David Fincher‘s 23 year-old commercial with the cigarette- smoking fetus, posted by Screen Grab’s Bilge Ebiri.

Ghost Rider, the #1 film right now, is projected to wind up with roughly $47,344,000 by Monday night (i.e., concluding the four-day weekend). The second-place Bridge to Terabithia should take in $35 mill and change. Eddie Murphy’s Norbit is #3 with $22,880,000. (Re-calculating by a three-day weekend standard, it’s off 40-something percent from last weekend.)

Music and Lyrics is fourth with $14,735,000, and Breach is fifth with a projected $11,322,000. Tyler Perry’s Daddy’s Little Girls is sixth with $10,963,000. Hannibal Rising follows with $6,065,000. Because I Said So is eighth with $5,892,000. Night at the Museum is #9 for $5,230,000, and The Messengers is the tenth-best earner with $4,569,000.

“My name is Lewis Beale, and I am an Academy Awards addict.

“God help me, but it’s only February and I’m already thinking about the 2007 Oscars. I just saw The Hoax, Lasse Hallstrom‘s film about the 1970s scandal involving author Clifford Irving, who claimed he had written Howard Hughes‘ ‘autobiography.’ Opening in April, the movie is a fun (if overlong) ride, but as the charming and utterly amoral Irving, Richard Gere gives a performance that, as I told one of my editors at another publication, is “Oscar-worthy.”

“Someone, please — organize an intervention. Is there some sort of Academy Awards 12-step program, or perhaps a Betty Ford Clinic for Oscar junkies?”

David Halbfinger‘s N.Y. Times piece (2.18.07) about David Fincher‘s Zodiac has some very candid quotes from the three stars — Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey, Jr., Mark Ruffalo — about Fincher’s exacting perfectionism, and particularly how this sometimes led to their having to perform a scene 70 times or more. And it’s hilarious stuff. Really. I would imagine that anyone reading this who hasn’t yet seen Zodiac will now want to see it all the more.

“What’s so wonderful about movies is, you get your shot,” Gyllenhaal says. “They even call it a shot. The stakes are high. You get your chance to prove what you can do. You get a take, 5 takes, 10 takes. Some places, 90 takes. But there is a stopping point. There’s a point at which you go, `That’s what we have to work with.’ But we would reshoot things. So there came a point where I would say, well, what do I do? Where’s the risk?”

“Told of Gyllenhaal’s comments, Fincher half-jokingly said, ‘I hate earnestness in performance,’ adding, ‘Usually by Take 17 the earnestness is gone.’ (Wells aside: To be fair, Gyllenhaal’s acting can seem a little too “sincere” and “heartfelt” at times. Fincher was probably right to try to mess with that.)

“But half-joking aside, [Fincher] said that collaboration ‘has to come from a place of deep knowledge.'” (Wells aside: Hah!) “While he had no objections to having fun, he said, ‘When you go to your job, is it supposed to be fun, or are you supposed to get stuff done?’ (Wells aside: the world is divided into two camps — the much larger camp A is into the ritual of neck massages, alpha vibes and “fun” while working — the much smaller camp B is into getting stuff done in such a way that everyone involved will be immensely proud when they see the movie five years later on DVD, and later with the neck massages.)

“[Fincher] later called back and said he ‘adored the cast” of Zodiac‘ and felt “lucky to have them all,” but was ‘totally shocked‘ by Gyllenhaal’s remark about reshoots.

“Downey, impeccably cast as a crime reporter driven to drink, drugs and dissolution, called Fincher a disciplinarian and agreed that, as is often said, “he’s always the smartest guy in the room.” But Downey put this in perspective.

“Sometimes it’s really hard because it might not feel collaborative, but ultimately filmmaking is a director’s medium,” he said. “I just decided, aside from several times I wanted to garrote him, that I was going to give him what he wanted. I think I’m a perfect person to work for him, because I understand gulags.”

“Ruffalo too survived some 70-take shots. “The way I see it is, you enter into someone else’s world as an actor,” he said. “You can put your expectations aside and have an experience that’s new and pushes and changes you, or hold onto what you think it should be and have a stubborn, immovable journey that’s filled with disappointment and anger.”

“Fincher was equally demanding of everyone — executives, actors, himself — and ‘he knows he’s taking a stab at eternity,’ Ruffalo said. ‘He knows that this will outlive him. And he’s not going to settle for anything other than satisfaction, deep satisfaction. Somewhere along the line he said, ‘I will not settle for less.””

A National Public Radio/“All Things Considered” piece by Kristal Brent Zook about certain African American women being angered by Eddie Murphy‘s portrayal of “an overweight, bossy, mean black woman” in Norbit. I think Murphy is entitled to be as vulgar and offensive as he wants, if he wants to go that way. I don’t care if African-American women are offended, He’d be doing something wrong if somebody didn’t get irate. A wallower needs the freedom to wallow. You can’t put a dog collar on him.

Newsday‘s John Anderson sorting through the Oscar-nominated shorts (i.e., a task that’s also allegedly been attempted by Matt Zoller Seitz in the N.Y. Times, Kevin Crust in the L.A. Times and Tim Gierson in the L.A. Weekly. Wait a minute…The Envelope‘s Steve Pond put his up last Wednesday.

“As this season of insane Oscar foreplay approaches its inevitably unsatisfying climax, making predictions is a dangerous game,” writes City Beat critic Andy Klein, who dares to say the following a couple of lines later: “Alan Arkin will win Best Supporting Actor.

“Much of the smart money has been on Eddie Murphy for Dreamgirls, but, as several commentators have already noted, the release of Norbit in the middle of the voting period could cost Murphy dearly. It may not be the sort of movie Oscar voters go out for in droves, but no one with a television could have avoided the barrage of wretched, unfunny, even offensive ads in the run-up to its opening — ads that remind us of everything that√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s worst about a sometimes brilliant performer√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s work.

“At the same time that the folks at DreamWorks/Paramount are spending money to promote Murphy√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s Oscar chances, they√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢re spending far more on unintentionally undermining them.

“If Murphy is out, then the award is Arkin√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s to win. Nearly everyone loved him in Little Miss Sunshine, a film that was itself hard to dislike. And he has 40 years of work, often great, behind him — a factor that, however unfairly, has been known to sway voters. It would also represent an Oscar comeback for Arkin, whose two previous nominations were in the √ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢60s.”

Two positive AICN fanboy reviews of Universal’s Evan Almighty from a recent Sacramento research screening…whatever. I guess it’s time to consider the possibility that this grossly expensive event comedy might not be so bad, although I still maintain that lots of money always works against any concept of “funny.”

Here’s a graph that got my attention more than any other: “The part of the film that surprised me the most, was how big it felt in sheer scope. I had no idea that the film would actually have so many animals, every single freaking member of the animal kingdom made it into the movie. All in pairs of course.

“[And yet] they never simply served as set pieces, they really developed a life of their own, playing off Steve Carrell to a tee, especially the monkey’s. Then of course there was an amazing CG sequence, that I won’t give away, that although incomplete in this version of the movie, transformed this fun comedy into what felt like a movie of epic proportions.”

“Nobody knows what will happen in the Best Picture category on Oscar night,” Riskybiz blog’s Anne Thompson begins. “I’m guessing The Departed is ahead of Little Miss Sunshine by a hair, and EW‘s Dave Karger agrees with me.

“While many Oscar prognosticators insist that Little Miss Sunshine is weak because it lacks a director nomination, or that Babel is strong because it has the most nominations (seven), I maintain that there is real affection for Little Miss Sunshine, which could win Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor, that Babel will likely win Score, that The Queen will win Helen Mirren, and that The Departed will win Director and Adapted Screenplay. This is the most even playing field in years.”

Whoa, whoa…did anyone catch that? A hard-nosed, no-nonsense Hollywood Reporter columnist whose fingers are constantly monitoring the industry pulse is saying that because “there is real affection for Little Miss Sunshine” that Alan Arkin “could” win Best Supporting Actor,

Decoding the code: Thompson also uses the “c” word regarding Michael Andt‘s chances of winning Best Original Screenplay, which are nearly 100% assured. In other words, she’s being her usual qualifying, don’t-stick-your-neck-out-too-far self by using the word “could” in relation to something she believes will possibly/ probably happen. In other words, she feels/believes/suspects that the LMS coattails may usher in the defeat of Eddie Murphy.

Ju-Osh said this morning in a Hot Blog reply that Black Snake Moan director Craig Brewer and his Paramount Vantage marketing pallies “should scrap their rather generic ‘Everything’s hotter down south’ ad slogan for the ‘It’s hard out here for a nymph‘ gag slogan they debuted at Sundance. It’s easier to remember and a hell of a lot funnier.” Absolute 100% agreement from this corner. The former copy line. of course, is aimed at ahead-of-the-curve types who didn’t see Hustle and Flow and don’t get the synch-up with the “Hard Out Here for a Pimp” tune.

“These are the movies that are preoccupying the conversations that [have been happening] at the water cooler, in part because they are the most interesting films of the year — in any language.” So says N.Y. Times Oscar guy David Carr (a.k.a., “the Bagger”) about the five nominees for Best Foreign Language Film, and, if you follow the link, N.Y. Times columnist Caryn James as well.

A story about Groucho and Chico Marx, passed along by N.Y. Times columnist Dick Cavett and called “Luck in the Afternoon.” If I described it as “hilarious,” a certain percentage would go “not funny enough.” (By the way, the anecdote about meeting anti-Semitism with claims of half-Jewishness is funnier with that Barry Goldwater joke about asking an anti-Semitic golf course manager if he could play nine holes, etc.)

Update: CHUD correspondent Devin Faraci just pointed out that it’s a “Times Select” piece, so I’m going to risk the wrath of Times Online staffers by pasting it here:

February 15, 2007, 7:44 pm

Luck in the Afternoon

Groucho stories, even if you’ve heard them, are still good. Like the well-known story of his daughter and the restricted country club pool. Groucho: “But my daughter’s only half-Jewish. Can she go in up to her waist?”

I have a particular fondness for the one I’m about to tell you, partly because I got it directly from Groucho. I may have told it in the 1982 documentary, “The Marx Brothers in a Nutshell.”

The setting is vaudeville. The young Marx brothers had barely heard of movies and were rollicking around the country as big stage stars and enjoying the fruits of fame, one being its proven effectiveness as an aphrodisiac. “You know my brother’s name is often mispronounced,” Groucho would say. “My uncle [Al Shean] who named us all pronounced it Chicko because of my brother’s monumental success with `chicks.’ He was catnip to all women. And we were opposites in other ways, too.”

They were playing somewhere in Iowa. One night while they were removing their makeup, there was a knock at the dressing room door and a middle-aged Jewish couple came in. After effusive compliments on the boys’ act, the husband said, “We know you boys are Jewish, and we thought you might like to come to our house on Friday night for a traditional Jewish dinner.” The invitation was accepted.

On Wednesday, Groucho and Chico were out strolling, and Chico, with his genius for numbers (and lack of it for gambling), noticed a house address. He said, “Isn’t that the number of those nice people’s house?” It was, and it was the house. They decided to pay a call.

They rang the bell and an attractive girl appeared. As luck (or something) would have it, there were the couple’s two pretty daughters. The parents were out.

Groucho: “Thanks to Chico’s skills in this area, in two shakes of a lamb’s tail we were out of our clothes and in bed with the two daughters. Balancing Chico’s great luck in getting us there, his ill luck dealt the next card. The bedroom door opened and there were the parents.

“Chico was more accustomed to this sort of predicament than I was, so I followed his example — which was grabbing up our clothes and high-tailing it out the window. Fortunately, we were on the ground floor. In any case, the penultimate thing the parents saw were our two buck-naked rear ends disappearing over the window sill. The ultimate thing they saw was Chico’s head reappearing momentarily, saying, ‘I hope this doesn’t affect Friday night.'”