TMZ.com’s Claude Brodesser-Akner is reporting that “insiders [are saying] that Warner Bros. was caught by surprise at an unexpected announcement of a Departed sequel in the press by the loose-lipped Mark Wahlberg — the only surviving principal character from the first film. And as a result, the follow-up project’s planning is vastly complicated,” largely because of questions about the participation of Paramount Pictures chief Brad Grey.

Paramount honcho Brad Grey, Warren Beatty at the Paramount party on Golden Globes night

“In fact, insiders say that all deals associated with the project are on hold until the studio can figure out what Grey’s involvement would be,” Brodesser-Akner writes. “After all, before he was chairman of Paramount, he helped create Brad Pitt‘s production company at Warner Bros., which developed the present-tense, Oscar-nominated Departed.

“Grey declined to speak to TMZ about what role he’d have in the new Departed, But now that the news of a planned sequel is out of the bag, things are complicated: For one thing, it’s being made at a rival studio, putting Grey in an odd, conflicted position if he is produces it for Warners. For another, if Grey pushes to be the sequel’s producer, it might signify that he’s thinking of packing a parachute because he suspects he’ll soon be out of a job at Paramount.

“Grey’s future is a matter of open speculation in Hollywood these days: Having just last month fired his studio president, Gail Berman, after a tumultuous run, Grey appears embroiled in a battle for control of the studio with DreamWorks co-founder David Geffen. It was Geffen who last year brought in Universal Pictures chairwoman Stacey Snider to run the now Paramount-owned DreamWorks.

“As the Times‘ Claudia Eller noted on 1.29, “Though Grey signed off on her hiring, the move was widely viewed as an effort by Geffen to position Snider for Grey’s job.”

Anthony Hopkins‘ portrayal of Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs “was one for the ages,” recalls N.Y. Daily News critic Jack Matthews. “With only 16 minutes of screen time, he turned the creepy psychotic genius into the most indelible screen villain of all time, a standing made official four years ago when Hannibal was No. 1 in the American Film Institute’s poll of the 100 top villains. (Second and third place went to Norman Bates and Darth Vader.) Lambs even won Hopkins the 1991 Academy Award for Best Actor.

“Hannibal Lecter has Hopkins — as much as his creator, author Thomas Harris — to thank for his notoriety. Hopkins’ performance in Lambs was electrifying, one of the rare occasions where a movie actor gets under the skin of an outsized literary character and makes him larger, more frightening, more dangerous, more real, and yet — here’s the key — irresistible.

“What was it in that hiss, in the menacing evenness of his voice (‘Good eveninggg, Clarice’) that sent chills up our spine and drew us to him at the same time? It’s great acting, of course, but it’s more. I think audiences could see through the character to the joy and playfulness of the actor inside. Hopkins knew he had the role of a lifetime, and we could tell he wasn’t letting it go by.” — from a piece in which Matthews is looking to talk about the forthcoming Hannibal Rising (Weinstein Co., 2.9) without talking about it.

I never responded to the most oft-voiced comment about the opening-page art for that Los Angeles magazine piece about “The Blog Whisperers,” which is that David Poland looks like either Clemenza or Don Barzini…some scary guy from Little Italy. That led to a thought about whether any other entertainment or Oscar-blog writers remind anyone of any character in either The Godfather films or on The Sopranos.

Pete Hammond doesn’t remind me of any mafioso types — too amiable and industry-centric, zero malevolence, too much laughter and good will.

I can’t think of any character whom N.Y. Times Oscar guy David Carr might be either except, on a reach, a blend of two Sopranos characters — Jerry Adler‘s ‘Hesh’ Rabkin plus Peter Reigert‘s State Assemblyman Ronald Zellman.

Sasha Stone is not Connie Corleone or Carmela Soprano, but I could make a case for her being a blend of Dr. Jennifer Melfi with a tiny sprinkling of Annabella Sciorra‘s steak-throwing car dealer, Gloria Trillo.

In Contention‘s Kris Tapley sees himself as blend of Clemenza and Tom Hagen. I say he’s young Michael Corleone just when he’s convincing Sonny that he’s got the steel to shoot Virgil “The Turk” Sollozzo in that Bronx restaurant.

Tom O’Neil doesn’t have a gang bone in his body (okay, maybe a little tiny bit of John Ventimiglia/Artie Bucco) but Coming Soon‘s Edward Douglas could be…I’m lost. Drawing a blank. Any thoughts on anyone else? Who’s Devin Faraci?

I’m obviously not the best judge, but I would say I’m made up of one part Christopher Moltisanti (as played by Michael Imperioli on The Sopranos), one part Tom Hagen/Robert Duvall and one part Sonny Corleone/James Caan.

Postscript: One of the above-named voices wrote in around 3:30 pm to say that Poland reminds him/her of Sterling Hayden‘s Capt. McCluskey, the guy who got shot along with Sollozzo by Michael Corleone.

“I saw Children of Men yesterday. Its not just great — it’s holy shit great. With clearly the most imaginative and inspired cinematography since Seven (in terms of the innovation of the work, which, in this case, was how well the camera moves). This is easily the best film of the year. Nothing comes close. It got shut out of the Oscar race because of a horrible Oscar campaign, or lack of one.” — a prominent feature film director who sometimes passes along this and that thought, often on Sunday mornings.

A fully reasoned, highly persuasive New York Post piece by Michael Kane, arguing against the notion of Eddie Murphy as a deserving Best Supporting Actor nominee, appeared this morning. It’s very surprising, I’m thinking, that the most devastating quote against the guy is delivered in the article by Oscarwatch.com‘s Sasha Stone, who’s said I’ve got my head screwed on backwards for trying to articulate the anti-Murphy current.

Murphy “has a 90 percent chance of winning right now,” she says. “And I’m getting the sense that he doesn’t even care. He’s been prickly through this whole thing. He doesn’t want to let his guard down. He doesn’t want to look desperate or appear desperate. You can tell he’s up there trying to say the right things, going through the motions, but maybe deep down he thinks it wasn’t really Oscar-worthy.”

“Norbit,'” Stone says, “is really not the best Eddie Murphy to be showing right now. What if you’re an Oscar voter, and you drive by that giant billboard on Ventura Boulevard? Maybe you start thinking, this movie is probably going to make $100 million. Let’s give the award to poor Jackie Earle Haley, who has nothing. Eddie Murphy doesn’t need an Oscar.”

“Let’s face it, he’s really very good in [Dreamgirls], on stage,” another observer says in the piece. “It’s not just that he can sing. He’s got the moves. He knows how to do it.It’s like an extended James Brown impression. Is that great acting? That’s okay acting. He did the job. But there’s no basis for him to be saluted and put up on the mountaintop.

“Eddie Murphy may well have something to show that proves that he’s a good actor, but Dreamgirls‘ and the role of James Thunder’ Early is not that role. It’s basically prancing around on stage.”

The odd thing is, Kane writes, is that “this kind of criticism may not even get an argument from Murphy himself.

“Even he dismisses his supposed ‘Oscar clip’ in Dreamgirls, a scene that comes late in the film, when his character is down on his luck and reaches for heroin to ease the pain. When a friend asks him to stop, ‘Thunder’ Early shoots him a look that without words fully captures the moment of surrender of a proud man.

“But even Murphy, true to form, laughs off the artistry of the acting.

“‘After that scene was shot,’ recalled Murphy after winning the Golden Globe, ‘our producer, Laurence Mark, said, ‘Oh, that look you just gave him was incredible.’ And I was like, ‘What’s he talking about?’ I didn’t know what he meant.

“And then [co-star] Jamie [Foxx] came over a week later and said, I saw that look that you did.’ And then I watched the movie, and I was like, what the f— are they talking about? Everyone was like, Oh, that moment,’ and I was like, I didn’t do nothing.'”

I was just-re-reading my very first, morning-after Departed review (posted on 9.21.06), and I almost started to tear up a little bit about the Leonardo DiCaprio Best Actor campaign that might have been if the people running Warner Bros. marketing hadn’t cocked things up by deciding to go the favored-nations route and calling him a Best Supporting Actor nominee along with Nicholson, Damon, Wahlberg, Baldwin, etc. Brilliant work, guys.

“The Departed doesn’t exactly throb with thematic weight,” I began. “It’s just a feisty, crackling crime film — a double-switch, triple-fake-out dazzler about lies and cover-ups and new lies to take the place of old lies, and about the psychic toll of being a two-faced informer and living in a whirlpool of anxiety and dread. And it’s Leonardo DiCaprio, more than costars Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Alec Baldwin or Mark Wahlberg or anyone else, who exudes the vibe of a hunted, haunted animal — a guy so furious and frazzled and inwardly clenched that he can barely breathe.

“Don’t even talk about Leo’s Amsterdam Vallon in Gangs of New York or Howard Hughes in The Aviator or Frank Abagnale in Catch Me If You Can. In fact, somebody ask those guys to please leave the room and wait for us in the car. We’ll be out later.”

Everyone has been saying the Best Director Oscar is a lock for Martin Scorsese since The Departed began to screen about four and a half months ago, so forgive me if I didn’t breathlessly post last night’s news that he’d won the Directors Guild of America feature directing award. Variety’s Dave McNary didn’t exactly indicate a quickened pulse when he wrote that the trophy “underlines Scorsese status as the front-runner for the Best Director Oscar, to be presented 2.25.”

If I had a semblance of a sports gene I’d be looking for the Bears to go all the way, baby. Stay with Barack Obama‘s home team, I’m figuring. I don’t like the Indianapolis Colts because you should never have to tap dance over seven syllables to say a football team’s name. Plus I don’t like Super Bowl games being played at Dolphin Stadium just because it’s warm in Miami. If the guys who run things were men they’d have the game in some colder climate just for the sheer machismo factor. Girls go “ooohhh, I’m freezing”; guys shrug it off and soldier on.

A three-way Eddie Murphy debate between myself, Oscarwatch. com’s Sasha Stone and N.Y. Times Oscar guy David Carr (a.k.a., “the Bagger”), as posted earlier today by The Envelope‘s Tom O’Neil.

The thing about the Oscars is that they “have nothing to do with standards of good moviemaking,” laments the Toronto Star‘s Geoff Pevere. “And I mean nothing, as in what’s left when you take zero from zero, multiply it to infinity and divide it the number of times Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Ingmar Bergman or Akira Kurosawa won for Best Director. (Which was zip, by the way.)

“If they did have anything to do with the quality of movies, the following would necessarily follow: It would not be possible that the hysterically-cloying Little Miss Sunshine would be nominated for Best Picture and Children of Men would not.

“It would not be possible that Chicago could be mentioned in the same breath with ‘Best Picture.’

“It would not be possible that the great Barbara Stanwyck would have died with no Oscars on her shelf and Hilary Swank, who will not presumably die for some time yet, should already have two.

“It would not be possible that Ron Howard would be more esteemed than Orson Welles.

“It would not be possible that, when the searing Goodfellas lost to the all-but-unwatchable Dances With Wolves, Martin Scorsese should be told that sorry, but you’re just not as visionary an artist as Kevin Costner.

“And it would not be possible for Will Smith to commit as heinous an act of sentimental terrorism as The Pursuit of Happyness — holding his own son hostage on-screen in the process — and actually be rewarded and not jailed for it.”