Here's Ken Turan on the five Best Picture nominees and what they represent. Good piece. While Turan argues that Michael Clayton is the sole studio best-picture entry, it still got made as a $25-million indie within the system, with major star George Clooney not getting his price upfront and Boston financeer Steve Samuels behind it. I'm going to meet him today at the Indie Spirits.

At long last, the Oscar ballots are in and it is the week before the Oscar kudocast! It's time to make your fearless forecasts and plunk your money down in your office pool. (I can tell you one thing--it's not easy to come out on top here at Variety, where everyone is an Oscar expert.)

I'll be filing my final Oscar predicts today at the LA Times Buzzmeter and MCN Gurus O' Gold polls. Oscar expert Pete Hammond lays out what's at stake for the Coen brothers: they could make Oscar history and equal Walt Disney's 1953 win in four categories. I don't think they will, though...Oscar voters are likely to parcel out some wins for other movies too. I'm betting the Coens win picture and director and not adapted screenplay (Ronald Harwood could steal it for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) and editing (as Roderick Jaynes). The movie could also pick up Javier Bardem and a sound award or two. I also don't buy into the thesis that No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood will cancel each other out. I suspect No Country will beat There Will be Blood in some categories like picture and director, and TWBB will win some others, like cinematography (because Roger Deakins is competing with himself and Janusz Kaminski will also pull some votes) and art direction.

As always, our own Oscar blogger Kris Tapley links to everything you'd ever want to know about the Oscar race, from Shootout's interviews with the likes of George Clooney to Nathaniel Rogers' latest Oscar symposium.

Here's Salon on the Oscar race, the LAT's Patrick Goldstein on No Country for Old men producer Scott Rudin, Film School Rejects, and Oscar forecasts from Stephen Schaefer and Scott Feinberg. (Send me more, by all means.)

Glenn Kenny is doing the same he said/she said Oscar ritual--albeit in blog form--that I used to love doing at Premiere. (I couldn't do it this year.)

Over at his Vanity Fair Oscar blog, The Reeler has come up with a novel (and morbid) way to liven up your Oscar pool.

Here's one clip from the Shootout Clooney interview:

And an ode to the Oscar nominees (hat tip Awards Daily):

You may recall that because of the Writers strike, the WGA Awards show was cancelled. How odd that the same day that on the WGA members are deciding the fate of the strike, they are also announcing the awards (at 7 PM Pacific).

Several folks have suggested that Juno rookie scribe Diablo Cody is vulnerable and that Tony Gilroy, who also made his directing debut with the popular best picture nominee Michael Clayton, could win original screenplay. I too perceive a Juno backlash. If Cody loses, it's to Gilroy.

But Juno is also popular and writers admire Cody's script. I suspect the WGA will go Cody's way. It's the Oscars where the upset would be more likely to occur. In that case, voters are apportioning votes throughout the ballot, and will want Juno and Clayton to each win something. But even there, assuming that Juno doesn't win best picture, director or actress, Cody's screenplay calls out for recognition as something completely different and a win for the little-indie-that-could, while Gilroy's falls more in the realm of a classical studio picture. It's a horse race.

(Am I the only one who thinks Diablo Cody is a dead ringer for Louise Brooks?)

Among the adapted screenplays, the Coens' No Country for Old Men is the expected winner. But if there were a challenger (more likely in the Oscar race, where No Country could scoop up multiple wins), it would be Ronald Harwood, for the high degree of difficulty on The Diving Bell and the Butterfly screenplay. As magnificent as the collective effort led by Julian Schnabel was, Harwood first cracked the code of how to make a book about a paralyzed guy with a blinking eyelid into a visually arresting movie.

On the docs, I don't know how many people saw Alex Gibney's Taxi to the Dark Side, but the writing is superb. He also helped out Charles Ferguson with his dense but clear expose of the U.S. government's blunders in Iraq in No End in Sight, one of the few docs to do business this year, along with another strong contender here, Michael Moore's engaging political screed Sicko.

Here are the WGA nominees:

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Diablo Cody, Juno
Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton
Tamara Jenkins, The Savages
Nancy Oliver, Lars and the Real Girl
Judd Apatow, Knocked Up

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood
Joel, Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men
Ronald Harwood, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Sean Penn, Into the Wild
James Vanderbilt, Zodiac

DOCUMENTARY SCREENPLAY

THE CAMDEN 28
NANKING
NO END IN SIGHT
THE RAPE OF EUROPA
SICKO
TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE

There were some welcome surprises this nominations morning. (Here's Variety's story.) Atonement made it to best picture. While Keira Knightley, James McAvoy and Joe Wright did not win noms, Saorise Ronin did. Christopher Hampton earned a screenplay nod. The Guilds don't always reflect the Academy, clearly; this means the battle for the fifth slot was fierce. But Atonement got seven noms altogether; Michael Clayton seven, Juno four, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, four, and Sweeney Todd got only three (Johnny Depp, art direction and costume); Juno's Jason Reitman, not Tim Burton, landed a director's slot. A surprise, but well-deserved. (I was talking to him here in Park City last night at the WMA party; he was nervous because he didn't get a writing nom last time for Thank You for Smoking.)

Atonement took the fifth best picture slot away from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Julian Schnabel got director, and Harwood screenplay, but Diving Bell, which is foreign language, didn't make it all the way.

Into the Wild must not have been that strong because Sean Penn and Emile Hirsch did not get nominated. It was shut out earned expected supporting actor nom for Hal Holbrook and editing. Eddie Vedder's music might have gotten in if it hadn't been disqualified. I never thought Into The Wild would score with the Academy, but Paramount Vantage gave it the full court push.

If Jonny Greenwood's score hadn't been disqualified, There Will be Blood might have nine noms to No Country for Old Men's eight. Vantage, Miramax and producer Scott Rudin, who partnered on those two films, are having a very good day.

The Academy loves Cate Blanchett, nominating her twice, for Elizabeth and I'm Not There, movies she dominated. She can do no wrong. Laura Linney beat Angelina Jolie, which is an upset but proves that the Golden Globes and SAG do not necessarily match up with the Academy. The Savages is well respected; so is Linney; so is screenwriter Tamara Jenkins. When in doubt, the Academy goes with the class act. Four solo women screenwriters got nominated, my USA Today pal Susan Wloszczyna pointed out on the phone this morning.

I had a flash that Tommy Lee Jones could be nominated for not only In the Valley of Elah, but also on some level No Country for Old Men. I wish I had listened to that instinct. And Viggo Mortensen got a deserved first Oscar nomination for David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises.

Casey Affleck took the fifth supporting actor slot. And Jennifer Garner didn't make it; Ruby Dee got the older vet slot, for American Gangster.

The full list of noms are on the jump.

The Screen Actors Guild nominees took some surprising directions. (Here's Variety's story.) They reflect a few things about SAG, and may not predict Academy voting behavior. The two groups often share noms but also go their separate ways.

Actors LOVE Sean Penn, whose Into the Wild grabbed four noms. Hal Holbrook is still the most likely Oscar nom for this film, but Emile Hirsch and Catherine Keener get a leg up. Remember, actors adore Penn, but the rest of the Academy voters may not.

I hope the attention SAG voters gave Lars and the Real Girl's Ryan Gosling, Eastern Promises' Viggo Mortensen and A Mighty Heart's Angelina Jolie will inspire Academy voters to watch those three films.

Actors love Cate Blanchett. Like the Golden Globes, she grabbed two noms, for best actress for Elizabeth: The Golden Age and supporting actress for I'm Not There. I doubt the Oscar actors will go for Elizabeth.

SAG voters are somewhat more mainstream than the Academy actors. They steered away from such late-breaking high-brow Academy contenders as Sweeney Todd and Atonement. No Johnny Depp, James McAvoy, Keira Knightley, Saorise Ronan. They went for There Will be Blood's Daniel Day Lewis, but not Paul Dano. Michael Clayton's George Clooney, Tilda Swinton and Tom Wilkinson continue to gain traction for Academy Oscar slots. SAG voters skipped such foreign-language fare as The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and The Kite Runner, but came through for Marion Cotillard in La Vie en Rose, which was a hit here. It makes sense that they embraced the great ensemble acting in the hugely entertaining 3:10 to Yuma, American Gangster, Hairspray and No Country for Old Men (both Tommy Lee Jones and Javier Bardem got supporting actor noms).

American Gangster won a best ensemble nod and Ruby Dee is a supporting actress nominee, but Denzel Washington got nothing, not for American Gangster nor The Great Debaters, which some SAG voters may not have had a chance to see. While American Gangster seems to be losing momentum (it has fallen out of the LAT's Buzzmeter poll's top five for best picture) my sense is that many Academy voters like it a lot. Charlie Wilson's War, on the other hand, which opens this weekend, hasn't got a pulse.

The full SAG nominations list is on the jump:

With seven nominations, Joe Wright's Atonement led the field of Golden Globe nominations Thursday morning. It was a good day for Denzel Washington, who stars in two films out of seven in the motion picture drama category: American Gangster, in which he stars as a Harlem kingpin, and The Great Debaters, a heart-tugging period drama about an upstart debate team at a black college who take on Harvard, which he also directed. He was also nominated for best actor for American Gangster.

The 80 or so Hollywood Foreign press voters wound up with three ties for fifth place, they say; hence the seven drama slots.

Michael Clayton earned five noms, including George Clooney, Tilda Swinton and Tom Wilkinson. Cate Blanchett landed two noms, for dramatic actress in Elizabeth: The Golden Age and for her supporting role as one of six Bob Dylans in I'm Not There. And Philip Seymour Hoffman won two comedy side noms, as best actor in The Savages and supporting actor in Charlie Wilson's War.

While considered a bellwether for the Oscars, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association generously breaks its best picture and actor candidates into two categories: drama and musical/comedy, while the Motion Picture Academy does not. Thus, on January 22 the Academy may not find room to reward all the musical/comedy Globe entries: Across the Universe, Hairspray, Juno, Sweeney Todd and Charlie Wilson's War, which landed five noms.

The director category reveals the strongest five Globe candidates: Sweeney Todd, No Country for Old Men, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, American Gangster and Atonement. I would not be surprised if those five also wound up as Oscar's best on January 22. While its youthful director Jason Reitman did not land a director Globe mention, Juno, which got nods for comedy, actress (Ellen Page) and screenplay (Diablo Cody) is gaining momentum in the Oscar race.

There's no question that Hairspray got a significant boost from the Globe nominations, especially John Travolta in the supporting actor category, who had been overlooked by critics' groups. Also getting much-needed recognition was Casey Affleck for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

Among the Globe surprises that may not be mirrored on the Oscar side of the ledger:

David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises and star Viggo Mortenson earned drama nods.

Angelina Jolie landed a dramatic actress nom for A Mighty Heart.

Jodie Foster was recognized for her role as a Manhattan vigilante in The Brave One.

On the musical/comedy side:

Hairspray's Nikki Blonsky and Sweeney Todd's Helena Bonham Carter landed noms.

Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts won noms for Charlie Wilson's War.

John C. Reilly landed a nod for the musical comedy Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.

Ryan Gosling got a much-needed boost for the indie flick Lars and the Real Girl.

Of the musical/comedy actor nods, the likeliest one to score with the Academy voters is Sweeney Todd's Johnny Depp.

Because the Globes have less stringent criteria for inclusion in its foreign film category, several films that are not eligible for the Oscars made the cut: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Lust, Caution and The Kite Runner. Nominees 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days (Romania) and Persepolis (France) are considered strong contenders in the foreign Oscar race.

While many would-be awards-season contenders are crying in their beer today, all is not lost. It is possible to forge ahead without Globe noms, as Half-Nelson star Gosling did last year.

The full list of movie nominations is on the jump.

The National Board of Review, which is not necessarily predictive but does add early momentum to movies in the award season derby, has named the Coen brothers' No Country for Old Men as best film. It's a happy day in the Affleck family, as both Ben and his brother Casey grabbed nods for best new director (Gone Baby Gone) and best supporting actor, respectively. Amy Ryan also nabbed a supporting actress win for Gone Baby Gone. Oscar blog And the Winner Is goes through the nominees exhaustively.

The other winners are:

Director: Tim Burton, "Sweeney Todd"

Actor: George Clooney, "Michael Clayton"

Actress: Julie Christie, "Away From Her"

Supporting Actor: Casey Affleck, "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford"

Supporting Actress: Amy Ryan, "Gone Baby Gone"

Foreign Film: "The Diving Bell And The Butterfly"

Documentary: "Body Of War"

Animated Feature: "Ratatouille"

Ensemble Cast: "No Country For Old Men"

Breakthrough Performance by an Actor: Emile Hirsch, "Into The Wild"

Breakthrough Performance by an Actress: Ellen Page, "Juno"

Best Directorial Debut: Ben Affleck, "Gone Baby Gone"

Best Original Screenplay (tie):Diablo Cody, "Juno" and Nancy Oliver, "Lars and the Real Girl"

Best Adapted Screenplay: Joel and Ethan Coen, "No Country For Old Men"

Besides "No Country," here's NBR's top ten, in alphabetical order:

While I admire Kris Tapley's attempt to make some sense out of the blizzard of Oscar predictions out there, I remain convinced that until the prognosticators see Charlie Wilson's War and Sweeney Todd, the two films that many of us got invited to see Monday, none of these lists make much sense. Richard Corliss in Time suggests that "audiences will have a great time watching" Charlie Wilson's War, which seemed to play for Oprah Winfrey's Chicago audience. Oprah raved about Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance, as guests Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts (who tried to get out of shooting a bikini scene while four weeks pregnant) nodded politely. My hunch is that Hoffman won't get nommed for best actor for The Savages or Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, but will get a supporting nom for Charlie Wilson's War.

Clearly, the non-pro fans on Movie City News and Awards Daily are voting with their youthful hearts and not thinking much about the Academy's tastes. Into the Wild is a popular movie that has a chance at some noms, especially for Hal Holbrook, but because of the way the movie was written, shot and performed, the different branches of the Academy may not take it seriously enough. It's shot doc-style on location, it looks like it was performed on the fly. I suspect the editor has a better shot than Penn as director or writer, Emile Hirsch as actor, or the cinematography. The Academy admires fakery, sets, costumes and literature. As an organic whole, Into the Wild is an entertaining, thought-provoking emotionally rewarding movie. But it's a long-shot as an Academy contender.

David Fincher's Zodiac is another movie that isn't gaining Oscar momentum. It was well-reviewed last summer March, and many critics will include it on their ten-bests. But its time has come and gone. It was an expensive big-budget studio failure. It's indulgently long, and Fincher's insistence on verisimilitude meant not giving viewers a satisfying narrative arc. The movie has its merits--hell, it will be on my ten best list---but an Oscar contender needs to have enthusiastic supporters, few detractors and a passionate push behind it. It needs confidence. Zodiac has too many deficits. Paramount is already gearing up to make a major Oscar push for Fincher's next, starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett as star-crossed lovers twisted by time, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

I got into a heated debate with someone in the office yesterday about Enchanted, the animated/live action comedy that brilliantly spoofs Disney's classic animated musicals. This movie is just what the doctor ordered: entertaining, witty, engaging, delirious fun. It's a three-quadrant accessible family musical that will grow and grow and grow through the holidays. Whatever it opens at Wednesday, it will keep building: the movie could wind up one of the year's biggest grossers. Men will initially resist the chick flick's charms, but they should eventually get pulled into Enchanted's vortex. Amy Adams gives a full-blown star breakout performance (on Oprah, a clip of her from Charlie Wilson's War caused both Hanks and Roberts to chime, "Amy Adams," naming her the It Girl of the moment). Adams could land, Julie Andrews-style, a nomination for best actress. (Why Disney isn't thumping the movie harder, I don't know. Most of us media folks didn't see it until last week. UPDATE: And yet again, the Academy screening committee in its wisdom has scheduled Alvin and the Chipmunks during its prime December viewing season, and not Enchanted.)

But Enchanted is not your standard-issue Oscar movie. Director Kevin Lima (Tarzan, 102 Dalmations) has made a successful crossover from animation. Bill Kelly's script is witty and smart and should land a nomination. But will it? Let's be honest about the Academy. They are SNOBS! They are high-minded, nose-in-the-air, classists. The more literary, historic, and pretentious the better. (EW's Mark Harris explains the Oscar predicting game.) The last animated film to make it to Best Picture was Beauty and the Beast (for which Lima did character animation), before there was an animation category. Sure, I'd also like to see the best-reviewed movie of the year, Pixar's fabulous Ratatouille, score screenplay, director and picture. It deserves it. But it won't necessarily happen.

The trick with Oscar predicting is feeling where the momentum is going and looking into the future, down the line. The best prognosticators have seen the movies, one. And two, they're not rooting for their favorites. They're staying ruthlessly objective. Do I have some pics I'm rooting for? Sure. But I have to take that into account and remain clear-eyed. The year I let emotions get the better of me and predicted that Beauty and the Beast would win, I was so wrong.

As for the Academy docs short list of 15, they are the the best-known and best-reviewed: the full list is on the jump.

Horror flick 30 Days of Night handily won the weekend. (Here's Variety's weekend wrap. Of all the "serious" Hollywood contenders clogging theaters this weekend, Michael Clayton held the best (only dropping 33%) while We Own the Night dropped a steep 49%.

Of the newbies, Ben Affleck's well-reviewed Gone Baby Gone (92% on rottentomatoes!) came in sixth, performing better than the disappointing Rendition, Things We Lost the Fire and Reservation Road--all grim adult-minded dramas.

What a bloodbath. Of the family pics, The Game Plan only dropped 26%, while Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married? dropped 43%. Game Plan has already grossed almost $70 million. What that tells us more than anything is that Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is a bonafide movie star. Doesn't matter if he can act. Folks love the guy.

Reading this thread on Hollywood Elsewhere responding to Kim Masters' Slate story on George Clooney and the boxoffice fate of Michael Clayton depressed me.

George Clooney is the model of a modern movie star. His accountant told him one day he never had to work another day in his life and he decided to use that "fuck you" money to make good movies. (Solaris and The Good German were both noble Steven Soderbergh failures.) I understand that Clooney signed off on Warner Bros.' stupid distribution decision to go wide with Michael Clayton on the second weekend.

What makes me crazy is that the studio had a well-reviewed, smart-house, classy movie that played well for the Academy and cost only $22 million. That's peanuts to a studio like Warners and there was no earthly reason to go wide! They could have let those per-screen averages play out slowly over time, kept the movie simmering in a successful mode, and widened gradually, keeping the Oscar race in mind. This is the kind of movie that builds and finds an audience. As long as it's successful, all well and good. But taint it with a 4th-place weekend and you've got the perception of damaged goods.

As to whether George Clooney is a star: if he gets paid $20 million, does he open the movie? Well, the guy doesn't get paid that much. He'd rather get his money in back-end gross. If he chooses to topline big commercial ensembles like the Oceans series or star opposite a giant wave, that's fine. If he makes overtly uncommercial movies that still do business, because they're Oscar-worthy, like Syriana and Good Night and Good Luck, that few other actors would have risked, that's fine too.

Look at someone like Harrison Ford, who's too scared to star in Traffic or Syriana. Is that who we want Clooney to be? There is value in a movie star like Jodie Foster (The Brave One aside, a violent action movie nobody wanted to see her in) or Clooney who represents quality. When the adult audience believes that their movies will be good, they will come--but not necessarily all at once on one weekend.

With all due respect to my colleague Brian Lowry, who correctly called Michael Clayton a tricky sell because the movie lacked car chases and the usual formulaic thrills and chills--that's exactly why the movie is so good, and why it's ranked at 82 on Metacritic.

Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married? handily trounced the competition this weekend. Here's Variety's Saturday boxoffice report. Fantasy Moguls. A NYT feature on Perry. And Variety's review. UPDATE: Here's Variety's Sunday boxoffice report.

Boxoffice prognosticators expected George Clooney's Michael Clayton to do better. But I worried that Warners was broadening the picture too early. The art of platforming is a delicate one. Sony and Paramount Vantage bet correctly that Across the Universe and Into the Wild would slowly build audiences. But for WB to leap from 15 to 2511 locations after just one week was too far, too fast. The risk for Clayton, which has long-term Oscar prospects, is that a critical winner could be tainted by failure. Clayton is not a thrill-packed action ride. It's an old-fashioned character-driven talk fest. It needs careful handling, not a sledgehammer.

The LAT examines Clooney's hits and misses.

As for Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Universal seemed blissfully sanguine that because they could sell action and spectacle in their TV spots, that they could magically switch this big-budget epic sequel from the smart-house specialty track to the mainstream. Big mistake.

[Perry photo by NYT]

Clooney fans: Charlie Rose interviewed Clooney Wednesday night. You can download the interview on the Charlie Rose website.

[Toronto Film Fest 2007 photo by Jeff Vespa, WireImage]

Things are looking up for Michael Clayton, which opened to rave reviews (a terrific 88% fresh on rotten tomatoes) and boffo initial box office in limited release.

Michael Clayton will be an interesting test of George Clooney's star power, as unlike the FX-heavy Perfect Storm or the Oceans flicks, the movie rests on his shoulders. Syriana and Good Night and Good Luck were both boosted by Oscar campaigns, a fate that may also meet this film. I've seen the movie twice; it's a smart-movie pleasure which sprang full-blown from the head of Tony Gilroy, who wrote all three of the Bourne pictures. He waited some five years to be able to direct Clayton himself, and managed to land Clooney, who initially resisted meeting him. "When asking someone to direct, your level of trust has to be so high," Gilroy told me over coffee at the Four Seasons bar.

Typically, it was only when CAA's Rick Hess raised some indie equity coin for the picture (from Steve Samuels) that Gilroy was able to say to one of Michael Clayton's director godfathers, Steven Soderbergh, "OK, I'm making this, may I please meet George to see if we get along?" They did, and talked for eight hours straight. (The other mentor was Sydney Pollack, who also stars in the film.) Clooney agreed to star for back-end gross only: the movie cost just $20 million upfront. Even so, Gilroy was able to shoot in New York City, with Clooney on hand to press the flesh whenever he needed help. "He'd put Vernon Jordan on hold to talk to the cops," says Gilroy.

Gilroy always wrote Clayton with the opening monologue from the mad lawyer, which is nailed so well by actor Tom Wilkinson (In the Bedroom). Gilroy actually shot it on the first day of filming, in a freezing Queens jail cell with Clooney. "I had Tom do it in front of him. George knew he was doing that, he wanted it. He went home and got a good night's sleep," Gilroy jokes.

Wilkinson is getting serious Oscar buzz. So are Gilroy and Clooney. Like Soderbergh's similar Erin Brockovich, Michael Clayton could win up as one of the last films standing in the Oscar fray.

Perhaps remembering how hard he had to work to equally promote his two Oscar contenders in 2005/2006, Clooney has decided, following his recent motorcycle spill which painfully broke one rib, to back off trying to finish his third film as director, Leatherheads, this year. Reshoots were always planned for the last weekend in September, when Clooney had grown a beard for the Coens' Burn After Reading.

Now Leatherheads will open in April, giving Clooney more time to promote Clayton, finish Burn After Reading, and edit Leatherheads. Sounds like a sane move. I hear there's a character in Leatherheads who smokes a lot, which may be another potential thorn in Clooney's side. Universal marketing is buying a Superbowl promo spot, so the studio stands behind the period football pic.

Here's one Gilroy interview. And here's David Poland's video sit-down: