I need to be honest and admit something, which is that I’m not particularly enthused about watching a forthcoming F/X TV series called 4 oz., as in one quarter of a pound, which is the weight of a surgically severed penis. I don’t think this one holds great interest for me. 21 Grams — the weight of a human soul — worked as a title but not this…sorry. Ryan Murphy‘s forthcoming series is about a married sportswriter who decides to become a woman…terrific. I haven’t been permitted to see Murphy’s Running With Scissors (Columbia, 10.27), but as far as I know it’s only about verbal (as opposed to surgical) slicings.

I don’t know how many people are making personal /quirky New York Film Film Festival video diaries, but Jamie Stuart is probably better at this sort of thing than anyone else. He really has a handle on something here — the precisely timed cutting style, the grungy lonely-guy narration…he’s really the best. He just needs to do more sit-ups and eat more fruit and fewer cheeseburgers. And everything loads way too slowly on the site — it’s like watching paint dry. Stuarts’s first NYFF encounter is with the Little Chidren team — Todd Field, Kate Winslet, Patrick Wilson, Noah Emmerich, etc.

“It’s not a ghost town yet, but unless they rent some of those offices and start to use the sound studios, it’s not hard to envision tumbleweeds and coyotes moving in.” — a Paramount “source” speaking to Radar Online‘s Jeff Bercovici about the low activity and population levels on the Paramount Pictures lot.

If you could pick any actor or filmmaker to meet in a boxing ring, who would it be? Ten rounds, no holding or hitting below the belt…but you can slug away all you want. Or maybe you’d rather face down a film critic or a columnist? I’ve fantasized from time to time about beating up tech-support outsource guys from India, but I really don’t like slugging people. I haven’t been in a fistfight since the seventh grade.

I’m no longer the only guy advocating the Best Actress candidacy of Factory Girl‘s Sienna Miller, and breathing easier. Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers, another “Envelope” forecaster, has put Miller on his own list. I’m not sure, though, if he’s actually seen her in Factory Girl or if he’s just riding the tailwind.

To listen to N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis, Forrest Whitaker‘s Last King of Scotland stock has just dropped a couple of points. And yet New Yorker critic David Denby is deeply enamored, so maybe it all balances out.
Dargis has described Whitaker’s General Idi Amin as a character who “changes moods on a dime depending on the gas percolating in his bowels or the threats on his person, real and imagined. It’s a role rich in gristle and blood, and Mr. Whitaker makes the most of it, even if the performance and the film’s essential conception of Amin never push deep or hard enough. This actor can play devious, [but] what you need in a film about a man who fed the corpses of his victims to the crocodiles is something more, something hateful and vile.”
Denby, on other hand, says that “Whitaker, [giving] the performance of a lifetime, makes General Amin a charismatic madman. Whitaker has done some surpassingly gentle and rueful work in the past, but for this role he has transformed himself — he’s either sprawled in a stupor or alarmingly mobile, throwing his big body around the room as if it weighed nothing. His laugh is enormous, and his arms are like grappling hooks.
“This dictator has a terrifying affability: like many sociopaths, he can be surprisingly empathic. He figures out what people want, but, once they have received his generosity, he believes that they belong to him. Any check on his desires sends him into a rage, and, as Whitaker takes off into astonishing tirades, one eye opens wide, and the other droops viciously — even his vision is schizoid.”

TMZ.com is reporting that NBC’s Law & Order series “will air an episode in November featuring Chevy Chase as ‘a television celebrity who is pulled over for drunk driving while wearing blood-soaked clothes, and whose religious prejudice comes out after his arrest.’ I can hear Chase saying to the arresting officer, “The Irish Catholics are the cause of all the alcoholism in the world! Wait…are you an Irish Catholic?”

“The fall to me is always a scary time. It’s a traffic jam of very good, upscale academy-type movies all vying for screens on the same date” — Picturehouse chief Bob Berney speakng to “The Envelope”/L.A. Times reporters Rachel Abramowitz and John Horn for what seems to be their first Oscar-related piece of the year, appropriately titled “Let The Battle Begin“.

L.A. Times “Oscar Beat” columnist Steve Pond, New York Post critic Lou Lumenick and yours truly are the first three Oscar Wise Guys to name favorites in the top three races — Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Actress — on Tom O’Neill‘s L.A. Times-sponsored “The Envelope” website. Nine other pundits willl soon join in.
O’Neill writes that Lumenick’s decision to put United 93‘s Ben Sliney on his Best Actor list is a thin out-on-a-limb call — I agree only in the sense that Sliney belongs in the Best Supporting Actor category. Otherwise, I think he gives one of the most convincing performances of the year in Paul Greengrass‘s 9/11 film. And my putting Factory Girl’s Sienna Miller on my Best Actress list isn’t out-on-a-limb either because I’ve seen a rough cut of that film and I know she kills in it.

Hollywood Wiretap‘s Pete Hammond dropped this idea in my lap the other day, but I’ve thought about it and he’s dead right: this year’s Best Actor Oscar race is starting to look like it might have some racial flavoring.
Things could change, obviously, but right now it’s looking like two of the stronger Best Actor contenders are African American — The Last King of Scotland‘s Forrest Whitaker and Catch a Fire‘s Derek Luke — and the current betting is that The Pursuit of Happyness star Will Smith will soon join them to make it three. And that’s not counting the distinct possibility of Djimon Honsou getting nominated for his performance in Ed Zwick‘s Blood Diamond. (I read somewhere that he registers more strongly than costar Leonardo DiCaprio.)
I haven’t heard anything trustworthy about Honsou’s performance (has anyone?) and it’s conceivable that Luke might not make the final cut (I would strongly disgaree with that but it’s early in the game and who knows?), but Whitaker and Smith are probable lock-downs. But if all four are nominated it could be a bit of a tinderbox. By which I mean it’s going to look a little bit gnarly for the Academy if a white actor — Peter O’Toole, say — wins the Best Actor Oscar with four African Americans vying for the same prize. Think about it. It’ll certainly look that way to some.
It’s a little early to get into this without anyone having seen Blood Diamond or The Pursuit of Happyness (I’m hearing that Columbia may be thinking about showing the Smith film sooner rather than later), but it’s something to keep in mind as things evolve.