Cinemablend points us to Moviehole’s nab of Warner Bros.’s Gran Torino plot and cast breakdown. The official synopsis:

Walt Kowalski is a widower, a grumpy, tough-minded, borderline-hateful, unhappy man who can’t get along with either his kids or his neighbors, a Korean War veteran whose prize possession is a 1972 Gran Torino he keeps in cherry condition. Drawn against his will into the lives of the Hmong family that lives next door to him, Walt grows increasingly fond of TAO and his sister SUE, and takes steps to protect them from the gangs that foul his neighborhood with their strutting presence…

I really hope there is an old-guy-kicks-ass fight scene in an ally. The cast breakdown is over at Moviehole.

Nominations were announced this morning for the Daytime Emmy Awards in roughly 2300 categories. You can wade through the 20-page pdf to find out if your favorite “Outstanding Achievement in Technical Direction/Electronic Camera/Video Control” guy made the cut.

TOP MULTIPLE NOMINATIONS
17    The Young and the Restless
13    Guiding Light
13    One Life To Live
13    Sesame Street
12    As the World Turns
9     The Bold and the Beautiful
8     All My Children
8     The Ellen DeGeneres Show
7     The View
6     Days of Our Lives
6     General Hospital

hmm, I sometimes watch two of those. I’ll list the nominees in categories I care about (marginally) after the cut. You can list the nominees you care about (if any) in the comments.

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Variety’s Robert Koehler raves about the French doc, Beloved:

Lovely, extremely heartfelt film helps redefine the term “homemovie” as the director examines the sad, multilayered life of his grandmother Therese, who died of tuberculosis at 36. Desplechin once again demonstrates his capacity for turning anything into a cinematic moment, and accomplishes what many viewers might wish they had done with their own relatives. Tube buyers will lead the request line for this gentle, human document.

Yet, John Anderson has no kind words for Madonna’s I Am Because We Are (reminds me of the Colbert book, I Am, America, and So Can You – I think Madonna pays a tiny price, tiny, for staying out of touch with TV):

More famous for her personal reinventions than her music (or certainly her acting), Madonna now has apparently chosen to morph into Sally Struthers. For all its noble intentions, “I Am Because We Are” is little more than a longform PSA about the horrors of life in AIDS-ridden Malawi, one that asks many questions without providing answers — except, of course, the ministrations of a multimillionaire, and whatever one can donate via her website. Producer-writer’s celebrity might generate some ticket sales, but wide exposure was never in the cards, not will it be, unless the doc gets rear-projected during Madonna’s next concert tour.

Ouch. The title actually is, according to Wikipedia, “from Desmond Tutu’s (famous Archbishop from Cape Town, South Africa) words. ‘Ubuntu’ is an idea present in African spirituality that says ‘I am because we are’ – or we are all connected, we cannot be ourselves without community, health and faith are always lived out among others, an individual’s well being is caught up in the well being of others.”

Kris Tapley has redesigned his Incontention site and added a few more contributers.  He promises it to be a more lively and active blog, not just Oscar focused but industry focused.  Check it out.

Reuters prints the quotes from Empire Magazine’s interview with Ian McKellen, as follows:

“Yes, it’s true.  I spoke to Guillermo in the very room that Peter Jackson  offered me the part and he confirmed that I would be reprising the role. Obviously, it’s not a part that you turn down, I loved playing Gandalf.”

Well, someone’s got to say it.  In case you haven’t been following the latest distraction (do people really care about shit like this?) of Miley Cyrus, the “topless” photo and Annie Leibovitz, Vanity Fair has decided to showcase the talented photographer’s covers over the years.  What is striking about looking at them all in a long line, as ONTD has done, is how few people of color are on them.  VF wants to sell the magazines and traditionally, only white folk sell magazine covers.  Still, it is striking, is it not?  The very first one, or last one chronologically, is the most ethnically diverse.  They do have the token here or there – it’s just a general observation that though we’ve come a long way, in many ways, we’ve not come far enough.

The Coens’ film has had few, if any, actual stills from the film.  But First Showing has some of them (via Oh No, They Didn’t).  Tilda, George, John and Brad!

Here’s to hoping the Coen crowd doesn’t becoming like the Soderbergh crowd where all the cool kids hang together in every movie.

In our discussion on the Emmys selection for drama a few interesting items popped up. One of them is worth taking a deeper look at, I think, and that is whether or not Lost is gone forever. The Jack writes:

Lost started out as a show about these characters and how they interact with the island and respond to the mysteries around them – the characters came first. Now it’s about the island and the mysteries of it, and the now interchangeable characters come second. That’s not what I want, and it didn’t seem to be what the writers wanted at first, but since the audiences started complaining (the same audiences who only bother to catch the odd episode anyway) the writers have done everything they can to bend to their whims, which has started the show on a downward spiral that I hope to God they can get themselves out of.

I don’t really see how they can at this point. I do see a definite change from the earlier episodes. What was interesting back then were the backstories and how they informed who people were on the island. The time warp thing, the terrorist thing, the Oceanic Six – it’s just become interesting in a different way, perhaps more like 24. What it had going for it was uniqueness. Once the back stories started overlapping and becoming implausible they lost their value. I think you’ve hit it on the head, The Jack. It is now as if the characters don’t really matter that much and are only there to serve the weirdness that the island created in their lives. Either way, it’s still impossible to give up on.

Variety reports that Fernando Meirelles’ Blindness will indeed play at Cannes and will, in fact, open it. This should come as good news to the AD readers who kept bugging us to give the film some coverage.

What Just Happened stars Robert DeNiro as an aging producer who is trying to get a movie made. It also stars Bruce Willis, Stanley Tucci, John Turturro (my all time favorite most underrated actor),

Last year it was:

Boston Legal
Grey’s Anatomy
Heroes
House
The Sopranos

It’s easy to see why The Sopranos took it. Grey’s Anatomy and Heroes could have probably been dumped. Sure, they’re highly rated and successful but really THAT good? It seems to me that the biggest problem with the Emmys is that they start to look too much like the People’s Choice awards. There is no critical backlash, no respect at all for this voting body. The awards themselves must mean something to the recipients but let’s face it, in TV-land, who cares whether a show wins anything or not; the people decide what they like to watch.

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A few years back I was actually dabbling in writing, or adapting, a Che screenplay for a small production company in LA.  Back then, though, it was exactly the wrong political climate to make such a film.  Now, it’s all the rage.  With Soderbergh set to release his Che duo pics at Cannes, all eyes are suddenly on the sexy Commie revolutionary.  Cinematical has a review of a new Che doc called Chevolution, which screened at the Tribeca Film Fest:

What struck me about the movie was its completeness; it not only took a careful look at the lives of Guevara and Korda, but it also examined the genesis of the famous photograph, taken at a memorial for the victims of the 1960 terrorist attack on the ship Le Cubre. The photo, one of two frames of Che amongst rolls taken by many photographers at the event, wasn’t even published in the local papers the next day, but showed up internationally seven years later. Che’s revolutionary message, which dovetailed nicely with the student protests that had started around the world by that time, combined with a lack of copyright laws in Cuba, allowed the image to spread like wildfire around the globe.

The AP reports that the new Coen Bros. joint will open the most romantic festival of the season, the Venice Film Fest at the Lido (truly one of the prettiest places in Italy) on August 27.  According to Variety, Working Title released Atonement in Venice and look at how that turned out?  No Country launched from Cannes, which is probably why it’s not a great idea to launch Burn After Reading, which is probably not an Oscar movie (though never say never).

There is a trend on American TV, I don’t know if it’s the same in Europe, where people “discuss” the movies before the film screens and during the commercial breaks.  When I see this hideous extra pasted on any film it’s an immediate skip for me.  So it was with some sadness and perhaps ambivalence that I happened upon Robert Osborne and, of all people, Rose Mcgowan “discussing” Paper Moon just before it aired.  It is such a wonderful film and anyone with their channel pointed there is there to watch the movie, trust me.  Why do we necessarily have to listen to a chat about it?  She exhibits, perhaps, unexpected depth and/or intelligence, which maybe was the point?  Is she there to draw the young crowd?    Do they think we’re all incapable of googling the movie to find out more info?  Oh, wait – I get it now.  She was actually there for a reason:

As co-host of THE ESSENTIALS, the network’s signature movie showcase. McGowan will take a chair opposite TCM host Robert Osborne, just as she did during TCM’s recent Guest Programmer month in November. Starting Saturday, March 8 at 8 p.m., Osborne and McGowan will introduce “must see” movies each week with an eye toward helping viewers better understand why these films are important and the impact they had on audiences and the culture at large.

Oh, okay.  Oh and…

“During our many shoots with Guest Programmers this year, we encountered a lot of celebrities who impressed us with their knowledge and love of classic film,” said Tom Brown, vice president of original programming for TCM. “But Rose really stood out, because she was so passionate and insightful. We thought it would be great for her to share her passion with the audience by co-hosting THE ESSENTIALS in 2008.

We already knew Guillermo Del Toro was directing The Hobbit but now the news is set in stone

It’s no secret that we here at Awards Daily pledge our undying love for Guillermo after having given us Pan’s Labyrinth. Who knows what he’ll do with The Hobbit but we do know that his and Peter Jackson’s sensibilities aren’t altogether THAT different. Jackson was one of the few directors who could have done the LOTR series justice in that there wasn’t a whole lot of cutesy going on. Hopefully Del Toro will adhere to the same. Cute should not be an issue.

We’re back to the same ol’, same ol’ regarding the reluctance of the American people to sit through anything depressing about the war in Iraq. Now, Errol Morris has to confront the possibilities of empty theaters when his Standard Operating Procedure rolls out, as he discusses with Reuters:

The movie begins its roll-out to U.S. theaters this week, but Morris thinks he may have a problem on his hands. “This is a story I had to tell, but I don’t think anyone is going to see it,” he told Reuters.

Morris believes, though, that his story shows us things we haven’t seen before:

“You start to look into why this photo was posed and you find out that he was killed by the CIA and that others tried to sneak out his body. Sabrina sneaks in and takes pictures that in a different set of circumstances would have won a Pulitzer … Her crime was embarrassing the military. Without her photos we would have known nothing of this crime,” Morris said.

The best way to get people to pay attention is for the film to have itself adorned with awards. We’ll have to see if Morris can once again capture voters’ attention as he did when his Fog of War was the hottest ticket in town.