has played five character-y parts in five films over the last year and a half. Or at least, parts that seem angular in some way, shape or form, to go by their descriptions.

Edie Sedgwick in Factory Girl was first, I think. Then a soap star named Katya being interviewed by a fading political journalist (Steve Buscemi) in Interview, which Buscemi directed. (It will debut on Saturday, 1.20, at the Sundance Film Festival.) A newlywed in Gregory McKenzie‘s Camille, opposite James Franco. An ethereal sort named Jane Bellwether in Rawson Marshall Thurber‘s The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, which costars Jon Foster, Nick Nolte, Peter Sarsgaard and Mena Suvari. And a cameo in Matthew Vaughn‘s Stardust, a romantic fantasy costarring Claire Danes, Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer.

Her next film, she said, is Charles Shyer‘s Father Knows Less, in which she’ll play the daughter of Dustin Hoffman and Diane Keaton. (Shyer told me a few weeks ago that he hates this title and that he’ll come up with something better eventually.)

We sat down in the outdoor patio area at the Chateau Marmont yesterday afternoon. It lasted about 30 minutes. Here’s the mp3 file. Miller looks great (she was wearing a killer dark-blue Prada dress — check out the photos) but also strikingly unlike Ms. Sedgwick, which is obviously a tribute to the transformative nature of her craft. She also showed up at last night’s party at Drago in Santa Monica for Emilio Estvez and Bobby.

The Best of ’06 picks of (I want to be extra- delicate here) the grossly unsophisticated American flyover class were made known at last night’s 33rd annual People’s Choice Awards. I agree with (or at least feel some amount of support for) exactly one choice — Vince Vaughn as Best Leading Man. (The voters decided this because they rented the DVD of The Break-Up.) And I thought Jennifer Aniston‘s performance in The Break-Up was easily her best so…fine. But going totally whole hog for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (Best Movie, Best Movie Drama)…? Giving the Best Female Action star award to Halle Berry because of her performance in X-Men: The Last Stand? Calling Click the Best Movie Comedy? This is embarassing. These people have no shame. It’s like they’re aliens or something.

11 months ago I received an e-mail from a disgruntled agent about the alleged shortcomings of Paramount Pictures president Gail Berman. I spoke to this person on the phone about the whole deal for about a half hour, and then I threw it all together in a story called “Scent of Toast.” It wasn’t the whole story obviously, but reading it again provides at least some perspective on why Berman has been whacked, as reported today by L.A. Times reporters Claudia Eller and Meg James.

“Less than two years after she was hired to help turn around Paramount Pictures, Berman and the studio are expected to sever ties this week, according to four people familiar with the situation,” their story begins.
“Late Tuesday, Berman and Paramount chairman Brad Grey had not formally discussed the terms of her departure. Berman has more than two years left on her contract. Paramount declined to comment. Berman did not return calls. Executives with knowledge of the plan asked not to be named because the matter was not yet public.
“It was unclear Tuesday how Berman’s role would be filled. Two top Paramount executives — Rob Moore and Brad Weston — could figure prominently in a management restructuring, studio insiders said.
“Berman’s exit comes as no surprise. Almost from the moment Grey handpicked the veteran TV executive in March 2005 to become his creative lieutenant, Berman, 49, has been dogged by rumors of her demise. Some agents, producers and colleagues were put off by Berman’s matter-of-fact and sometimes abrasive style and her lack of movie experience.
“It hasn’t been a happy marriage for Berman either. She felt Grey never gave her the kind of authority she needed to be effective in her job, said people close to Berman. The studio’s acquisition last year of DreamWorks SKG’s live action studio further undercut Berman’s power by reducing the number of movies she was responsible for overseeing.”

Jeff Reichert‘s appreciation of Miami Vice, posted on 1.2.07 as part of Reverse Shot’s Ten Best of ’06 rundown , is one of the best I’ve read anywhere ever:
“How’s this for totally subverting genre expectations: an action movie in which obligatory sex wraps itself in true sensuousness and emotion, and where the required violence is sketched nearly as an afterthought — and a brutish, crude, and ugly one at that? It’s a bummer that this kind of turnabout even needs mentioning, but the aesthetics of violence in film often go so shamefully unquestioned that in Michael Mann‘s hands a little probing ends up as practically revelatory.
“But seriousness of revisionist purpose isn’t the main course here, even if it provides a ready answer for why Miami Vice is so valuable. A few months on, I’d be hard-pressed to tell you exactly what the thing was about, but here is a case (like the average David Lynch film) where the expunging of narrative in favor of seductively composed images pays dividends.
“What’s memorable is not the tracking of a drug lord by elite cops (I think?) but Miami skylines shot through with an unearthly purple glow framing be-suited Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell on a rooftop as they mumble jargon into cell phones — as deliberately anti-action as Beckett. That, and speedboats to Cuba, mo-hee-taws, salsa dancing. Miami Vice is nearly avant garde in its interest in images and instants and busts the genre mold because those moments of true concern have so little to do with explosions and dismemberment.”

A very smart handicapper has passed along an interesting thought: the Best Picture Oscar will be won by either The Departed or Little Miss Sunshine, and the edge, right now, may be with the latter. LMS “is an ensemble piece that people just love…that’s how it was with Crash, and you have to watch out for movies that people just love.
“It was inexplicable last year but the rank-and-file really loved Crash, while some of them — obviously not all, but some — felt a grudging respect for Brokeback Mountain. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris being named as Best Director nominees this morning means that people really love that film.
“If Little Miss Sunshine wins the SAG ensemble acting award plus the Golden Globe best comedy-musical award — and I’m thinking more and more that this might happen — Little Miss Sunshine will take the Best Picture Oscar.”

“The absence of Pan’s Labyrinth‘s Guillermo del Toro and Children of Men‘s Alfonso Cuaron from this morning’s DGA Best Director nomination list is a one hundred (or maybe ninety-nine) percent function of the DGA’s ban on DVD screeners plus the late release dates of these films,” says a “name” director and DGA member who wrote a few minutes ago.
“I can assure you that the vast majority of us have not even seen these films. I know that I have not. I couldn’t make the handful of screenings and was away during the holidays. I voted for four of the nominees. It’s a damn shame, of course. Scorcese will win what amounts to a lifetime achievement award from the Academy, so it would have been nice for the DGA to offer the proper recognition where it was due. Maybe we can get it right next year.”

Speaking once again about the reception to Half Nelson, ThinkFilm’s Mark Urman says to The Reeler‘s Stu VanAirsdale that he “couldn’t have wanted more. It’s a film that’s done very well commercially and critically; with respect to the awards — that sort of exposure and season. For a company like ours, I think it’s very important that you are able to show to the filmmaker community that should a film of great quality end up in your hands that you can get it to the finish line.

“And I expect to go to Sundance this year and have people feel that they can trust me with their movie because I did my job well. Sometimes even good movies don’t make it to the finish line; sometimes it’s bad luck. Sometimes it really is that they didn’t have a distributor who knew that they were doing. I don√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢t mean to be arrogant, but I think we did a really good job with this movie. But it’s a very good movie.”
That said, what’s up with Ryan Gosling? He’s looking like a cross between the early ’80s Nick Nolte and late ’80s Brian Dennehy. (The above photo was taken at last weekend’s New York Film Critics Circle award ceremony.)

Producer Ed Bass — the guy Emilio Estevez allegedly said “checkmate, asshole!” to during the making of Bobby, according to John Ridley‘s famous Esquire piece — and Karen Sharpe Kramer, the widow of director Stanley Kramer, have teamed to make a sequel to the 1963 comedy classic It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, according to a story by the Hollywood Reporter‘s Borys Kit.
The only way this could possibly work would be to assemble enough money to fund a really funny script by two or three perversely talented screenwriters plus a really top-ranked comic director on board, who would then be able to cast all the super-hip, top-dog funny guys (Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson, Sarah Silverman, Will Ferrell. Ben Stiller, Sacha Baron Cohen, etc.) in the same way that Stanley Kramer cast all the kings of comedy circa 1962-63 when he made his film. Otherwise, forget it.

The lowdown on Apple’s iPhone, which ships in June. The 4GB iPhone will go out the door in the U.S. as a Cingular exclusive for $499 on a two-year contract, 8GB for $599. I’m kinda”sold” on this thing, frankly. The more I read about it, the damper I get.