Oscar-winner Norbit? I couldn't make this up

Now I didn't bother to see "Norbit," a k a Eddie Murphy's ultra-classy career move directly after getting his first acting Oscar nomination, but believe it or not - if you look deep enough - you'll indeed find it buried in Tuesday's Oscar nominations.

Facing off with the folks behind the maquillage in "La Vie en Rose" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" in the Achievement in Makeup category, Rick Baker and Kazuhiro Tsuji have a solid chance of walking away with one of those little statues primarily for, well, putting Eddie Murphy in a fat suit. Sheesh.

In much better news about a much more worthy nominee, cinematographer Roger Deakins has pulled off an impressive double dip that we haven't seen since 1971.

The cinematographer's nominations for "No Country for Old Men" and "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" are the first double in the category since Robert Surtees was nominated for "The Last Picture Show" and "Summer of '42."

Nominated five times previous to this year, Deakins is best known as the primary cinematographer for the Coens, having filmed nine of their movies thus far (and how in the world did he not win an Oscar for the wild look of "O Brother Where Art Thou?"), but among his other various credits you'll also find great flicks like John Sayles' "Passion Fish," Frank Darabont's "Shawshank Redemption" and Martin Scorsese's "Kundun."

This year, his competition comes from (besides himself): Seamus McGarvey for "Atonement," Janusz Kaminski for "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" and Robert Elswit for "There Will Be Blood."

Of those, I haven't seen "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" or "The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford," and "There Will Be Blood" certainly had a singular look to it, but no movie left a stronger or longer-lasting visual impression on me in 2007 than "No Country for Old Men," so here's hoping this artist finally gets the recognition he clearly deserves.

New hope for an end to the strike?

"Ironic" is a term I've tried to stop using too often because I'm fairly certain I use it incorrectly, but it would certainly seem to fit the latest development in the WGA strike.

As the scribes have stood strong in the picket line, the leeches who produce reality TV have jumped into the void with zeal, filling my TV set with simply unwatchable crap. Now, in what can only be called fair play in my book, it seems that in informal talks Tuesday that will hopefully lead to solid negotiations, the writers have dropped a demand to unionize the folks who create reality fare (the fine folks in the animated division apparently got cut loose too, unfortunately.)

And in another hopefully promising development, both sides have agreed to a "news blackout" until some deal can be reached. Now, people, can't we all just get along?

Why is this advertised at my multiplex?

For at least three months now there has been a poster at one of my local multiplexes, the AmStar 16 (or The Grand, or whatever it's called now), for "The Hunting Party," a flick which I've wanted to see for a long time.

So, imagine my surprise when, surveying this week's DVD releases, I found the Richard Shepard flick starring Terrence Howard, Richard Gere and Jesse Eisenberg (of "The Squid and the Whale.") In the serio-comedy, the trio embarks on an unauthorized mission to find the No. 1 war criminal in Bosnia and gets mistaken for a CIA hit squad.

Now, I'm very happy I'll finally get to see this flick, which has just been moved to the top of my (fully stocked, thanks to the readers of this site) Netflix queue, but is it too much to ask that the poster promising its mythic big-screen appearance in Macon be taken down? Peace out.

All hail Criterion: Demko's DVD shelf

The big news if, like me, you happen to live in Macon, is that Wes Anderson's "Darjeeling Limited" is coming to The Grand (formerly known as the AmStar) this weekend. I've been back to the site three times already to check it, but it seems a slow movie weekend means the answer to "how far will I have to drive to watch the new Wes Anderson movie?" is, well, about 10 miles. Huzzah to that.

For the rest of the world, thanks to Criterion (who are at work on a special edition of Anderson's "Bottle Rocket"), it's a banner week on DVD with two genuine classics getting grand treatment.

First up comes "A Bout de Souffle," or as Criterion has chosen to call it by its English title, "Breathless," or as I like to call it each time I finish watching it, "quite possibly the coolest movie ever made."

An exaggeration? I don't think so. If you've never seen Jean Paul Belmondo riffing on Bogie and pitching woo at the very funny Jean Seberg, watch this immediately. There was also an American version of this starring Richard Gere, but i couldn't possibly give you an opinion on that since I could never bring myself to watch it.

For the new Criterion edition of Jean Luc Godard's original Frenchy flick, the extras include: Archival interviews with Godard, Belmondo, Seberg and co-star Jean-Pierre Melville; new video interviews with director of photography Raoul Coutard, assistant director Pierre Rissient and filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker; New video essays: filmmaker and critic Mark Rappaport's "Jean Seberg" and critic Jonathan Rosenbaum's "Breathless as Film Criticism"; "Chambre 12, Hotel de Suede," an 80-minute French documentary about the making of "A Bout de Souffle," with members of the cast and crew; "Charlotte et son Jules," a 1959 short film by Godard, starring Belmondo; and a booklet featuring writings from Godard, film historian Dudley Andrew, Francois Truffaut's original film treatment and Godard's scenario. With all that included, I just can't recommend this one highly enough.

In making "Days of Heaven," American director Terrence Malick clearly took note of the French New Wave to make some ripples of his own. His increasing abhorrence of anything resembling a structured plot has, for me at least, made his recent movies like "The New World" almost unwatchable, but with this '70s flick he was clearly on top of his game.

As visually stunning as it is all-around entertaining, "Days of Heaven" stars Gere as a Chicago steel worker who accidentally kills his supervisor and flees to the Texas panhandle with his girlfriend (Brooke Adams) and little sister (Linda Manz) to work harvesting wheat in the fields of a stoic farmer (Sam Shepard). What they find there develops into a love triangle and much more.

For the Criterion edition you won't get a commentary from the very camera-shy Mr. Malick, so instead there's one from art director Jack Fisk, editor Billy Weber, costume designer Patricia Norris and casting director Dianne Crittenden, who all apparently provide insight into just how hard it was to work for the demanding Malick.

There's also an audio interview with Gere that plays over footage from the film, in which he also vents some frustrations with Malick. Rounding out the set are interviews with Shepard and with camera operators John Bailey and Haskell Wexler. If you have a few shekels lying around, you can pick up these two genuine classics for $53 from Amazon, which sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

"Fido" - a zombie movie I somehow managed to miss

I've seen the poster for "Fido" several times now, but it never hit me that that was the very funny Billy Connolly all zombied out in the picture. If that's not enough to make this at least worth a rental, well, you and I clearly just have different tastes in movies. As far as I can tell, this is basically a boy-and-his-dog movie in which the dog just happens to be a zombie. I'm there already.

Two great TV series come to an end

I'm about to watch Kristen Bell's "Heroes" debut on the DVR (as soon as I can wrap this up, in fact), and seeing her again will be nice, but not as nice as the oft-rumored but ultimately failed revival of "Veronica Mars" would have been. The series had already lost its way a bit in the third and final season, out on DVD today, as it substituted mini-cases for a single, season-long puzzle to solve. Even in its lesser form, however, it was funnier and smarter than just about anything else on TV, and well worth buying on DVD. If you spring for it, you'll even get "Pitching Season 4": An in-depth interview with creator Rob Thomas discussing the new direction for the series he tried to pitch to network executives that picks up years later, with Veronica as a rookie FBI agent.

"The Sopranos - Season 6, Part 2" famously wrapped up the mob series with an up-in-the-air ending that infuriated many fans but just worked for me. I've never been one that demands closure, and from what I hear the ending of the new Coen bros. flick "No Country for Old Men" will put this further to the test, assuming I ever get to see it. Along with the final nine episodes, you get the promising featurette "Making Cleaver": A behind-the-scenes look at Christopher's horror film, and "The Music of The Sopranos," in which creator David Chase, cast, and crew discuss the songs from the show.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I am indeed going to cut this short and go watch "Heroes" now. Peace out.

Where's Bruce Lee when you need him?

If he were here, I'm sure he'd put an end to this madness quicker than you could say "this remake reeks."

There are surely better movies than "Enter the Dragon," but I'll challenge anyone to come up with one that's cooler.

This was supposed to be Bruce Lee's ticket to the big time, and it certainly would have been if he hadn't died during post-production. Rumor has it he had a big but uncredited role in writing and choreographing the fighting sequences in this, his first and only big Hollywood flick.

In it, of course, he's hired by the British government to infiltrate an underground fighting ring run inside an island fortress (of course!) It never gets much more complicated than that, but for anyone who loves kung fu, this flick simply contains some of the best fight scenes ever filmed. And without Mr. Lee, they will obviously be impossible to re-create, so why even bother?

Especially when it's obvious you can do a whole lot more. The "noir-style" remake to be called "Awaken the Dragon" (wow, even the name is creative) is to be written and directed by Kurt Sutter, who has made his name so far as the executive producer of "The Shield." Now, I don't watch "The Shield," and after watching the simply flawless "The Wire" I fear cop shows are spoiled for me from here on out, but surely with that on his record he can do a whole lot better than this for his breakthrough to the big screen.

And, worst of all if I have this right, the plot so far sounds like they've take just the shred of "Dragon" (and, of course, the name) and just perverted it completely. The lead will be an anglo (I assume, though maybe not) FBI agent who "pursues a rogue Shaolin monk in the bloody world of underground martial arts fight clubs." Excuse me while I take a short break to vomit.

If you want to watch a new movie about underground fight clubs (and, given the right one, I certainly would), I'd put my money instead behind what David Mamet's currently cooking up with Chiwetel Ejiofor as a mixed martial arts instructor who's lured into the world of competition. "Redbelt" is in post-production now, and even if it does also star Tim Allen, it's simply got to be tons better than whatever comes of this craptastic project.

So, you wanna be a rap movie star?

One of my former co-workers, entertainment writer Greg Fields, came up with a rather memorable lead when asked to write about a local "American Idol"-style competition that took place when Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken were in the real "Idol" finals.

I'm paraphrasing here a bit, but what he actually wrote, and what appeared in The Telegraph, was something very close to "Are you fat, black, sweaty or ambiguously gay? If so, Southern Idol is for you." Needless to say, the organizers of the event weren't amused, but I sure was, and it's the first thing that came to mind when I read this crazy story today.

It seems that Voletta Wallace, mother of the late and very great Notorious B.I.G., is taking part in the search for an unknown person to play her son in an upcoming Fox Searchlight movie to be directed by George Tillman of "Soul Food" fame.

So, if you're a black man of a certain build who thinks he can rap, this is indeed your shot at the (somewhat) big time. Beginning at 3 a.m. Sunday, anyone can submit an audition video to BiggieCasting.com.

On the serious side, Biggie was indeed a great M.C., and if I can make a suggestion of one black man who not only fits the build, but can also rap and actually act, how about David Banner? The best Southern rapper around was just about the only good thing in Craig Brewer's "Black Snake Moan" playing well, essentially himself. I'd probably just hand the role to him now, but it should be fun to watch all the silliness that unfolds until they come to any such decision.

Two faces of Haynes' Dylan

Iwatchstuff.com had these two new stills from Todd Haynes' upcoming Bob Dylan flick, "I'm Not There," which I'm holding out hope will have enough star power to make it even to my rather remote corner of the world when it finally opens in September.

In the flick, Dylan will be played by at least six people: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger and Ben Wishaw. As these photos show, some will have more luck in pulling it off than others. I'll buy Heath Ledger as a young Dylan, but Richard Gere just looks like he's been huffing in an alley for six days straight. Feel free to pile anymore hate on Mr. Gere, or add anything else that comes to mind.



And finally, just in case anyone's still thinking it really is possibly to re-create any Bruce Lee movie without, well, Bruce Lee, please enjoy this clip of him putting an enormous ass-whupping on Ohara (Robert Wall) from the one and only "Enter the Dragon." After all, what day, even a Friday, isn't just a little bit better with a little Bruce Lee? Peace out.