Nine and a half weeks remain before the polls will close on Academy nominations — the drop-dead hour being 5 pm on Saturday, 1.13.07. In other words, three or four weeks from now (figuratively speaking) and the whole nommie-nommie Phase 1 thing will be over and done with.
Nomination ballots are being mailed out 12.26.06. The locked-down nominations will be announced on Tuesday, 1.23 — ten and a half weeks hence. And then Phase 2 kicks in for a mere four weeks (literally) with the final polls closing at 5 pm on Tuesday, 2.20.07 . The Oscar telecast — i.e., the vaguely underwhelming letdown at the end of the road — will happen on Tuesday, 2.25 starting at 5 pm Pacific.
No slam against comedian Ellen DeGeneres, but the producers should have hired the great Sarah Silverman for the job, especially after her killer performance at last March’s IFP Spirit Awards. She’s brilliant — she gets everything as it is right now.

The only interesting part of this Rebecca Winters Keegan Time story about the Britney Spears-Kevin Federline divorce is the final-graph observation that Spears has now joined “a growing group of powerful celebrity women who have recently split from their less successful husbands, including Reese Witherspoon (from Ryan Phillippe) and Hilary Swank (from Chad Lowe).”
That’s the principal thing of it — the emotional-psychological inability of most wannabe alpha males to play second violin in a marriage, not to mention the corresponding discomfort often felt by their stronger, richer, better connected (and in many cases, more mature) wives. Marriages between alpha-female breadwinners and Mr. Mom house-husbands have obviously been a flourishing part of the domestic culture for the last 20 or 25 years, but the deep-seated need that most guys have to “be the man” in a relationship always seems to lead to problems.
That said, most marriages tend to fray a bit when (a) the natural myriad priorities of taking care of newly-arrived babies push aside and/or temporarily suffocate the romantic stuff (been there, seen it happen), and (b) when the wife evolves from a svelte pistol-hot babe into someone chubby or even borderline fat. Is there a gentle, sensitive way of saying that Spears has had the appearance of a cow for the last year, year and a half…? I’m searching for that phraseology as we speak.

“You cannot make a daring, unusual, completely risky film about amazing, outrageous subject matter, and not expect people to be polarized. When I made Secretary, there were people who thought it was a dirty movie. And there were people who were very moved by it. Those are the only kinds of films I’m going to make anyway. I know the game I’m in, [and] I’m not capable of — nor am I interested in — making a film that is attempting to appeal to everyone. That would be ridiculous.

“I mean [that] I’m interested in making the most personal films I can. My own internal life has enough complexity to it — and I’m in touch with it enough — that I’m going to put people off. And I’m also going to attract people. To me, those are the most interesting kinds of films. What’s the point in trying to make a movie that is trying to be all things to all people?” — Fur director Steven Shainberg to The Reeler‘s Stu VanAirsdale, in response to a brutal pan of his film by Time critic Richard Schickel, posted on 11.3

The Bagger blog — Oscar season riffs from N.Y. Times pulse-taker David Carr — is up and running. Here’s the first video piece, which is mostly about recaps, the usual aroma-funk of Times Square, and a little red carpet that Carr rolls up and carries around.

We all know that Ridley Scott‘s A Good Year (20th Century Fox, 11.10) is facing an uphill situation. I don’t know what’s wrong but something’s not taking. The tracking says so, and I can feel it when I talk to people about it. I think this is mostly about vague perception and skewed expectations, and almost nothing to do with what the film actually is.
Is it the Russell Crowe factor? I wouldn’t like to think so. He slips into an appealing groove as a London-based master-of the-universe who learns to lighten up after he inherits the deed to a French vineyard, and I don’t see why critics are saying he’s not suited for it. He’s been a trooper on the sit-down circuit, talking with Today‘s Meredith Viera and 60 Minutes‘ Steve Kroft and plugging it all he can.
As a nicely spirited mood piece that isn’t trying to be a “comedy,” A Good Year plays successfully on its own terms, which is a lot more than you can say for Stranger Than Fiction. The die is cast, the cards are dealt and people are going to see what they want to see. I just know this film gets a fairly good groove going, and that it’s easygoing escapism for adults. This is the last I’ll speak of it. It’s just too damn bad.

“I’ve seen Casino Royale, and I don’t want to get into the trip of breaking the embargo to slap down another critic, but let me say this: that French guy is completely wrong about the movie. See it for yourself and tell me I’m wrong.” — Big-gun critic based in a very cool northern city.

And the Jesse James plot thickens: yesterday I linked to a Kevin Williamson interview in the Calgary Sun with Tony Scott, who’s the executive producer of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Scott said to Williamson that the film, directed by Andrew Dominik with Brad Pitt playing the famed Missouri outlaw, would be out in February ’07.
Now I’m hearing forget February. In fact, forget any specific date. Limbo!
Before posting I called a Warner Bros. p.r. rep yesterday for a precise date — she didn’t get back until this afternoon, and she told me Scott is “absolutely wrong…I don’t know where he got that…the film is not coming out in Feburary…nobody’s seen it and we don’t have a date.” She couldn’t even suggest a season; nor could Scott (I called his office and was blown off) or producer Jules Daly (ditto).
Scott told Williamson that “we have to be careful how we market [Jesse James] because it’s like a Terrence Malick film. But it’s really good and Brad’s terrific in it — he just gets better with age.” Throw in WB’s release-date quandary and the implication is that Jesse James is perhaps a little too Terrence Malicky — too pastoral and picturesque, too much meditative muttering…something?
This was a movie that was going to come out last September — now the studio won’t even say what season it’ll open in. That’s a problem. The only time to open an offbeat western that’s making everyone a little nervous (a film, say, in the vein of All The Pretty Horses?) is (a) in either February-March or early April, (b) the dumping ground of August or (c) October-November (i.e., if it’s any good). If it’s the latter, The Assassination of Jesse James will become, in a sense, the All The Kings Men of the fall ’07 season.

There are very few adults in the big bad business world who don’t swear by the Don Corleone maxim, “Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.” Whatever your game is or what side of the fence you’re on, dealing with people who understand how things really work is usually a very smooth experience. Unfortunately, there are those who don’t get Don Corleone and instead are into a kind of iron-cannon, thick-walled, defend-the-English-castle mentality. They basically strategize the way Frank Thring‘s King Aella did in Richard Fleischer‘s The Vikings, and they regard well-meaning interpreters of the Hollywood film business the way that King Aella saw Kirk Douglas‘s Einar and Ernest Borgnine‘s Ragnar. You’re watching The Godfather, Part II and you’re thinking Michael Corleone may lose his soul, but at least he gets it. You’re watching The Vikings and you can’t wait to see King Aella thrown into the wolf pit.

The Hollywood Reporter has published a Hollywood Hot-Shots of Tomorrow list. Get in with the “tomorrow guys” or you’ll start to experience shaky relationship footing in five years, and five years later you’ll be dead. Congrats to Paramount’s Pam Abdy, New Line’s Cale Boyter, Silver Pictures’ Susan Downey, Pheonix Pictures Brad Fischer, DreamWorks’ John Fox, Universal’s Kristin Lowe, Fox Searchlight’s Zola Mashariki , Columbia’s Adam Milano, Lionsgate’s John Sacchi, Warner Premiere’s Geoff Shaevitz and IFC Films’ Ryan Werner.