In cyberspace, nobody can hear you scream about intellectual property rights.

And for those who think the music for the new trailer for The Road might be too upbeat, well, check out how much worse it could have been after the cut.

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Remarkably faithful to the novel, down to the most desolate detail. What impresses me most about the production design is the endless ashen sensation of terrible majesty. It’s as if the whole world has become the ruins of the Acropolis — the brittle fossils of a lost culture. The look in Viggo’s eyes secures his nomination, I feel confident. It’s going to take a lot of wry grins, curmudgeonly scowls, and other baked ham recipes for any other actor to match the depths this role fathoms.

Variety’s Michael Fleming has the news:

While speculation is running high on who’ll host the Oscars, one name that can be crossed off the list is Hugh Jackman… The thesp, who’s starring on Broadway with Daniel Craig in the drama “A Steady Rain,” quietly turned down the job within the past few weeks, sources said.

Jackman drew praise for his first Oscar hosting gig in February under producer Laurence Mark and exec producer Bill Condon. He may take on hosting duties again in the future, but it’s understood that he didn’t want to do the show two years in a row.

I’m glad. The Globes orchestrated a well-played cock-block by announcing Ricky Gervais as next year’s host. The HFPA are coming on strong with newness and coolness — and increasingly impeccable rosters of nominees. To maintain their preeminent Big Event prestige, the Oscars need to do more give us a repeat. They can’t recycle last year’s tricks. I don’t know who AMPAS will come up with, but if they’re forced to try to find someone hipper than Gervais and more suave than Jackman, then I’m happy the bar has been raised to make them jump higher.

TCM’s Robert Osborne gets into the prediction game with the latest assemblage by Tom O’Neil over at The Envelope. You can click over to see the full list, but this is, more or less, how it shook down:

Also participating in the our pundit panel are Thelma Adams (Us Weekly), Erik Davis (AOL Cinematical), Scott Feinberg (AndTheWinnerIs), Paul Gaita (The Circuit, The Envelope), Pete Hammond (Notes on a Season, The Envelope), Elena Howe (The Envelope), Dave Karger (Entertainment Weekly), Kevin Lewin (World Entertainment News Network), Steve Pond (TheWrap), Richard Rushfield (Gawker), Peter Travers (Rolling Stone), Jeff Wells (Hollywood-Elsewhere) and Susan Wloszczyna (USA Today).

Only “The Hurt Locker” and “Invictus” get backing from all 16 sages. Scoring 15 is “Precious” (Lumenick doesn’t pick it) and “Up in the Air” (Lewin is a hold-out). Two gurus spurn “Up” (Feinberg and me) and three don’t back “Nine” (Gaita, Pond and Wloszczyna).

Missing from the “Avatar” bandwagon are Hammond and Wells. Pond and Travers are among the five gurus who don’t buy that “The Lovely Bones” will make it. And there’s less support for “An Education” than I thought there’d be (Karger and Hammond don’t think it will make the grade).

“THE HURT LOCKER” (16) — Adams, Davis, Feinberg, Gaita, Hammond, Howe, Karger, Lewin, Lumenick, O’Neil, Osborne, Pond, Rushfield, Travers, Wells, Wloszczyna

“INVICTUS” (16) — Adams, Davis, Feinberg, Gaita, Karger, Hammond, Howe, Lewin, Lumenick, O’Neil, Osborne, Pond, Rushfield, Travers, Wells, Wloszczyna

“PRECIOUS” (15) — Adams, Davis, Feinberg, Gaita, Hammond, Howe, Karger, Lewin, O’Neil, Osborne, Pond, Rushfield, Travers, Wells, Wloszczyna

“UP IN THE AIR” (15) — Adams, Davis, Feinberg, Gaita, Hammond, Howe, Karger, Lumenick, O’Neil, Osborne, Pond, Rushfield, Travers, Wells, Wloszczyna

“UP” (14) — Adams, Davis, Gaita, Hammond, Howe, Karger, Lewin, Lumenick, Osborne, Pond, Rushfield, Travers, Wells, Wloszczyna

“NINE” (13) — Adams, Davis, Feinberg, Hammond, Howe, Karger, Lewin, Lumenick, O’Neil, Osborne, Rushfield, Travers, Wells

“THE LOVELY BONES” (11) — Adams, Davis, Feinberg, Gaita, Hammond, Howe, Karger, Lewin, Lumenick, O’Neil, Wloszczyna

“AVATAR” (10) — Adams, Davis, Feinberg, Gaita, Karger, Lumenick, O’Neil, Pond, Travers, Wloszczyna

“AN EDUCATION” (10) — Adams, Feinberg, Gaita, Howe, Osborne, Pond, Rushfield, Travers, Wells, Wloszczyna

I feel it is my duty to remind everyone that these are blind guesses, the way one might throw down some green at the Kentucky Derby, lay it all on the line for some good ink and a stellar track record.   Movies are, quite simply, magic.  Everyone involved hopes that all of them will be the best things ever made, but half of the time, the results don’t match either the hype or the hope.    At this stage in the game, you can’t really talk about who’s “ahead,” but rather, how perceptions are shifting.  I suppose this is what ultimately drives the stock market, right?  Perception?  So maybe if they do it long enough there could end up being some “there” there, but for now, it is a game.  A fun game, but a game nonetheless.

Oscar Emerges from Chaos at NYFF

by Stephen Holt

“Chaos reigns!” said the suddenly talking fox in Lars von Trier’s latest gore-and-upchuck opus “Antichrist” at this year’s New York Film Festival. One thing that that misogynistic, repellent, controversial film made clear to me though was, there was no way the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences members were gonna pop THAT DVD into their players come nominating time. Despite stars Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg giving their ALL (and maybe way too much), this was NOT an Oscar movie. Female genital mutilation in graphic close-up left people, me included, wanting to scream and run for the exits. I couldn’t believe that both TIFF and NYFF were screening it. Extreme torture porn masquerading as art, however, is NOT the Academy’s dish.

Although extreme topics are not outside Oscar’s lately edgy and historically lefty world view. Like for instance, the ironically titled “Precious” (Based on the novel “Push” by Sapphire) which was all the rage and the center of the Oscar hurricane that always begins to take shape at this time of year as Toronto, and then the New York Film Festivals pave the way for the road to the Oscars.

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Martin Scorsese scares pretty easy. I understand that these kinds of lists are idiosyncratic by definition, but some of his titles annotated on The Daily Beast must surely come with an asterisk (”*scary when I was 9 years old.”)   I’m glad I finally caught up with Dead of Night this week — on the recommendation of a few trusted readers.   It’s good to be familiar with the classics that once spooked the pants off audiences, but for me Dead of Night was almost a comedy.   The second flashback, with the youngster who met a ghost in the attic, was a hilarious reminder of how many teenage actors of the past had no concept of “act natural.”  — “I’m not frightened! I’m not frightened! Oh, please! Hold me tight!” (3:50)

I’ve never seen The Entity or The Uninvited and now I want to.  But I can say without hesitation that the only thing scary to me about Dead of Night and Isle of the Dead is their hellishly stilted dialogue and paralyzing  pacing.   That said, I’m down with Scorsese’s other 9 choices, and I’m hoping his obvious affection for crazed  isolation helps him conjure up some of the same classic atmosphere on Shutter Island.

1. THE HAUNTING

• “You may not believe in ghosts but you cannot deny terror!” was the tagline for this absolutely terrifying 1963 Robert Wise picture about the investigation of a house plagued by violently assaultive spirits.

2. ISLE OF THE DEAD

3. THE UNINVITED

4. THE ENTITY

• Barbara Hershey plays a woman who is brutally raped and ravished by an invisible force in this truly terrifying picture. The banal settings, the California-modern house, accentuate the unnerving quality.

5. DEAD OF NIGHT

• A British classic: four tales told by four strangers mysteriously gathered in a country house, each one extremely disquieting, climaxing with a montage in which elements from all the stories converge into a crescendo of madness. Like The Uninvited, it’s very playful…and then it gets under your skin.

6. THE CHANGELING

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Press Release:

Beverly Hills, CA — Oscar® winners Jonathan Demme, Anjelica Huston and Quentin Tarantino, along with past Honorary Award recipient Kirk Douglas, will be among the presenters at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ inaugural Governors Awards event on November 14, Academy President Tom Sherak announced today. The evening will feature presentations of the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award to producer-executive John Calley, and Honorary Awards to actress Lauren Bacall, producer-director Roger Corman and cinematographer Gordon Willis.

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Things aren’t anywhere near as quiet as they should be right about now. There hasn’t been a No Country for Old Men stretching its legs for the long haul; there probably isn’t a Slumdog Millionaire poised to eat up every available award known to man. That might be Up in the Air. Is there a showdown between a scrappy underdog and a Big Hollywood Movie ready to emerge? If so, there are little to no indicators. This is going to be a last-minute scramble.

And yet, there is much ruminating online about the race, such as it is. A recent New York Observer piece lamented the absence of Oscar movies. Erik Childress has launched his seasonal series, the Oscar Eye and has started to look at the movies but refuses to count in those that haven’t yet been seen. Tom O’Neil recently polled a few to find out their take. Childress has a list of films he thinks are the frontrunners right now but he also has ten images at the top of his site, and those ten seem to be close to what the ultimate ten might look like, give or take a film or two. Remember, the votes are being counted in order of preference. The list will still show films that are passionately loved by many in the Academy.

Keep reading to delve into Deep Background of Academy history when there were ten nominees for Best Pic.

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Via Craig Kennedy at Living in Cinema, the UK trailer for Nowhere Boy, nominated for 6 British Independent Film Awards on Monday:

BEST BRITISH INDEPENDENT FILM
BEST SCREENPLAY (Matt Greenhalgh)
BEST ACTOR (Aaron Johnson)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS (Anne-Marie Duff)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS (Kristin Scott Thomas)
DOUGLAS HICKOX AWARD [BEST DEBUT DIRECTOR] (Sam Taylor Wood)

UPDATE: Here’s a more official version, without the subtitles. (I’ll leave the other one up after the cut, for our Thai readers.)

And you can watch the trailer in crisp HD at Yahoo.

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After yesterday’s action-oriented domestic trailer for Green Zone, we now have the substantially improved international cut — more serious, more provocative, more relevant. As we’re tempted to make comparisons to The Hurt Locker or Body of Lies, let’s not forget that the job of those movies is to fictionalize reality, while Greengrass is telling a true story to dramatize reality. Two equally valid approaches, each capable of landing gut-punches with meaningful impact. But Green Zone promises to deliver what Greengrass does best. In films like Bloody Sunday and United 93, Paul Greengrass recreates reality with a pulsating sense of intense immediacy. Nobody’s a bigger fan of The Hurt Locker than I am, but here’s where Green Zone ups the ante: this shit really happened.

(Thanks to Amanda — took a few hours to find a copy that would play without freezing up.)

Screen Daily reports some details:

Jury chair Anjelica Huston said of France’s foreign-language Academy Award submisison: “A masterpiece, Un Prophete has the ambition, purity of vision and clarity of purpose to make it an instant classic. With seamless and imaginative story-telling, superb performances and universal themes, Jacques Audiard has made a perfect film.”

The jury gave a special mention to John Hillcoat’s The Road.

Full article here.

Not to be outdone by yesterday’s trailers from 2 major mid-winter movies (Shutter Island and Green Zone), the 3rd important off-season release of 2010 comes out with another preview too. To my eye, there’s almost nothing new here that we didn’t already see in July — but the shots are edited together in different order, and the crowd reaction at the Scream Awards on Spike TV last night gives this clip the feeling of a familiar song performed in concert. In the interest of completing the collection, we’ll post it anyway.

Steve Pond over at The Wrap decides to figure out if there is any Oscar love available for  the new Michael Jackson money grab documentary, This is It:

Makeup: Let’s see – the AMPAS definition is “any change in the appearance of a performer’s face, hair or body created by the application of cosmetics, three-dimensional materials, prosthetic appliances, or wigs and hairpieces, applied directly to the performer’s face or body.” I think we have a winner! Except that stuff was all done in the service of real life, not the movie …

Song: The fact that the “new” song, “This Is It,” turns out to have been co-written in 1983 by Jackson and Paul Anka is a pretty reliable indication that no songs were written for the movie. In fact, they couldn’t have been, because there wasn’t a movie when the footage was shot.

Score: Even if there’s original music composed to fill the spaces between Jackson’s songs, there’s probably not enough of it.

Sound editing, sound mixing: Yes.

Visual effects: David Copperfield-style stage effects don’t count.

Documentary feature: Maybe next year. To allow time for the multi-level judging process, the documentary eligibility period began September 1, 2008 and ran through August 31, 2009, with an extension to September 31 granted to some films. Without a seven-day run in L.A. and New York during that time, a film isn’t eligible.

As fascinating as Shutter Island looks, are we beginning to understand why it might be a less likely Oscar candidate than two other major Paramount productions this season? If it becomes a classic of Gothic horror next February then its thrills will last long enough to see it nominated appropriately in 2010. If it’s simply a great time at the movies from a director who’s this time more interested in entertainment than he is in winning another Oscar, then aren’t we glad that Shutter Island won’t be wrung out through the awards spin-cycle this year? The novel is an homage to mid-century noir with splashes of grand guignol and the screenplay is faithful to that vision. This material was never going to be Double Indemnity. It’s The Spiral Staircase to Shock Corridor, and proud of it. I can’t wait — but I don’t mind waiting.