10.31, 7:35 pm

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BBC News has announced that Nowhere Boy director Sam Taylor-Wood, 42, is engaged to Aaron Johnson, 19, who does a decent job of playing the lead role of John Lennon in the film. I wouldn’t make it legal if I were Johnson — I’d just cruise along and see where it all goes. No guy should get married at this age. I just asked a ladyfriend about this; she says “younger boys like older women because older women know what they want in the sack, and a lot of younger girls don’t.”

Nowhere Boy director Sam Taylor-Wood in a pose for a current issue of Bazaar.

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In a recently posted riff called “The Rules of Ten,” MCN’s David Poland says two things about Kathryn Bigelow‘s The Hurt Locker. (1) “Among the fifteen or fewer serious contenders for [Best Picture] nomination, it will certainly be amongst the best five, by most standards of quality.” (2) “In years past…a movie like The Hurt Locker would have a very hard road, no matter how good it is, because of its lackluster box office run.”

In other words, he seems to be saying that a standard Academy rule-of-thumb — i.e., if a great or near-great film hasn’t made a hefty pile of dough, it is automatically degraded as a potential awards contender — doesn’t apply as much this year. Is that what he’s saying? I’m not quite sure.

Either way you...

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In the view of Steve Mason, the weekend’s #1 film — Michael Jackson’s This Is It — is a shortfaller due to $8 million earned yesterday and a likely 5-day cume of $33.2 million by Sunday night.

That’s well short of the $31.5 million earned over the first three days by Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour (Disney) in February ’08. That film earned a little more than $65 million by the end of its run. So is Mason saying that This Is It won’t make it to that figure? His point seems to be that the potential business indicated by the Jackson...

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“When Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences president Sid Ganis announced the expansion of the best picture category to 10 nominations back in June, everyone was talking about J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek being the kind of movie that might benefit from a wider field,” writes Variety‘s Glenn Whipp. “Critics liked it; audiences loved it: It was the type of sturdy popcorn movie that, if nominated, might give the awards telecast a ratings boost — or, at least, stem further viewer erosion.

“Now, as Oscar season kicks into gear, nobody is talking about Star Trek much anymore. And, as audiences and Academy members have seen most of the Oscar contenders, a vague sense of discomfort hangs over Hollywood as some naysayers wonder how they might possibly fill out a ballot...

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“Anyone can formulate a personal version of heaven — an aerie of angels, a tropical getaway, a cloister with 72 virgins, a sports bar with unlimited beer and bigscreen, or an ethereal place where you could mingle and chat with everyone from Socrates to Groucho Marx,” Variety‘s Todd McCarthy wrote in a 10.22 column. “Last week I discovered the closest approximation of paradise I can imagine for the hardcore film buff at the Grand Lyon Film Festival in the center of France.

(l. to r.) Clint Eastwood, Cecile de France, Bertrand Tavernier, Therry Fremaux.

“This six-day event was defined by three...

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As I hear it, Kirk Jones‘ Everybody’s Fine (Miramax, 12.4), an About Schmidt-type family drama that will be reviewed following its AFIFest premiere on 11.3, isn’t necessarily a Best Picture candidate, but Robert De Niro, playing a dad looking to reconnect with his grown kids, could snag some consideration as a Best Actor candidate.

“It’s a low-key performance, which actors will like — understated — and he hasn’t been Oscar-nominated since Cape Fear, which was 16 or 17 years ago,” says a guy who’s seen it. “He more or less sells it with two scenes — a meltdown moment during a plane flight and an emotional scene at a hospital.”

Kate Beckinsale, Drew Barrymore, Sam Rockwell and Melissa Leo (in a very small role as a truck driver) costar.

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Every so often an actor or actress you haven’t noticed before will just catch your eye. It helps if they can act, of course, but movie cameras just like certain people. And right away you’re thinking you’d like them to stick around. For me, this happened when Ophelia Lovibond came on-screen in Sam Taylor-Wood‘s Nowhere Man. I should have made some noise about her in my 10.29 review but I didn’t know her name. (The press notes weren’t much help.)

Nowhere Boy costar Ophelia Lovibond at last night’s London premiere

She’s in two scenes with Aaron Johnson (who plays John Lennon), one of them an outdoor quickie sex scene. Lovibond — curious name...

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Miramax president Daniel Battsek, a good man, has been given the boot. As part of a late September announcement about streamlining/downsizing the company, Disney management stated that Battsek would “continue to oversee all aspects of creative, development, production and business and legal affairs” out of New York. Nikki Finke is reporting that Miramax’s NY office will now be closed, and that the whole operation will now move to the Disney lot.

A studio spokesperson told L.A. Times reporter...

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I’m sorry but I’ve never found locations in and of themselves to be remotely scary. I don’t even find them unsettling. It”s interesting when you can sense the aura around certain places — the White House, Ground Zero, Dealey Plaza in Dallas — but that’s a long way from scary. It’s fascinating to stand in areas and buildings that have been used in famous movies (like Mission San Juan Batista near Hollister) but again, no spooks.

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Wednesday, 10.28, 6:55 pm — 23rd Street near Eighth Avenue.

Condolence flowers received yesterday from a kind person over the death of my brother Tony about ten days ago. Lovely and soothing. They’ll die too, of course, so I wanted to capture them while still fresh.

Wednesday, 10.28, 6:45 pm.

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I love the way Werner Herzog pronounces his “ohs,” as in know and though and so on. It’s a very special “ohheww” sound. He spoke the night before last about the casting of Eva Mendes in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (First Look, 11.20).

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Amy Rice and Alicia Sams‘ By The People: The Election of Barack Obama will finally debut on HBO on Tuesday, 11.3 — precisely 365 days after the ’08 Presidential election came to an end. I reviewed the film in early August after catching a showing at the Sunshine Cinemas, and there wasn’t any way to be kind or charitable. It’s a political chick flick with no edge — butter wouldn’t melt in its mouth. And it’s way too easy in its depiction of Hillary Clinton ‘s campaign.

I began by calling it “a fairly bloodless portrait of one of the most fascinating, breathtaking, sometimes ugly, occasionally transcendent, up-and-down racial-tinderbox elections in our nation’s history. It’s up-close and somewhat...

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I don’t know what I was doing when this Matt Zoller Seitz video essay about Elia Kazan ‘s On The Waterfront went up almost a month ago. The more-or-less conventional view is that the story of Terry Malloy vs. Johnny Friendly is “a rat’s fantasy” or “a stoolie’s defense.” Seitz argues otherwise, or at least that a fairer, more perceptive reading is somewhere in the middle.

Kazan’s rep has long been tarnished by his cooperation with the House Un-American...

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Hollywood Reporter critic Ray Bennett, not exactly known for his no-holds-barred contrary opinions, shocked the film industry yesterday by calling Sam Taylor-Wood‘s Nowhere Boy, which had its premiere last night in London, a “passable look at the early life of John Lennon…quite a dull film.” If Bennett, who gave a pass to Amelia and Momma Mia!, can’t find a way to bend over for this film, it suggests that the U.S. critical consensus might be an issue down the road.

The British critics loved it. Of course, they usually roll over for British-produced films so you need to take their Nowhere Boy views with a grain of salt. Here’s the Telegraph guy,

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With Hugh Jackman stating he’s not interested in hosting the 2010 Oscars, and the show’s new producers (Bill Mechanic, Adam Shankman) presumably aware that drawing younger viewers is a priority, let me repeat a truism voiced two years ago by Manhattan ad exec Shari Anne Brill, to wit: “Younger viewers live their lives pushing the envelope, breaking rules and bending rules. As long as the Oscars are perceived to have a certain rigidity, they’re not going to be relatable to young people.”

In other words, don’t hire another setttled smoothie. You don’t want your next host performing a 75 year-old Fred Astaire tune in evening finery — you want Ben Stiller and Owen...

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No thanks to Matt Zoller Seitz for not sending me his latest video essay, a Zombie 101 tutorial; I had to hunt it down on Movie City News. One presumes he was inspired by the success of Zombieland. I know that George Romero‘s latest, Survival of the Dead, is still looking for distribution, and is showing next at the American Film Market.

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L.A.Times/Gold Derby columnist Tom O’Neil has recalculated his Best Picture Oscar prediction poll with input from 16 pundits. Only The Hurt Locker and Invictus are supported by the whole crew. Precious and Up in the Air got 15 votes, two blew off Up and three blew off Nine. Ten voted for An Education and Avatar. And four have now joined me in supporting A Serious Man — O’Neil, Robert Osborne, Steve Pond and Peter Travers.

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“Here’s why we’re here…because this little gray rock sells for $20 million a kilo. Their village happens to be resting on the richest deposit and they need to be relocated. Those savages are threatening our whole operation, we’re on the brink of war, and you’re supposed to be finding a diplomatic solution.” — Giovanni Ribisi‘s yuppie scumbag to Sigourney Weaver‘s Grace Augustine, a good-gal botanist, in a clip from the latest Avatar trailer. I saw this last night at the Chelsea Clearview before This Is It.

Giovannbi Ribisi, Sigourney Weaver in Avatar.

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Having leafed through a print edition of Variety, New Yorker‘s Richard Brody reported today that Noah Baumbach ‘s Greenberg, a relationship drama with Ben Stiller and Greta Gerwig, and Sofia Coppola‘s Somewhere, which I know zip about but which costars Stephen Dorff, Elle Fanning and Michelle Monaghan, will screen at the American Film Market (11.4 to 11.11). I’m thinking I could wangle my way in if I was out there.

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Even I, a Roman Polanski apologist and let-it-go-already arguer, don’t agree with some of what Gore Vidal has told The Atlantic‘s John Meroney about the Samantha Geimer case in an 8.28 posting. There are, however, slivers of truth here and there.

Meroney: “In September, director Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland for leaving the U.S. in 1978 before being sentenced to prison for raping a 13-year-old girl at Jack Nicholson‘s house in Hollywood. During the time of the original incident, you were working in the industry, and you and Polanski had a common friend in theater critic and producer Kenneth Tynan. So what’s your take on Polanski, this many years later?

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Responding to a fierce putdown of the late Robert Altman by Time‘s Richard Schickel in a review of Mitchell Zuckoff‘s Robert Altman: The Oral Biography, director Alan Rudolph has written an equally stern rebuke.

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This T-shirt is being sold at Cinefile, the DVD store next to West L.A.’s Nuart theatre. Presumably it can be ordered online. Obviously a must-own. The guy modelling the shirt could use a little time at the gym.

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I met Bad Lieutenant director Werner Herzog around 9:30 pm last night at the Tribeca Grand Hotel. Immediate following this he sat for a q & a before an audience in the hotel’s screening room. Herzog asked Bad Lieutenant screenwriter William Finklestein and dp Peter Zeitlinger to join him in front of the crowd during the interview.

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Sam Taylor-Wood‘s Nowhere Boy, which premieres tonight at the London Film Festival, is a marginally effective, vaguely muffled chick-flick account of John Lennon‘s teenage years in Liverpool, circa 1956 to ’60. I’m not calling it dull, exactly. Somewhat underwhelming? I respond best to films about transcendent, climb-out-of-it responses to problems rather than ones that mainly portray the muck and the grief of things. And Nowhere Boy‘s somewhat feminized, all-he-needs-is-love story just didn’t turn me on.

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Jamie Stuart‘s Isn’t She?… is being described as “an ode to John Hughes that follows a day in the life of Claire (Lauren Currie Lewis) as she tries to claim unemployment insurance.”

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I’ve just returned from a 6:15 pm show of This Is It, and I need to split in 20 minutes for a Werner Herzog interview at the Soho Grand. But I can at least say how startled I was by how enjoyable the Jackson doc was. I just love listening to those familiar catchy tunes all amped up with great bass tones, and watching Jackson and the team perform some pretty sharp dance moves — it’s almost pure pleasure. Almost, I say.

Because if you do any thinking at all about the back-story — why the “This Is It” tour was launched, why Jackson didn’t tour for years, why he looks like Skeletor — it all starts to feel a little strained. A diversion. A piece of a story without the full story. A sell job that doesn’t fully work. But if you can turn your brain off, it really isn’t that bad. You could do a lot worse for your $12.50. (Yes, that’s what I paid at the Chelsea Clearview.) And I came...

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L.A Times/Gold Derby guy Tom O’Neil asked Us Weekly‘s Thelma Adams, World Entertainment News‘ Kevin Lewin, Gawker‘s Richard Rushfield, USA Today‘s Suzie Woz and myself to suggest the ten most likely Best Picture candidates.

Everyone agreed on The Hurt Locker, Invictus, Precious and Up. I was the only one to stand up the Coen Bros.’ A Serious Man, and yet Lewin picked Star Trek….Jesus! I waffled my tenth-place choice, unable to decide if it’ll be Inglourious Basterds or District 9. This is strictly a pulse-taking prediction, of course. Only partially to do with my choices for the year’s best.

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