“Last pic to earn as many bids as Dreamgirls without picture, directing or writing noms was The Poseidon Adventure in 1972, which from its octet of noms took home only a song Oscar (plus a special trophy for its visual effects).” — from a Variety statistics piece by Keith Collins.

The bald-Britney-freakout story is all over the place. Fried, over the falls in a barrel…acck-acck! It’s not the shaved-head appearance per se (she could have just done that and kept her cool) as much as (a) that tattoo-parlor employee saying Spears appeared “distraught and disturbed…very scatterbrained,” plus (b) Spears’ alleged reply when asked why she’d done it: “I don’t want anyone touching me. I’m tired of everybody touching me.”

Is this on the level of Norma Desmond walking dramatically down the grand staircase, playing Salome for the newsreel cameras and saying, “I’m ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille”? Or just another standard-issue Hollywood meltdown a la Martin Lawrence waving a gun, or a disoriented Anne Heche knocking on some suburban home-owner’s door around breakfast time?

Moving Picture Blog‘s Joe Leydon is reminding readers of a Moviemaker interview he did last year with mile-high guy Ralph Fiennes.

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.