• This is actually Nick Nolte's third Oscar nomination! (For Warrior.) He was most recently snubbed for his work in Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore. READ MORE

Over the weekend, Sony freaked out when they heard David Denby's review of "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" was coming out in the New Yorker today, sending out a dramatic "please respect our embaaaaaargo" email to all and sundry. (The "embargo" date is December 13. Forced to define the rationale for embargoes, their reasoning is tepid, at best: "[E]mbargo dates level the playing field and enable reviews to run within the films’ primary release window, when audiences are most interested." But, you know, trailers should come out four months before the film. Mmm hmm.) Then producer Scott Rudin wrote an email to Denby, which was so clearly for public consumption, as it was immediately "leaked," because you have never, ever seen such a calm and polite communication from Rudin. What Scott Rudin is this and where is the real one? Denby's points in debate with Rudin are decent, if not particularly relevant: he's definitely right that critics (and even movie-goers) are pretty hosed that Oscar movie season is like a few weeks long and also over the holidays. (And then, the February – April movie season assaults our intelligence.) People break embargoes all the time; but because this is an Oscar movie, the studio is treating it like the publication of the Pentagon Papers. READ MORE

We all know that our movie stars are not only a precious natural resource, but also a group of individuals that are very highly compensated, not just now, but even back then, when we were just figuring out what to call them (moving picture heroes? Lumièronauts?). We also all know that this compensation has increased as the years tick by and the Oscars are doled out. But do we know exactly by how much? READ MORE

It's always exciting when the girl who was never supposed to make it totally makes it! And so yay, the New Yorker profile of Anna Faris today (subscription only!), who can now place herself on a list of lady actress script-readers behind "Reese, Cameron, Natalie Portman, Kate Hudson, Katherine Heigl and Anne Hathaway." (Sidebar: at least two of those are frightening and crazy and also chronic liars! To be fair, at least two of them are kindly and human.) But it's a very good look at the "problem" of women doing comedy. Hmm. Is it a "problem"? It's a problem, if you want to spend a lot of money on a movie and then make a lot of money, which is the only goal in Hollywood. It's not a problem if you want to have a good time and make cool stuff, which, then don't move to L.A. READ MORE

They came slowly, the franchise films, the grandchildren of the serials. The other night I was in the theater trying to see The Green Hornet for the second time (the first time, the theater started to burn down 30 minutes in, so I had to, like, evacuate (evacuate the theater, I mean, not like, in my pants), and then the next day sit through act one twice, which wasn't really the worst thing), and there was the omnipresent trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides. And it suddenly occurred to me that we were on the fourth movie of a franchise built around a really rather terrifically lame amusement park ride. There is also a Pirates of the Caribbean version of Monopoly, you know. (The Amazon reviews note that "the Jail should have been changed to the Brig and Free Parking should have been changed to Free Docking." Which, God, really, are companies that lazy now that they won't even rename Free Parking for us?) Despite how enjoyable Johnny Depp nearly always is (The Tourist excepted), this is a really strange state of cultural affairs. READ MORE

I'm still waiting to watch Easy A, but only because I haven't found the exact right moment of "I have two hours to kill and I want my mind to shut off entirely so, yes, I will let this movie that is far too young for me just wash over me and wipe everything away." I'm looking forward to it though, because who doesn't want to watch a movie about a girl taking charge of her slutty reputation in the judgmental halls of America's high schools? (NO, WHO DOESN'T?) Now, from Nicole Kassell, who made The Woodsman which was about how you can't go home again after you've been a convicted pedophile, and who is off making The Bell Jar, which is probably going to upset so many of us, there is this movie, Little Bit of Heaven, that has no U.S. release date, which is about a whore who doesn't believe in love who gets cancer and falls in love with her cancer doctor (haha, just like on "Bored to Death"!) and meets Whoopi Goldberg in heaven. Oh Lord. READ MORE

The richly imaginative details of J.K. Rowling’s fictive world, it must be admitted, are pleasurable. The hot-rod brooms, the flowing robes and flying cars, the goth Heaven of the sullen Slytherins, the snake language and the magic wands enclosing phoenix feathers or unicorn hairs, the metamorphic potions, the leaping or fizzing sweets! All these have been fully and lovingly realized in the Warner Brothers movie adaptations of the Harry Potter books, including the most recent, which is a fine-looking but completely incoherent mess with a morally bankrupt and politically repugnant story at its core. READ MORE