“I live in the poor part of Bel Air…Skid Drive.” — a stand-up line Bill Maher used six or seven years ago, or perhaps as long ago as ’99…I forget.

A journalist friend wrote a few hours ago that he’ll “be so glad on Monday when it’s all over” — i.e., all the Oscar crap — “for another year.” It will be over for precisely four, maybe four and a half months — until mid-July — by which time the ’07 campaigns will have been decided upon, pre-strategized and quietly launched. And then the game really kicks in come Labor Day.

Which means, now that I think of it, that it’s time for the ’07 Oscar Balloon to be thrown together. I can throw something together, of course, but it’ll be better if it’s done with reader input. All nominations due by 9 ayem Wednesday morning. Sometime today or tonight would be better. I’ll start it off with a sum-up article of some kind or another.

“Was it not just the other day that I mentioned the travesty of Prince of the City not being released on DVD? The double-disc treatment will get this masterpiece seen by many more than ever had a chance to catch it in theaters. I don’t know of any other film of this quality not yet out in the format…and POTC really is the best antecedent of Zodiac, which I saw the other night.

“Zodiac is a film that, on the one hand, seems to burst a blood vessel of tension when it wants to do so (pretty amazing for a film that tells a story in which we already know the answers) — but on the other hand, it’s more laconic scenes have a kind of ethereal beauty to them — there’s a warm bath quality to most of the film — perhaps that is due to how perfectly it captures an era in time. An era that most of us savor — for the movies, the music, the bad clothes and gas guzzlers.” — a director friend, writing late this afternoon.

WARNING: Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End plot spoiler about to be revealed, mainly because it’s already been revealed on jimhilledia.com and I hate these movies anyway (not how well they’re made, but how adamantly empty they are) so screw it:

“In the third installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean series, Will, Elizabeth and Capt’n Jack Sparrow are once again thrown together for a showdown between the fiercely independent Pirate Lords from around the world and the all powerful East India Trading Company (!!) led by the mysterious & cunning Lord Cutler Beckett. With possession of Davey Jones’s chest, Beckett is now able to use Jones and his ship, the Flying Dutchman, to further his plans of ridding the open seas of all Pirates. In response to this growing threat, the Pirate Lords call for a secret meeting at Shipwreck Cove.

“Newly returned from the other side, CaptaIn Barbossa agrees to help Will and Elizabeth rescue Jack who is now trapped in a very strange afterworld known as Davey Jones’s Locker. This unlikely trio makes their way to the exotic Far East where they meet Captain Sao Feng, the Pirate Lord of Singapore, and retrieve a special map that will then show them the way to Davey Jones’s Locker.

“Their course ultimately leads them to the edge of the world where their ship sails over a giant waterfall and comes crashing down through the darkness and literally into another dimension. There, Will, Elizabeth and Barbossa meet a somewhat bewildered Jack Sparrow still on board his beloved ship the Black Pearl, which is now stranded in the middle of a vast desert. Using reverse logic, Jack figures out a way to sail the Black Pearl back to the world of the living, where they are immediately set upon by Beckett and Davey Jones.

“After a series of plot twists and turns, Jack, Barbossa, Will and Elizabeth ultimately end up at Shipwreck Cove for the meeting of the Pirate Lords. During this meeting, the Pirate Lords agree to fight together against the approaching armada of ships led by Beckett and Davey Jones.

“The story’s thrilling conclusion unfolds in a huge sea battle between the massive fleet of the East India Trading Company and the Pirate Lords led by Jack, Will and Elizabeth, who while outnumbered and outgunned, possess a secret weapon so powerful yet so unpredictable that both sides may be lost in this final confrontation for ultimate control of the open seas.”

An industry observer who talks to Academy members is starting to think that maybe Alan Arkin might eke out a win against the ogre Eddie Murphy. “[Arkin’s] name is coming up, this and that person has told me they’re voting for him. Plus he’s in a Best Picture nominated film, so [Arkin’s performance] is being seen by a lot of people. Plus it’s not atypical for the Academy to have differences of opinion with SAG, and I’m thinking that such a difference just might be in this category [i.e., Best Supporting Actor].

“Murphy is a veteran, but Arkin is really a veteran, and the bottom line is that I just keep hearing his name…people I talk to on the phone and, like I said, I get stuff all over the map. It’s just another indicator that, at the very least, tells me the Best Supporting Actor category is not wrapped up….it isn’t a Helen Mirren situation. I’m not secure in predicting this absolutely, but there’s a reasonable chance, based on my unscientific readings, that [the winner] might be Arkin.”

“In Hollywood and on Wall Street, some question the focus at New Line Cinema,” writes N.Y. Times reporter Sharon Waxman. She then discusses the why and wherefores of that focus, or lack of. And yet the bedrock “thing” about Shaye and (talk to anyone who’s made a movie for him or had his/her film distributed by New Line) the moody, somewhat erratic, dark-cloud manner in which New Line operates, is not really given a name in the piece.

Talk to anyone who’s run a few laps around the track at 116 No. Robertson and they’ll give it a name, all right…but it’s a different proposition to tap it out on a keyboard and put it into print.

“After the success of Lord of the Rings, some had expected the studio to pursue a more ambitious agenda than the urban comedies and horror films of its past,” Waxman writes. “That might have included pressing ahead with The Hobbit, from the [original] ‘Rings’ author J. R. R. Tolkien, to which New Line shares the rights.

“Instead, Shaye has been trading insults with the Rings director Peter Jackson, while the studio has struggled to find a new breakout hit.

“I wouldn’t characterize it as a financial crisis, even if they had a bad year,” said Harold L. Vogel, an entertainment analyst. “It’s more like an identity crisis. It’s a fair question: where do you go from here? Everyone has the same problem, whether you’re 90 or you’re 20. And they’re facing it now with a little more emphasis.”

“If critics have observed that the studio seems distracted, there may be good reason. Shaye’s illness, the seriousness of which was not disclosed to the public before now, apparently derailed the studio for a portion of 2005 and affected the slate in 2006. And last year he took time to direct his own movie, The Last Mimzy, a family-oriented science fiction adventure (co-written by New Line’s president of production, Toby Emmerich) that will open in theaters next month.”

I saw The Last Mimzy a few weeks ago at Sundance, and it’s a nice family-level alien-visitation film…but it’s too E.T.-ish for anyone with strong memories of that 1982 Steven Spielberg film (and who doesn’t recall that film with unusual clarity?) to truly relax with and be genuinely moved by. Of all the stories that could be made into movies, why Shaye chose this particular one is a head-scratcher.

“When he sees a guy like you, all normal and everything, coming here with a nice pretty little girl, he should get the two of you a really nice room and a nice bed.”

The Movie Gods are at peace. Children of Men dp Emmanuel Lubezki won the top feature film award at last night’s 21st Annual American Society of Cinematographers Awards. “Chivo” also won the Best Cinematography category at the Orange British Academy Film Awards last weekend. This seems to pretty much settle it — the Best Cinematography Oscar is Lubezki’s to lose next Sunday.

Babel and The Departed tied for Best Edited Feature Film (Drama) at the ACE Eddie Awards tonight (The last time two films tied in a feature category was 1989 when Rain Man tied with Mississippi Burning.) The Best Edited Feature Film/Comedy or Musical award went to Dreamgirls. An Inconvenient Truth took the Best Edited Documentary award.

“It’s dangerous to make broad generalizations about TV versus film without sounding as though you’re comparing apples and tubas, but let’s do it anyway: television is running circles around the movies,” Newsweek’s Devin Gordon argues in the new, just-out issue.

“The internet age has put both industries into a state of high anxiety, with everyone scrambling to figure out how money will be made in a digital future where people watch movies on their phones and surf the web on their TVs. But while the major film studios have responded by taking shelter beneath big-tent franchises, the TV industry has gone the opposite route, welcoming anyone with an original idea.

“The roster of channels has ballooned into the hundreds, creating a niche universe where shows don’t need to be dumbed down in order to survive (because the dummies have their own channels). DVDs, meanwhile, have upended how we watch television, transforming shows from disposable weekly units into 8-, 12-, sometimes 22-hour movies. ‘We get a lot of people who tell us they don’t even watch the show when it airs,’ says Joel Surnow, co-creator of 24. ‘They wait for the DVD and watch it all at once.'”

Another presumably choice DVD on the way: Peter Ustinov‘s Billy Budd (’62), a literate, superbly acted (by Terence Stamp, Robert Ryan, Melvyn Douglas, Ustinov), very handsomely photographed (monochrome, 2.35 to 1 Scope) adaptation of the Herman Melville novel about innocence wronged. Ustinov’s Captain Vere is perhaps too humane and guilt-wracked, but the reptilian malevolence in Ryan’s Claggart is fascinating, and the young, blonde-haired Stamp is angelicism personified before even speaking a word. Ustinov directed and produced. Due March 6th from Warner Home Video.

Universal is doing a little Children of Men promotion with CHUD and critic-essayist Devin Faraci, with reader questions submitted to director Alfonso Cuaron and Alfonso answers them on video. (Or so it says here.) Devin is asking HE readers to submit questions, which he presumes will be appropriately incisive and intelligent.