In the news: Borat no make present Oscar

Borat's Sacha Baron Cohen says no to presenting at the Oscars; apparently reading Bruce Vilanch's jokes off the teleprompter isn't his kind of comedy.

Ellen DeGeneres on hosting the Oscars: "I've been hoping they would ask me for probably six years now." Academy President Sid Ganis on Ellen: "Her wit cuts to the truth of things, but in a wonderfully warm-spirited way." (Translation: She's not like that mean ol' Jon Stewart.)

The Washington Post asks: How do you judge "best picture," anyway? And their film critics reveal who they think should win -- but not who they think will win.)

Also: The Last King of Scotland premieres in Uganda.

An inside peek at three ballots

Sorry to pimp for Entertainment Weekly two posts in a row, but I love their annual feature where they get the inside scoop from three Academy voters: an actor, a producer and a screenwriter. Their comments are pithy and thought-provoking, and whether you agree or disagree they might just change how you look at some of the nominees. Check it out.

Also: today's New York Times offers a look at the foreign-language nominees, including the acclaimed Pan's Labyrinth -- which some say should have been up for best picture.

EW's predictions are in

The new Entertainment Weekly won't arrive in my mailbox until Saturday, but OscarWatch.com has the scoop on their Oscar predictions. They have best picture as a toss-up, with a slight edge to The Departed (numbers are projected percentages of votes cast):

The Departed 25%
Little Miss Sunshine 23%
Babel 20%
The Queen 17%
Letters From Iwo Jima 15%

The other major awards are as you might expect, although Forest Whitaker, Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson all look vulnerable to upsets. My take: One of them will be taken down on Oscar night; it's just a question of which one.

Taking in the shorts

Disney's The Little Matchgirl

The Envelope today offers a slideshow look at the 10 nominees in two of the lesser-known categories: live-action and animated short films. Come on, admit it: When you're filling in your picks for the Oscar pool, you do what I do in these obscure categories. You wait until Entertainment Weekly's Oscar predictions come out, a week before the show, and you go with their picks.

Well, good news: Magnolia Pictures is giving all 10 short films a limited release nationwide this weekend. They'll be at the Lagoon Cinema in Minneapolis and the Times Cinema in Milwaukee.

A few of the animated shorts will look familiar: No Time for Nuts stars Scrat, the acorn-hunting squirrel from the popular Ice Age films; there's the obligatory Pixar nominee, Lifted; and Disney's The Little Matchgirl marks the end of an animation era: It's the last Disney project to use the studio's animation system where hand drawings were digitally scanned for compositing and rendering.

If you're interested, there's a more in-depth look at the short-film nominees over at InContention.com.

Fox's No Time for Nuts (apparently the unrated version)

And the presenters are ...

The Academy's list of presenters is starting to firm up. Confirmed so far are Cate Blanchett, Steve Carell, George Clooney, Daniel Craig, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Will Ferrell, Eva Green, Tom Hanks, Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, Rachel Weisz and Reese Witherspoon.

Conspicuous by his absence (so far) is Philip Seymour Hoffman, last year's best actor, who by tradition would present this year's best-actress Oscar.

The list probably won't be finalized until a couple of days before the show.

The Departed: Bloody good

I finally made it to a showing of The Departed last weekend. If Martin Scorsese's recent epics like Gangs of New York and The Aviator were a little too high-and-mighty for your taste, then The Departed might be just your style -- and given that there's a good chance this film will walk away with the statuette on Feb. 25, that seems to go for a lot of people.

This time, Scorsese returns to the streets -- of Irish south Boston. This taut (despite its two-and-a-half-hour length) thriller grabs you from the get-go as it sets the hook: Matt Damon as a mob rat in the Massachusetts State Police, Leonardo DiCaprio as a "Statie" mole in the mob. (The sharp, Oscar-nominated script by William Monahan is adapted from the Hong Kong gangster flick Internal Affairs.) Soon, the rat is on to the mole and vice versa, although their identities remain hidden. Then, the hunt is on.

It's a great cast, starting with DiCaprio's bottled-energy performance as Billy Costigan. Mark Wahlberg and Alec Baldwin have a great time with the dialogue in their supporting roles. Jack Nicholson goes a little too Witches of Eastwick on us in a couple of scenes, but he conveys the menace of the mob kingpin.

This being Valentine's Day, I should note that those hoping for a romantic subplot would be best served elsewhere. Vera Farmiga is good as Damon's psychologist girlfriend, but the role is more plot device than romantic lead.

Scanning today's movie listings, it looks like The Departed is starting to depart from theaters again -- which may have something to do with the fact that it's now out on DVD. Either way, it's worth a look.

In the news: Silver and gold; Oscar goes global

A Reuters story points out that if conventional wisdom holds up, Helen Mirren will join an exceedingly small club: Oscar-winning actresses over 50.

Also, AP observes that this year's nominees are truly a global bunch:

This year's lineup is the most ethnically diverse ever, with five black people, two Hispanics and an Asian among the 20 acting nominees. Best-picture nominee "Letters From Iwo Jima" is almost entirely in Japanese. Hispanics alone garnered a record 19 nominations, including three Mexican directors contending for some of the biggest prizes of the night.

12 days to go: What's the buzz?

The big pre-Oscars awards are behind us now, and Academy voters have one more week to get their ballots in. It's time for a buzz check. Unfortunately, Monday came and went with no weekly update to the Buzzmeter over at the Envelope (guess they're still hung over from the Grammys over there at the L.A. Times). Entertainment Weekly's buzz survey won't get an update till Thursday. Thursday?!?

So we'll have to settle for a report from that entertainment bellwether Reuters. They've got The Departed and Little Miss Sunshine as the definite front-runners for best picture, with Babel, which seems to have faded since its Golden Globes triumph, in don't-count-'em-out-yet status.

Another reason to keep an eye on Babel: The Big Man of Film Criticism himself, Roger Ebert, arose from his sickbed last weekend to lend his official endorsement to Babel -- as both "will win" and "should win." You may recall that last year Ebert picked Crash when everyone thought Brokeback Mountain would win -- and, well, just ask Ang Lee what happened there.

For best director, last week's Directors Guild award pretty much sealed the deal for Martin Scorsese. Does that mean The Departed will ride to best picture on Marty's coattails? Maybe, but don't bet on it; four years out of the past eight the Academy has split the best picture and best director awards.

Still not much suspense in the actress awards: A loss by either Helen Mirren or Jennifer Hudson would be a huge upset. But the actor awards could get interesting: Alan Arkin is gaining momentum against supporting actor favorite Eddie Murphy, and Peter O'Toole, Reuters says, has been "making the Oscar party rounds" in hopes of unseating Forest Whitaker. Hmmmm. Stay tuned ...

[UPDATE 6:45 PM: The Buzzmeter is now updated; they also have the best picture race as a toss-up between The Departed and Little Miss Sunshine.]

In other news: Best actress nominee Judi Dench won't be at the Oscars. Officially, the reason is knee surgery. Or maybe the Brits are just peeved Hudson blew off the BAFTAs to go to the Grammys.

Queen, Scotland rule British awards

The British Oscars, the BAFTAs, were handed out last night in London -- and let's just say the voters seemed to be rooting for the home team. The big winners were The Queen and The Last King of Scotland:

Best film: The Queen
Best director: Paul Greengrass, United 93
Best actress: Helen Mirren, The Queen
Best actor: Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland
Best supporting actor: Alan Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine
Best supporting actress: Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls
Best original screenplay: Little Miss Sunshine
Best adapted screenplay: The Last King of Scotland
Best British film: The Last King of Scotland

Given the British bent, it's hard to say what this portends for the Oscars, if anything. Babel garnered just one award, for best score, and The Departed was shut out entirely.

Other highlights from the telecast on BBC America: Greengrass, in a somber acceptance speech, reinforcing the importance of cinema in the post-9/11 world; Whitaker dedicating his award to his grandmother, who died two days earlier.

Also last night, Stateside: the Writers Guild awards. Best original screenplay went to Little Miss Sunshine, best adapted screenplay to The Departed.

Little Miss Sunshine: Good, but overrated

Last night we watched on DVD this year's Little Movie That Could: Little Miss Sunshine. We liked it. It's a good film. The best film of the year? Not so sure.

It's a road film about a dysfunctional New Mexico family on a mission to get their daughter Olive (Abigail Breslin) to the Little Miss Sunshine pageant in California. It was snapped up by Fox Searchlight out of last year's Sundance Film Festival (although it did not win the top prizes there -- those went to Quinceanera). Despite their problems, they're a likeable bunch, even the cranky, heroin-snorting grandpa ("I'm old! It doesn't matter!") played by Alan Arkin. You find yourself rooting for them throughout the film.

It's an excellent cast, but there's not a whole lot of depth here, neither in the story nor in the characters. Alan Arkin is a fine actor, but the character really requires just one note from him. Abigail Breslin is a good child actor, but not great. Mostly she's got a great smile, and her role is such that she isn't required to show a range of emotion. The best acting in the film is in the meatiest roles: Steve Carell as suicidal uncle Frank and Paul Dano as sullen brother Dwayne.

Don't mistake me: See Little Miss Sunshine if you haven't already. It's good. But an Academy Award winner? Not so much.