Here's my Weekly column on Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle, and in case you missed it, my flipcam interview with him from Telluride, one of the first he gave on the film.

Sony and Paramount are in talks to co-finance two Tintin films in the Steven Spielberg/Peter Jackson series based on the Belgian Tintin comics. (The NYT first announced the story.) Both studios confirm that talks are under way.

After resolving the Paramount/DreamWorks divorce, putting together a studio deal for Tintin was next on Spielberg's agenda. After Universal balked at partnering on the first installment, which will be directed by Spielberg, Paramount offered to back the first Tintin movie with a reduced back end at $135 million.

Spielberg had planned to be already shooting the 3-D performance-capture film, and lost the participation of his lead actor Thomas Sangster when the financing fell apart at Universal at the last minute, on the eve of DreamWorks/Paramont divorce. This is not a DreamWorks picture; if the deal goes through, Paramount is planning to distribute in North America and some other English-speaking territories, while Sony will handle the foreign release. Tintin should be completed for a 2010 release.

Jackson was planning to direct the follow-up. The DreamWorks deal was originally for three films. The NYT is reporting two: one Spielberg, one Jackson. As I understand it, Jackson wasn't thrilled with the Paramount offer, so a partner offered another way to go. Jackson went through an ugly lawsuit with New Line Cinema over monies owed on The Lord of the Rings. His DreamWorks film The Lovely Bones has been delivered to Paramount for release in the fall of 2009.

Mad Men star Jon Hamm's performance on Saturday Night Live last weekend was one of those watershed moments where you see an actor break out of a TV role and announce, "Hey, guys, see what I can do!"

We already know that he has the sex appeal of a leading man. Now we know that Hamm can do an imitation of James Mason, or light comedy. When I saw him standing in front of an American flag, I thought, "Superman." Yes, I know he's too old, but Hollywood could use a guy like this. Strong, dangerous, mysterious, romantic, funny.

So what's his next movie? Well, he has a straight-arrow supporting role in Fox's The Day the Earth Stood Still, which the studio has promoted heavily. UPDATE: And Tina Fey, perhaps inspired by his SNL stint, may be hiring him for a 30 Rock arc.

With Mad Men on hiatus until February, now is the time for Hamm to shoot his interim movie, but he hasn't lined anything up. His manager Connie Tavel says that while the studios and producers are asking for meetings and throwing material at Hamm, nothing is happening due to the ongoing impasse between SAG and the studios. "Jon has been getting offers to do a lot of projects," says Tavel, who also works with Helen Hunt. "We're waiting for the right one. There's a de facto strike at the studios."

Two casting directors over at Disney features, Marcia Ross and Gail Goldberg, are high on him. "We think Jon Hamm has the potential to be a movie star," says Ross. "He could do the sorts of parts George Clooney plays. If you look at Jon's work on SNL, he adds funny and charming to the edge and danger he displays on Mad Men. He's handsome but accessible. He has a lot of personal warmth, like George. We need these substantial good-looking, charming, masculine leading men. There's a dearth of them out there."

Hamm has gotten some indie offers, Tavel says, but he's reading and waiting for just the right thing. He's open to leading men, supporting roles, comedy. The material he's seen "is all over the board, a lot of dream projects, every genre," Tavel says. "They were always asking, 'can he be funny?' Saturday Night Live answers that question. He'll make his decision soon." (No, he has not been offered Green Lantern.)

How maddening it must be, to know that you are on the cusp of stardom--and Hollywood isn't hiring.

Fox continues to assemble its marketing materials for Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire. The official trailer debuted on Yahoo Movies today.

My favorite Barack Obama line on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night was his answer to the Socialism question: "In kindergarten, I shared my toys with the other children," he said. So far: 3.6 million views. Wow.

According to Comedy Central, last night's Obama satellite interview "lifted The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to record levels," they wrote in an email. It was the most-watched and highest-rated episode in the show's history, with 3.6 million total viewers and a 2.6 HHLD Rating. This episode beat the October 8 prior most-watched episode record set by Michele Obama, by 700,000 total viewers.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" (October 29, 11:00 p.m. – 11:30 p.m.)

3.6 million total viewers

2.2 million P18-49 viewers

2.6 HHLD Rating

2.0 P18-49 Rating

This is the first time The Daily Show has averaged more than 3 million viewers for a single episode.
The Daily Show outperformed its previous best by +22% (2.9 million viewers on October 8, 2008).

The Colbert Report, featuring Colbert's endorsement of Obama, is also feeling the love:

"The Colbert Report" (October 29, 11:30 p.m. – 12:00 a.m.)

2.4 million total viewers

1.7 million P18-49 viewers

1.8 HHLD Rating

1.5 P18-49 Rating
The Colbert Report outperformed its previous best by +23% (2.0 million viewers on October 8, 2008).

Aside from the politics, the concept, etc., this "Don't Vote" video is a great demonstration of why some of these folks are movie stars...Shia, Leo and Sacha especially pop right out.

I've been taking a wait-and-see approach on the Oscar race. You really don't know until you screen all the pictures. But enough other people are seeing them, now, for me to take a stab at where the race is right now. And nobody I know of has seen Australia, Seven Pounds, The Reader or Gran Torino.

The movies are falling into five categories.

Best Picture frontrunners with likely deep support:
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight (but Warners has to delicately calibrate this campaign)
Doubt
Revolutionary Road
Slumdog Millionaire

Likely acting nods, but the pics need critical support and awards recognition:
Changeling (Angelina Jolie)
Defiance (Liev Schreiber)
Frost/Nixon (Frank Langella)
I've Loved You So Long (Kristin Scott Thomas)
Milk (Sean Penn)
Seven Pounds (Will Smith)
W. (Josh Brolin)
The Wrestler (Mickey Rourke)

Little Indies that Could:
Frozen River (Melissa Leo)
Happy-Go-Lucky (Sally Hawkins)
Rachel Getting Married (Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie Dewitt)
The Visitor (Richard Jenkins)
Wendy and Lucy (Michelle Williams)

Best Animated Feature:
Kung Fu Panda
Wall-E (could go all the way if it lands enough noms)
Waltz with Bashir

Best Foreign Film
The Baader Meinhof Complex
The Class
Everlasting Moments
Waltz with Bashir

The NYT's David Carr does a good job of synthesizing and explaining what's happening to old media. I read the story online.

An editor friend sent me an email from the first long-lead screening of Revolutionary Road:

first screening long lead today at paramount. the word from me is wow! very powerful two-hander for Leo and Kate, all grown up now as a married couple unhappy but still in love. they go at it fiercely and you can sense the real-life bond that lets them really go for it, all defenses down. it's powerful and also beautifully written and filmed. Sam Mendes doing suburban angst again, but this time in the 1950s. I daresay it may be a modern classic. also, the screenplay race this year is unusually light on adaptations, so this being an adaptation of the Richard Yates novel, I'd look for a nomination.

Scott Rudin is on a roll. He has three possible Oscar contenders in the mix, Doubt, Revolutionary Road and The Reader (which he walked away from after a legendary tussle with Harvey Weinstein), plus ten or so pics in the pipeline for 2009 and 2010.

Here's a classic Rudin story: the hands-on producer (who won the best picture Oscar for No Country for Old Men) agreed to give John Patrick Shanley's Doubt to the AFI Fest after Paramount pulled The Soloist in favor of a March opening. But the fest would have to project a digital copy of the film, which won't have final prints ready until next week. Rudin persuaded key L.A. press to agree not to review Doubt until they screened the final film in 35 mm. And he was so appalled at the way the digital projection looked on the curved giant Cinerama Dome screen that he made sure the film will show on three flat screens at the Arclight.

As it happens, two Rudin stories are in the paper today: he's producing High and Low, a remake of the Akira Kurosawa 1963 Toshiro Mifune classic, to be directed by Mike Nichols from David Mamet's script at Miramax, and he's featured in our 75th anniversary package.

MovieCityNews' Kim Voynar puts old media's mistakes into new media perspective. And David Poland surveys the Hollywood media landscape.

It's all happening faster than we thought--the economy is pushing change. Here's the LAT on how the cash crunch will hit Hollywood. And here's Time. It's the Internet, stupid.

Focus Features had a plan: mount the world premiere of Milk, the gay agitprop biopic about San Francisco politician Harvey Milk, on the 30th anniversary of his death, at the famed Castro Theatre, in San Francisco. Universal's specialty distrib, which also released Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain, held off on showing the pic to the press (except for some long-lead folks) until the same day as the SF launch Tuesday night. Here's Pamela McClintock, William Horberg's blog report, Greencine and A.P. :

Van Sant said he had been talking about making this film for 18 years."He's an American hero," Van Sant said. "He's a great example of a man representing his community and his city."

Holding off the press until the premiere led to some accusations that the distrib was hiding the pic. Au contraire. Now the floodgates will be unleashed. I missed the screenings Tuesday: all I'm hearing is that it's Sean Penn's picture.

[Photo by William Horberg]

It's a toxic environment for journalism right now as Time Inc. slashes through its magazines.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, six Ohio newspapers are stopping their Monday editions. And the Orange Country Register cuts 110.

As the economy continues to crunch, the media world is downsizing. Maer Roshan's beloved Radar mag is no more; American Media tabloid mogul David Pecker has acquired Radar online as a celebrity-oriented rival to Harvey Levin's TMZ.

During Slate's latest round of cutbacks and editorial shifts, the online news site slashed Kim Masters' Hollywood blog. Slate wants more reviewers, she told me. One of the great entertainment industry reporters, Masters is still a full-time staffer for National Public Radio. She filed weekly Hollywood stories for Slate for a monthly fee. She's currently working on a reported piece for Tina Brown at The Daily Beast. Look for Masters to work something out there.

Fred Schruers is no longer filing the Hollywood Deal blog for Portfolio.com, another magazine/online venture that may or may not survive these troubling times. Ad sales are tumbling everywhere, with the economy. Here is Schruer's last post, on Paul Newman. While Schruers did some one-off reporting for a Daily Beast project, he has always excelled at long-form journalism (like Masters, he's a Premiere alumnus), and is hoping to set up a high-profile book project.

My old THR colleague Sheigh Crabtree is leaving the LAT. The last time we talked, she didn't know what she would do next. But she boasts a strong skill set: her cred is both print and online. Jeffrey Wells doesn't seem to get that Crabtree is an online animal. That will get her where she wants to go--if she chooses to stay in journalism. UPDATE: (She has sold a screenplay, for one thing.)

And as a sign of the times, the venerable Christian Science Monitor is abandoning its print edition next April in favor of an online version.

[Photos: The Daily Beast's Tina Brown, NPR's Kim Masters, Fred Schruers]

USA Today has a first look at Tom Hanks in the Da Vinci Code sequel, Angels & Demons. They got rid of Hanks' hairstyle, thankfully. The filmmakers are promising that all around, this movie is better than the first one. It better be.

Here's the trailer for Seven Pounds, which reunites Will Smith with his Happyness director Gabriele Mucchino. If Smith's still in the Fluke Zone where he can do no wrong, this will be huge. And if it hits all the right notes, another Oscar nom could happen for Smith. The star is nothing if not sincere, and Muccino brought a European sensibility to Happyness--he didn't smarm it up. Smith plays an IRS agent who wants to redeem his past misdeeds by doing right by seven deserving people. He falls in love with one of them: Rosario Dawson. This one looks a little hokey to me.

Oscar season is under way. How do I know? Well, Paramount Vantage has published its Academy screening schedule and is pushing hard for The Duchess, Defiance and Revolutionary Road. You'd never know that the label had been slashed within an inch of its life. That's because Paramount marketing co-head Megan Colligan is still on the Vantage case.

Another bellwether: LAT blogger Geoff Boucher's "three-part exclusive" interview with Christopher Nolan. Yes, Warner Bros. wants to sell The Dark Knight DVDs, but no director submits to a long interview in the LAT in advance of a DVD release unless Oscar is at stake.

The Dark Knight (which is sneaking up on Titanic's all-time worldwide boxoffice gross, as James Cameron well knows) should nab some Oscar noms and might even win some awards, for the late Heath Ledger, as well as various tech contributors. But director, screenplay, best picture---that's another kettle of fish for a comic book blockbuster.

While Dark Knight scored 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, and many critics will put it on their ten best lists, it's not going to win year-end critics' group prizes, because they tend to spotlight smaller pics that need help, such as Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York or Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky, two films that were summarily dismissed this weekend by at least one of At the Movies' Two Twerps. (Why do I keep watching? The habit is ingrained but painful.)

Iron Man is another example of a deserving film that nabbed better reviews than most films this year (93% on Rotten Tomatoes) and may be overlooked in major categories at Oscar time. On the other hand, Jonathan Demme's horrific thriller Silence of the Lambs and Peter Jackson's fantasy trilogy The Lord of the Rings weren't supposed to be Oscar bait either. Justin Chang examines the superhero Oscar phenom.

Also climbing up a high Oscar wall is the year's best-reviewed movie---as of late October, unlikely to be unseated--Disney/Pixar's Wall-E, from Andrew Stanton. It earned 97% when it first opened June 27. Here's my story about why it's tough going for an animated film to earn a best picture slot. Again, critics groups will likely stick the film in their animated category and focus on rewarding smaller fare.

But bowing to pressure from the community, Disney and Pixar are going for it. I've got insider info: Variety's running a Disney ad on Thursday that not only asks for Academy members' consideration for Wall-E for best animated feature but for best picture as well. (Here's the LAT's look at the new Disney animation under John Lasseter, who cracked the whip on Disney's upcoming Bolt, UPDATE and the NYT on big movies going for Oscar.) Disney's going to put on a concerted marketing effort to push Wall-E with AMPAS, the guilds, critics, producers, the works.

Wall-E deserves a shot at best picture. And it couldn't be more timely, in terms of nailing the zeitgeist. It won't take long, the way things are going, for us all to wind up in Wall-E's world.

This teaser was prepared for Slumdog Millionaire's recent screening at the London Film Festival. Check out the fluid, high-speed camera work. This could not be done with a steadicam operator. The camera man is running with a hard drive in his backpack, holding the lightweight SI 2K gyro with a camera lens in his hand, which shoots a high-res digital image. Boyle shot about 70% of the film this way.

When the going gets tough....the LAT has set loose film critic Carina Chocano, among the expected 75 staff cuts announced today.

Manohla Dargis was a hard act to follow. When the critic was lured to the NY Times in 2004, the LAT saw fit to move TV critic Chocano over to film, in a classic "anyone can do this" move. Suddenly someone perfectly suited to the TV beat was out of her league and never managed to catch hold on the film side. She did better at feature essays than daily criticism, and was always a strong voice on women's issues. One of her best pieces, not surprisingly, was her Sex and the City review. Here's her LAT gallery of reviews.

Now, to quote from reality-TV jargon, she's out. It's all a game of Survivor in journalism these days.

Here's LAT editor Russ Stanton's letter to the troops:

Colleagues, The growing economic downturn is forcing us to undergo another round of job reductions and cost cuts. I deeply regret to report that today, 75 of our friends, colleagues and capable staff members in Editorial will be told that they are losing their jobs. This is about 10% of our total staff and these cuts are comparable in scale to those made on the business side of The Times last week. The severance terms being offered to our colleagues are similar to those offered in the other reductions we've faced this year. I appreciate your patience, understanding and cooperation during this difficult period. Your department heads and the senior editing team, including John, Davan, Meredith and I, are available to hear your concerns and answer any questions. Russ Stanton Editor Los Angeles Times

According to the A.P., Jennifer Hudson returned to Chicago over the weekend and identified the bodies of her slain mother and brother. A young boy's body was found in the SUV that had been sought for Hudson's nephew. And William Balfour, the ex-husband of Hudson's sister (the mother of her missing seven-year-old nephew Julian King), is being held for questioning. Hudson is offering a reward for info about this case.

"Jennifer and her family appreciate the enormous amount of love, support and prayers they have received while she and her family try to cope with this tragedy and continue the search for Julian," said a statement from her publicist."

Ah, the hazards of foreign language filmmaking in a digital age. At a recent morning press screening of Steven Soderbergh's Che at the Landmark Cinema in Westwood, a gaggle of media waited as the movie they were watching unfolded in Spanish. But something was missing. "Was it so authentic that there weren't any subtitles?" one editor wondered. "The English parts were few and far between." After ten to fifteen minutes, someone finally complained.

The publicist told the group: "There are supposed to be subtitles." It turns out the projectionist was working with a digital print and didn't know how to turn them on. Eventually, everyone took off.

This weekend's High School Musical 3 (63% Tomatometer) scored even bigger than expected with teen girls, and Saw 5, which was not screened, played to the guys. (True confession: I have never seen a Saw movie. Not my idea of a good time.)

For grown-ups, Changeling delivered a strong per screen average on its opening weekend, while Gina Prince-Blythewood's The Secret Life of Bees pulled ahead of Oliver Stone's W. on their second weekend. Here's Variety's weekend b.o. wrap:

“W.” dropped 49% to $5.3. Cume for the George Bush pic is $18.8 million, with a gross in the $25 million range likely after a post-Election Day exit.

This is a classic case of too much competition on the second weekend after a strong opening supported by a big ad spend and Oliver Stone's ubiquitous media presence. After I had just seen him on Charlie Rose, CNN's Larry King Live and Shootout and heard him on NPR, I did a phoner with him at NY's Four Seasons Hotel. Stone had just spotted one of the characters in his movie, ex-CIA chief George Tenet, in the restaurant. "Did you go over to him?" I asked. "Oh, no," Stone said.

Did he feel that he had to open the $30 million movie before the election? Was the timing right for this? He could have pushed it back if he wanted to, Stone says: "Let's be clear about this. I had the right to hold. It was a good faith effort to try and make the October 17 date. I had final cut, I could have delivered in December for a January release." But he was into the rhythm of finishing it in time, opening it this fall before the election.

Stone knows the downside of being rushed into opening a picture too soon--Alexander was not finished when it opened; the sober re-edited DVD version is far superior. Stone left thousands of feet of film on the edit-room floor on Alexander. By contrast, W. was shot fast on a tight budget; there was no waste. He shot on 26 locations in 46 days and edited in seven weeks. "There were no reshoots," he says. "We rehearsed with a great repertory company, nobody was making mistakes. We got what we needed." Only a few deleted fantasy scenes will make it to the DVD.

It's hard to calibrate timing with a topical movie like this, Stone admits. He had no idea George W. Bush would be so down and out when the movie opened. He had thought the White House might come after them, fighting, but "Bush is defeated," he says. "He is weakened now. We could not have foreseen that then. He's hated now. Will people be interested?"

Would waiting until after the inauguration have been better, as "he's leaving office, and we're exorcising the ghost?" he asks. Stone would have taken that course "if it had not fallen in, if we needed reshoots." Finally, the momentum was moving fast toward an October opening and he was ready to open the movie on schedule.

The Secret Life of Bees did better than W. on its second weekend on fewer screens (1630) with a higher $5.9 million weekend gross and a total of $19.2 to date. Searchlight worked hard to achieve these results, chasing not only fans of the bestseller--which is hugely popular--but literate women in general, and African-American audiences. They're building buzz on an $11 million movie.

"We were judicious in our spend," says Fox Searchlight COO Nancy Utley. "We were scared to death of reviews." That's because older women tend to take reviews more seriously, and sure enough, they were mixed (58% on Rotten Tomatoes). But some key critics were fans, including Roger Ebert, USA Today and People. And Oprah Winfrey devoted a show to the film.

Utley comforted herself with the fact that some movies hit without reviews, like Ya-Ya Sisterhood. On the other hand, Denzel Washington's Antoine Fisher had not scored with African American audiences, but it was less of a known title. Bees was a "faithful straight-on adaptation" of an "extraordinary book," Utley says.

And Bees had no ordinary ensemble either--Queen Latifah, Alicia Keyes, Jennifer Hudson, Dakota Fanning, Sophie Okonedo. Searchlight targeted book clubs and the morning talk shows, bought TV spots on BET and Desperate Housewives, and took advantage of some faith-based endeavors. The distrib booked the movie in areas where not only African-American pics had scored but literary films like Atonement.

Definite recommends in the exit polls were A or A+ across every demo. Searchlight's own poll was 90%. Among African Americans, it was 91% and non-African Americans, 86%. "It's a color-blind movie," says Utley. 'We're hopeful."

[Photo of Oliver Stone by Jeffrey Wells]

While I wouldn't call TMZ czar Harvey Levin the King of Hollywood, as Michael Ciepley does in this NYT story, Levin's brand of breaking video journalism is the future, which makes him the King of New Media.

Speaking of a King of Hollywood, David Geffen's last deal may have been setting up an independent DreamWorks at Universal. Cieply sums up Geffen's legacy, as this powerful figure, who inspired much fear and dread, departs the entertainment scene. (See Michael Tolkin's thinly-veiled portrait in The Return of the Player.)

On the old media side, the American Journalism Review explains the inexorable economic forces behind the decline of newspapers. And here are ten reasons why newspapers will die.

And in the tech arena, Tech Crunch thinks tough times won't necessarily be tough on startups.

Kevin Smith invented the raunchy rom-com with movies like Chasing Amy. And he wrote the leading role for Seth Rogen in Zack and Miri Make a Porno before Judd Apatow hit Knocked Up out of the park. Now Rogen is a bonafide movie star and the Weinstein Co. is banking heavily on the comedy to boost their dwindling fortunes. Unfortunately, the words "Make a Porno" aren't going over too well. And the MPAA did not approve this poster. (My full story is on the jump.)

The Weinstein Co. needs all the hits it can get, but is, like Paramount, choosing not to rack up too many costs in 2008 that will not be returned right away. It's about book-keeping. Patrick Goldstein lets Harvey Weinstein explain away his laundry list of releases pushed from 2008 to 2009.

In case you missed it, here's my interview with Kevin Smith from Toronto:

Producer William Horberg (The Kite Runner, The Talented Mr. Ripley) has launched himself a blog that is as charming and erudite as you might expect.

Check out this Q & A with Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner, who answers questions from readers of the Season Pass blog. I asked one--about how much influence Richard Yates' novel Revolutionary Road had on the show.

Men Men star Jon Hamm did very well on Saturday Night Live; if his outing doesn't boost Mad Men ratings, nothing will. (Now that the show is on hiatus for a while, sigh.) Here's Don Draper's Guide to Picking Up Women:

Alfred Hitchcock expert Donald Spoto is going back to the well with his new book Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and his Leading Ladies. NYT reviewer Janet Maslin points out in her review entitled "Hitchcock's Birds," that Spoto's focus is on the filmmaker "at his most fetishistic."

Tippi Hedren talks to Spoto about what she went through on The Birds ("Are you trying to kill her?" asked Hedren's doctor). Here's Vanity Fair's photo of Jodie Foster as Hedren:

I love this headline at Filmdrunk.com: "Clint Eastwood is really pissed and old." That about describes this Gran Torino trailer:

I saw Changeling for the second time Thursday night. It's as good as I remember it from last May at Cannes. And it's just the kind of movie that Academy members will appreciate--it played well at the Academy premiere.

Clint Eastwood beautifully evokes Los Angeles in 1928, when women were passive creatures bossed around by men, when the LAPD was corrupt and lawless, and when the real Christine Collins made news headlines when the police tried to return to her a son who wasn't hers. When she refuses to submit to their version of the truth, they clap her in an insane asylum.

Angelina Jolie is more than fine as Collins. She says she modeled the role on her mother; she seems dead-on for the period. She's sympathetic; we care about her and root for her, and get very angry on her behalf. That may be what the movie has going for it the most, given our lack of trust in authority right now. The movie will play strictly for adults, who may come out in droves, starved for material as they are. And Jolie should easily grab an Oscar nom.

John Malkovich and Jeffrey Donovan are both strong, as her advocate and nemesis, respectively. And Michael Kelly, one of Variety's ten actors to watch, also pops.

I admire Eastwood's ethic of working fast and hard on multiple projects. I also applaud each film's organic shape and size, and the director's resistance to formulaic three-act structures. But there's something wrong with the trajectory of Changeling's last half hour. As long as the film hangs on Jolie, it works, but it takes a detour in its last third to focus on a serial killer mystery before returning to Collins' search for closure. Some Eastwood movies such as Flags of Our Fathers and Changeling seem to be missing that last final polish.

Peter Bart reflects on how Clint Eastwood has changed over the decades: for the better.

It sccored a not-so-great 51% with critics on Rotten Tomatoes (1979's The Changeling scored 77%). Here are reviews from Michael Wilmington and Todd McCarthy.

Read Steve Gaydos's report on his October 22 Q & A with Changeling screenwriter J. Michael "Joe" Straczynski on the jump.

Here's the trailer:

Things were going so well. Jennifer Hudson, the Oscar-winning actress of Dreamgirls and co-star of the current hit The Secret Life of Bees has lost her mother, reports say, to a Chicago gunman. Here's the A.P. and CBS News:

The mother of Academy Award-winning actress Jennifer Hudson was reportedly found dead in a South Side home.

Two adults were found fatally shot at a home at 70th Street and Yale Avenue at 3 p.m. Friday, authorities said. Willie Davis, the pastor of the Hudson family's church, Progressive Baptist, confirmed that 57-year-old Darnell Hudson Donnerson was one of the victims.

The other victim was a man, the Chicago Fire Department said.

Chicago police are now searching for a man and boy, believed to be driving on the North Side. The man is known as "William," has braids in his hair, and is driving a 1994 Chevy, according to police scanner traffic. The 7-year-old, known as Julian, is wearing a tan jersey with the number 5 on it, and tan slacks.

The shooting is believed to be domestic.

Taking advantage of the Facebook community to find new talent, John Paul Rice, the producer of The Boy Who Couldn't Say No, is inviting folks to audition for a role:

Hey all,

I want to clarify a FEW THINGS for ALL who have received this invite...

1. This was my first crack at doing an invite on Facebook and the dates listed on the invite are from the day we posted (10/21/08) THROUGH to NOVEMBER 20th, 2008. Facebook does not let you change dates after posting, so to be clear, we are accepting submissions for auditions up to 11/20/2008.

2. We are only looking (at this time) for actors who are right for the role of JAKE WILSON. Why did I email you if you are not a male ages 16-20 years old? YOUNG MALE ACTORS you might be friends with or know of who you can forward this invite to and/or recommend. I have received a handful of emails with suggestions for potential JAKE's.

In short, we had great success last year finding discoveries of talent and this year are using all resources from the net to find the perfect JAKE who is likely and UNKNOWN (by mainstream audiences) but very talented and ready for a break-out role and film.

Thank you in advance to all my friends, fans and fellow colleagues for your time and help.

John Paul Rice
Producer, The Boy Who Couldn't Say No

When I talked to director Marc Forster on Monday morning, he admitted that trying to top Martin Campbell's Casino Royale was the thing that gave him the most pause. But he plowed ahead and delivered a Bond that is long on action and short on sex and dialogue.

Variety's Derek Elley, reviewing from London, writes that this shorter, Bourne-influenced Bond film does not improve on the last one, and begs producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson to return to form. (Daniel Craig worries that there won't be enough money around to make another one anytime soon.) I recognize that Forster's Bond takes chances by straying from the formula. But I think his is the most modern, stylish and elegant Bond in years. Here's my interview.

Here's the trailer:

OK, so I lean left of center. Given that I grew up across 110th Street in Manhattan, what would you expect? Someone who digs this MC Yogi "Vote for Hope" pro-Obama video:

The always interesting Steven Soderbergh is going 3D with a full-bore musical starring Catherine Zeta-Jones as Cleopatra, a role the Chicago star was born to play. (She starred in Soderbergh's Traffic.) And we all know Hugh Jackman can sing and dance with the best of them. Here's Variety:

For his next directing effort, Steven Soderbergh is plotting a 3-D live-action rock ’n’ roll musical about Cleopatra. He is courting Catherine Zeta-Jones to play the Egyptian queen and Hugh Jackman to play her lover, Marc Antony.

The $30 million "Cleo" will be shopped for financing and distribution within the next two weeks. Casey Silver is producing.

The music has been written by the indie rock band Guided by Voices, and the script is by James Greer, a former bass player for the band and an author.

This may take a while to ramp up, as Soderbergh still has to raise financing (at the upcoming AFM presumably) and has plenty of other stuff on his plate, including the second installment of his 2929 Entertainment HDNet day-and-date experiment, starring porn star Sasha Grey.

Set for release on Friday February 13th is producer Michael Bay's remake of Friday the 13th, from the director of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre--no, not Tobe Hooper, a logical mistake, but the remake, Marcus Nispel. A stylish trailer, though, set back at Camp Crystal Lake, on Jason's birthday...

You know Ron Howard wants to be taken seriously. He's got Frost/Nixon coming up for chrissakes. Look how far he's willing to go to help get Barack Obama elected:

Needless to say, the AFI Film Fest freaked when Paramount pushed back The Soloist from 2008 release. They figured---rightly--that the movie would be pulled from their opening night. That's not what Paramount wanted, though. The studio thought they could still screen the movie, and hoped that CAA and the filmmakers would see it their way over last weekend. But finally, it's too great a risk to show a movie like The Soloist on October 30 when the movie won't open until March 13. What if, God forbid, it doesn't play? That would be tough to recover from.

So the AFI had a big gaping hole to fill: with celebrity guests. Would Paramount supply one of its movies, moving Defiance up from closing night (would Daniel Craig be here?) or putting up Revolutionary Road or The Curious Case of Benjamin Button? Would Scott Rudin supply Doubt in place of Revolutionary Road? Would the trades review the movie, whatever it was? AFI promised to alert the media Thursday.

UPDATE: Finally, at 6:30 PM, AFI artistic director Rose Kuo announced the replacement film: Rudin and Miramax came through, with Meryl Streep-starrer Doubt. Happy ending.

Fox Searchlight went from zero to 100 when it took over the release of Danny Boyle’s rags-to-riches romance Slumdog Millionaire (from partner Warner Bros.) just before its launch at September’s Telluride and Toronto Film fests. (Here's an exclusive first look at the official poster.)

The specialty label wasted no time in getting up to speed on Slumdog marketing materials in advance of a November 12 limited opening. They had Boyle, a director who has built a core indie cinephile following, but no name stars. The movie, which is 80 percent English, 20 percent Hindi, is about a teen from the slums of Mumbai, India who answers every question right on India’s “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” The movie is less about how he won—although it answers that question—than why he needed to win. The final answer: Love.

“We do some of our best work under extreme pressure,” says Searchlight COO Nancy Utley. “You have to go with your gut. We tried to capture the spirit of the movie. The upside of the title is it doesn’t seem like anything you’ve ever heard before: it’s a contradiction in itself. We picked up the color palette of the foreign locale, and a beautiful girl, in action."

Searchlight is sending Boyle to spread his Brit charm on a press tour of a dozen American cities through October and November. And Searchlight will do what they did with “Little Miss Sunshine”: wrestle up pre-opening buzz with word-of-mouth screenings, 215 to be exact, in 50 cities. “They’re starting now,” says Utley.

TV spots will take advantage of the movie’s Bollywood soundtrack and closing dance number, and eventually reviews and awards. Natch, Searchlight is supporting an Oscar campaign for the filmmaker—“it’s time,” says Utley—and adapted screenplay writer Simon Beaufoy, who was Oscar-nominated for the label’s The Full Monty. “We always have the little underdog,” says Utley, who’s banking that Slumdog will place favorably against darker, grimmer Oscar competition. “This movie makes you feel good in a time of deepening anxiety.”

UPDATE: As to the controversy about Slumdog's R rating--which Boyle himself is helping to fuel--look at the movie. While it ends up in a good place and is exhilarating to watch, the film puts the viewer through some tough nasty violent real world shit (literally). I spoke to some media folks last night who, while they liked Slumdog, disagreed with its "feel-good" rep. They felt a little beat up along the way. "Definitely an R," said these two parents of a ten-year-old.

I don't post most of the crazy political videos people send me, but this Onion McCain video is well done.

USA Today has a first look at Clint Eastwood's upcoming Gran Torino, his second film for 2008 (it opens December 17) and possibly his last performance as an actor. (They talk to him, too.)

Look at him! No, it's not a Dirty Harry sequel--nor will there ever be one, Eastwood has said. But I have to say he's still dangerous and sexy at 78. Here's John Horn on why Eastwood can still make studio/indie movies that defy industry "wisdom," like this and Changeling. They don't HAVE to open wide.

[Hat Tip: Slashfilm]

Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway co-star in Gary Winick's Bride Wars (opening January 9) as two best friends who turn against each other when they both sked their Plaza Hotel weddings for the same day. This could be the kind of escapist lux-life comedy that the zeitgeist demands, or the sort of mean-spirited catfight silliness that auds seem to eat like catnip.

When it comes to this year's Oscar race, don't believe everything you read. So many movies haven't been seen yet, from Revolutionary Road and The Reader to Doubt and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I hear Kate Winslet, Meryl Streep and Cate Blanchett are all strong Best Actress contenders, but until we see the films...everyone's talking through their hat.

And the actress race is not as strong a field as people would have you think. I'm not clear on whether the Academy likes Rachel Getting Married and Anne Hathaway, for example. She gives a great, surprising performance, but Academy voters are not necessarily the target for this movie, which is playing younger. I wonder if Mad Men vet Rosemary DeWitt isn't a stronger candidate in the weak supporting category. (Debra Winger just doesn't have a juicy money scene.)

I'll check out how Clint Eastwood's Changeling plays at the Academy premiere Thursday night. Cannes is one thing, the reality of a fall release is another. I think that Changeling is a stronger shot than A Mighty Heart for Angelina Jolie, but nothing is certain with period dramas.

Speaking of which, I also need to see all of Australia before I make up my mind on Nicole Kidman. She's an accomplished and versatile member of the Oscar-winner club--but the Baz Luhrmann movie may not be a slam dunk Academy picture. The footage is looking broad and entertaining and romantic-- like King Solomon's Mines, say-- rather than epic and grand and Out of Africa. Which may be good news for its boxoffice potential. It all depends.

The one thing I'm sure of is that I've Loved You So Long's Kristin Scott Thomas will get nominated. Yes, she gives a great performance in a good movie that should play with Academy members. (UPDATE: it's opening day reviews are at 91% on Rotten Tomatoes.) But here's why she'll gain a slot:

1) She wears no makeup, looks awful and moves from shut-down depression to life.

2) She's a Brit who speaks French. (She's lived in France for 25 years.) This is huge.

3) She's done good work for a long time and is overdue (she was nominated once, for The English Patient).

4) Scott Thomas is also earning raves on Broadway for The Seagull. This does not hurt one little bit.

Tom Tapp and Stephen Schaefer agree. (Unlike Schaefer, I do not think that this is Keira Knightley's year for The Duchess, rated 61 % on Rotten Tomatoes, nor do I believe that Queen Latifah will get anywhere this awards season. The Secret Life of Bees is a hit, but did not score strong reviews--58% on Rotten Tomatoes.)

UPDATE: Yes, I left off indie upstarts Sally Hawkins, who creates from scratch the astonishing character of Poppy in Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky, which is holding its own at the b.o., and Frozen River's equally deserving Melissa Leo, a movie that many will never see. Both have earned rave reviews and have a shot IF the critics groups, Golden Globes, and SAG nominating committees reward them. The Academy actors need to watch their films.

Leo has the advantage of being a well-known veteran character actress, while Brit Hawkins has no following here. That didn't hurt another Leigh performer, Vera Drake's Imelda Staunton, who grabbed an Oscar nom. But there are some who find Hawkins' Poppy irritating. I also left off Michelle Williams in Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy, despite the fact that the crafty Cynthia Swartz is working on her campaign. Look for Williams to score with the Indie Spirit awards. Mini-distrib Oscilloscope simply doesn't have the scratch to mount a competitive campaign. I wish annual merit awards didn't depend on money. But they do.

Meanwhile, word from the foreign film voters is that it is another strong year. The full list of 67 foreign entries is up at indieWIRE.com , where Anthony Kaufman looks at the foreign Oscar race. And check out the exhaustive database at The Film Experience.

Of the four out of 67 that I've seen, France's The Class is innovative improvisational filmmaking, but not super-emotional; Sweden's Everlasting Moments from The Emigrants' Oscar-winning Jan Troell is a career-capping, moving masterpiece; Israel's animated documentary Waltz with Bashir could have a devastating impact on the Academy; and The Netherlands' Norway's O'Horten is a small jewel. I look forward to seeing more.

With financial pressure from their owners and stock prices in the toilet, there's movement afoot among the major studios. And much speculation. Here's Fortune's frightening story on NBC Universal owner General Electric, always one of the best-run and most solid of American corporations.

Kim Masters addresses Sumner Redstone's problems with the plummeting stock value of his companies Viacom and CBS. Some people think that the mogul, who's looking vulnerable (and just announced his divorce from his wife), should put the two companies he split, Viacom and CBS, back together again. UPDATE: Redstone swears to the WSJ that there's "not a chance" he will sell any more stock in Viacom or CBS. "I will not sell Viacom and I will not sell CBS. They're two great companies." He added: "We have no intention to sell any more stock and I'm decisive about that."

Loved the LAT's lede on their story about the rapacious Carl Icahn, who's buying up low-priced shares in Lionsgate as he ogles their massive library: "The barbarian is at the gate." There's also speculative talk of debt-ridden MGM being for sale as well, and of an MGM/Lionsgate merger.

Universal is in talks to unload its Rogue genre unit to buccaneer financeer Ryan Kavanaugh's Relativity Media for $150 million. They'll pocket the cash on their three-year investment and still collect a 10% distribution fee.

While I appreciate the shoutout from Patrick Goldstein, he's reporting uninformed speculation that because other latecomer studio specialty units have been downsized or shut down, or Jeff Zucker is calling for $500 million in cuts across all of NBC Universal, that must mean that Universal's Focus Features, which launched Rogue, is next on the cutting block.

That Universal is also going to unload Focus is far from obvious. The subsid has a huge international business; as much PR as Fox Searchlight deservedly enjoys, thanks to overseas business, Focus is just as profitable. In Bruges and Burn After Reading are two 2008 worldwide hits for the label. Universal execs flatly deny that they have any intention of selling the unit.

And closer to home, Peter Bart reflects on the dwindling number of full-on studio Oscar campaigns this year. In a climate where the studios are really up against their bottom lines, for once they may not have to indulge every vanity awards campaign that ordinarily would have been business as usual. Nothing these days, as many hurting Hollywood folks can testify, is business as usual.

My inbox is packed with PR pitches that are not only off-the-mark for my piece of trade turf, but hard to fathom. Take this email headline: Uniquely Decorative Toilet Tattoos Make Bathrooms Flush With Beauty.

Here's the full pitch:

Anne,

Here is some interesting info to help you put together a unique holiday decorating feature. The release below details an innovative product line called Toilet Tattoos - interchangeable, multi-themed electro-static decals that decorate the lid of any toilet.

Very unique and fun. Feel free to use this in any upcoming holiday decorating feature you may be working on - or maybe a feature on NEW ways to decorate this year.

We'd be happy to get you photos, samples or help further.

It's hard to believe that the IMDb--or Internet movie database--is 18 years old. I don't know about you, but I probably go on there 20 times day, checking movie or actor or director or writer or producer spellings, dates, company affiliations, release dates or awards history. IMDb is the most visited movie site on the Web, with 57 million unique users per month and 2 1/2 billion page views per month.

The site's founder and managing director, Col Needham, 41, is an ebullient, cheery film enthusiast. He manages about 100 employees around the globe from his home base in Bristol, England, where he lives with his wife and two teenage kids. Since IMDb was bought by Amazon ten years ago, there's another satellite office in Seattle. But Needham insists IMDb is "headquartered on the Internet."

Eighteen years ago Friday he posted the first version of the IMDb software onto the internet for anybody to download. IMDb started as Needham's own private database of films he'd seen. (The Alfred Hitchcock fan's top-ten list is on the jump.) Starting in the mid 1980s, he and a few film nerd friends started sharing their info. "I did the film geek thing of trying to create a paper diary of films," he says. "It lasted two weeks." Needham began to meet up with other film fans from around the world for a movie discussion group, before the Web existed. "It was all just text based postings," he says.

One person started collecting actresses. Needham was collecting a list of actors based on films he had seen. They started pooling information. Other people sent in missing credits. The files began to accumulate. In October 1990 somebody in the group said, "What we really need is a database so we can search." Needham took some software he had written in the past and converted it to work so that any computer could use it. "Everything spoke the same language," he says.

He collected experts in each area to add to the database. All volunteering, of course. Somebody would say, "I love writers," and that would be their area of responsibility. The third man recruited, who lived in Switzerland, took up composers. "He's still here to this day," says Needham. There was no corporate entity until January 1996 when the four founding partners all met for the first time in the same room with a lawyer to sign incorporation papers.

IMDb is still growing, in concert with Amazon, which takes care of the company's server and hardware needs, and indie site Withoutabox. "We're coming up with new features, listening to what our customers want," says Needham. The number one demand is video, a growing part of the site. IMDb has already launched 6000 TV episodes and feature films from a variety of sources, not to mention shorts. They offer Withoutabox filmmakers opportunities to upload and distribute content on Imdb, as well as share with each other films and reactions. They've also beta-tested a German-language version.

Here's an Awards Daily story on the top- rated movies on IMDb as Oscar indicators.

Needham, a wealthy man, spends some of his hard-earned pounds on DVDs--he just got a new 50th anniversary Vertigo edition from Amazon--which happens to be his favorite movie of all time. "I've lost count of the number of times I've seen it," he says. "I know I have a record of it on the computer somewhere."

I confess that I had a great time at Quantum of Solace last night. Sure it's glitzy and glam and jammed with heart-stopping violent action. But it's also arty and elegant and beautiful. One of the main sequences is a lyrical homage to Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much, set during a performance of Tosca.

It's both a James Bond movie and a Marc Forster movie. It moves the standard Bond-with-gun opener to the end, the Bond song honors are done by Jack White and Alicia Keyes, and the standard Bond crew is gone. The key crew members on this one were all Team Forster, except the composer John Barry David Arnold. But even there, the score pulls back on too much use of the classic Bond theme.

There are six Vesper martinis instead of the usual one, which isn't specifically "shaken not stirred." There is no "Bond, James Bond." Will audiences miss this? Or is this just the kind of modernization that the series requires to stay vital?

Craig is as strong and dangerous and fearless and rebellious as ever--and in this case, grieving and vengeful as he chases down the man who killed his beloved Vesper Lynd. (It is unusual for a Bond film to function as a sequel.) In this case, the Bond villain played by The Diving Bell and the Butterfly star Mathieu Amalric is bone-chilling-- without relying on any of the usual tics.

The movie already had a major press launch in London, who love their own Gemma Arterton as a modern Brit Bond Girl. Here's a sampling of early reviews.

Here's the trailer:

At the Gotham Awards, Ballast was the big leader with four noms. MovieCityNews has a rundown. Ballast will also be a likely strong Indie Spirit contender. Of the movies nominated, those gaining needed forward momentum going into this year's awards season include Frozen River's Melissa Leo, Rachel Getting Married's Rosemary DeWitt, and Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York, all backed by Sony Pictures Classics, plus Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Weinstein Co) and The Visitor (Overture), which will likely benefit Penelope Cruz and Richard Jenkins, even though their actual Gotham noms are for best feature and ensemble.

[By Jeff Sneider]

AICN's Quint posted a great interview with Kevin Smith last week and I totally missed it. Smith has been making the rounds talking up "Zack and Miri Make a Porno," which stars Seth Rogen, Elizabeth Banks and Craig Robinson. While the cast may be Apatowian, the movie is vintage View Askew and the fresh blood mixes perfectly with the old (Smith regulars Jason Mewes and Jeff Anderson). The film is both heartfelt and hilarious and despite all the controversy, relatively tame for a movie with "Porno" in its title. Personally, I could've done with a bit more nudity but what do you expect from a 24 year-old male? By the way, as good as the chemistry between Rogen and Banks is, the couple that really steals the picture (besides Katie Morgan's, um, assets) are Justin Long and Brandon Routh. Make sure to stick around for their return in the end credits.

JoBlo's always insightful and delightful Ten Spot lists the Best Self Portrayals. John Malkovich understandably tops the list in "Being John Malkovich," but while the main graphic features Bob Barker in "Happy Gilmore," the "Price is Right" host is inexplicably omitted, along with Topher Grace, who deserved props for sending himself up in "Ocean's 11."

JoBlo also has the poster for "The Haunting in Connecticut," not to be confused with "The Haunting of Molly Hartley." Or "An American Haunting." Or simply "The Haunting." You know what, I think I've had enough of these "Haunting" movies, especially since those last two were particularly bad. "Molly Hartley" looks to continue to that trend, though I have hope for "Connecticut," but only because I'm a big fan of Elias Koteas, who's poised for a big year in '09 with Martin Scorsese's "Shutter Island" (based on the excellent Dennis Lehane novel) and "I Come with the Rain." View the latter's Radiohead-enhanced trailer here.

Speaking of similarly titled projects, MTV has debuted the trailer for David Goyer's "The Unborn," starring Gary Oldman, Idris Elba and "Cloverfield" babe Odette Yustman. It involves a twin who was never born and while it looks a tad generic, I'll admit that Goyer delivers the goods more often than not. Just don't confuse "The Unborn" with "The Uninvited," a remake of Korean genre classic "Tale of Two Sisters" starring Elizabeth Banks (a very busy girl lately between this, "Zack and Miri," "Role Models" and "W.") as the cruel stepmother of two sisters (Arielle Kebbel and Emily Browning) whose house is haunted. You can view that trailer here.

And finally, for your weekend viewing pleasure, a trio of fun videos. The first one is a mash-up trailer that combines the visuals of "Toy Story 2" and the audio of "The Dark Knight." The second trailer features the unstoppable forces of nature otherwise known as Anton Chigurh ("No Country for Old Men") and McLovin' ("Superbad"). And lastly, a video that asks "What if Ferris Bueller really was sick," using Train's "Drops of Jupiter" to turn John Hughes' classic comedy into a tearjerker about a teenager with one day left to live. Funny though, who goes to all this editing trouble only to spell John Hughes and Seth Rogen's names wrong?

Weekend Edition's Scott Simon is in love with Terrence Howard. He does a major gush job on his show this weekend, but clearly Howard was putting a spell on him.

It's a great interview. Here's some video. Howard is a bit raw from the recent death of his mother, and the loss of the role of War Machine in Iron Man 2. "It was the surprise of my life," he says, confessing that he read about it in the trades, and wasn't expecting Marvel and his friend --is he referring to Jon Favreau?--to go back on their contract and their promises to him. He indicated that it wasn't about the money.

I admire Don Cheadle, who is replacing Howard in the role. But I thought Howard was fine, and I am still confused. What happened here? What was he promised? And what went wrong here?