Good move by the Los Angeles Film critics Association in giving the great Terrence Howard its “New Generation” award because ’05 was such a great breakout year for the guy (Hustle & Flow, Crash, Get Rich or Die Tryin’). Then again, the fact that Howard has been kicking around for quite a while makes the notion of him being a “New Generation” anything sound like a stretch. And LAFCA’s decision overlooks the very noteworthy fact that 2005 was Rachel McAdams‘ breakout year as much as anyone else’s. She stepped right up last summer and became the new Julia Roberts…signed, sealed, done deal. No, a better Julia Roberts!

The Envelope‘s Elizabeth Snead has done some followup reporting about Radar Magazine Online‘s item about Rachel McAdams (Wedding Crashers, The Family Stone) canning her personal publicist Amy Van Iden because Van Iden hadn’t told McAdams she would be asked to pose buck naked (alongside Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley) for the cover of Vanity Fair‘s upcoming Hollywood issue. Radar reported that McAdams walked out of the November photo session, but Snead heard differently. “McAdams did tee-totally freak when she got there and found out that VF’s ‘guest editor’ Tom Ford’s big artistic concept was to have the gals pose absolutely naked,” Snead writes. “She’d been prepared for a sexy shoot but fully expected a sheet or some lingerie or something. But — and here’s where it gets really interesting — McAdams went ahead and did the shoot. So much for taking a moral stand.” Uhhmmm…didn’t the fact that both McAdams and Knightley aren’t exactly top-heavy bodacious ta-ta types suggest to anyone (i.e., Ford or Van Iden) that there might be some hesitancy about such a shoot? I would probably be a wee bit guarded about this myself if I were female and flat- chested. It’s understandable.

Estimates for the The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe weekend haul have been modified due to a smaller bump in Saturday’s business than had been expected. The projection is now for a three-day $67 or $68 million haul, give or take, rather than $75 million.

The Los Angeles Film Critics Association has done the correct and expected thing by naming Brokeback Mountain as the year’s Best Picture, and also by awarding Brokeback‘s behind-the-scenes alchmeist Ang Lee as the year’s Best Director. But stoic Heath Ledger (“If you can’t fix, it, ya gotta stand it’) was nudged out by Capote‘s Phillip Seymour Hoffman for Best Actor. (These two are going to be nipping at each other’s heels between now and March 5th.) I’ll get into the Perplexing Mystery of Vera Farmiga in the next item. Hooray for William Hurt, the totally nutso-bonkers crimelord in A History of Violence‘s, winning for Best Supporting Actor award, and four sequential hoorahs to Catherine Keener for winning as Best Suporting Actress for her performances in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Capote, The Ballad of Jack and Rose and The Interpreter. And a big woo-woo-woo! for Capote screenwriter Dan Futterman and The Squid and the Whale‘s creator Noah Baumbach for splitting the Best Screenplay Award.

It’s 12:30 am and I just got back from two screenings, another Woody Allen q & a and some pizza and beer on the Strip, and I’m faced with a very strange turn of the screw. Vera Farmiga has been honored by the L.A. Film Critics as the year’s Best Actress. I go to almost everything that comes out and write about movies for a living, and I had trouble trying to remember who the hell Farmiga is when I first heard the news, and I never even bothered to see Down to the Bone, in which she gave her award-winning performance. No putdown to Farmiga, but this is a very typical LAFCA-like mzaeuver, which is to award someone primarily because…well, because they’ve done good work, most likely, but because they will also benefit from the attention that winning a LAFCA acting award will bring.

What the…? Production Weekly is reporting that Benjamin Bratt and not Benicio del Toro is going to play Ernesto “Che” Guevara in Steven Soderbergh’s long-delayed biopic about the legendary ’60s revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Geuvara. The report says that Soderbergh’s film is now called Guerilla, and that it will start shooting in New York City in January 2006, and will then shoot in and around Vera Cruz. Bratt is totally cool, but what happened to Benny? He was dug into playing Guevara for a lonnng time. (I ran into del Toro at Soho’s Mercer Hotel late last October, but I was too cool to put on my reporter’s hat and ask him about the latest. In other words, I fucking wimped out.) After Guerilla, Soderbergh will shoot Life Interrupted, a film based on the unfinished monologue of the late Spalding Gray, who killed himself by jumping off a ferry into New York harbor in the early winter of 2004.

The L.A. Film Critics Association is expected to chew things over for hours before deciding on a final tally of winners, so there may not be an announcement before 5 pm today…by which time I’ll be watching a film on the Fox lot. Of course, if LAFCA was as cool as the New York Film Critics Circle, they would report the winners on their website as they go from one category to the next.

Brokeback Mountain true and steady, Match Point rising and Munich falling. Walk the Line is everyone’s solid fallback, The New World is the esoteric Malicky forest-primeval fringe flick, and The Constant Gardener and Good Night, and Good Luck are darting in and out.

The great Richard Pryor, 65, has died at his home of cardiac arrest, his wife is telling reporters. The poor guy…multiple scherosis all those years and he only made one truly great film: Richard Pryor: Live in Concert, the 1979 doc about Pryor’s act (performed at the Long Beach auditorium, prior to his burning accident). Pryor’s performances in Silver Streak, Blue Collar and Stir Crazy were engaging, amusing, etc., but the ’79 concert film, directed by Jeff Margolis, was untempered genius.

Sad news about Pryor, but former U.S. Senator and Presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy has left also, at the age of 89.

Press enthusiasms have never been synonymous with Academy favors, but damned if Brokeback Mountain‘s Heath Ledger doesn’t seem to be edging ahead of Capote‘s Phillip Seymour Hoffman in the Best Actor race at this juncture. Ledger is great in Ang Lee’s film but I’ll be a Hoffman/Capote man to my dying day…it’s just how I see it. But the Brokeback reviews are fresh in everyone’s mind and the Ledger thing is blowing in the wind. I can feel it…I can feel it.

David Carr’s recently launched “The Carpetbagger” Oscar column in the New York Times has, for me, the right unpretentious attitude. He seems to be saying, “Maybe I know something about this racket, but maybe I don’t…who knows?” Carr’s items are fast and astute (i.e., he’s hearing the same stuff I am, and reporting it concisely and with a little perspective). And I loved his dopey little video walk-through asking Times Square passers-by if King Kong has a shot at being nominated for Best Picture. Surrrre!