Today, I’ll talk truth to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, potential justice of the Supreme Court Sonia Sotomayor, Pope Benedict XVI and President Barack Obama.  That’s a more powerful lineup than the 1927 New York Yankees, if I do say so myself.

I have almost begun to feel sorry for Nancy Pelosi.  After all, when you get past the facelifts and the Botox injections, the designer suits and the large private jet, you have an aging grandmother who, in a perfect world, would be home playing with the grandkids and letting the wrinkles show.  Instead, she’s constantly on TV, telling lies and looking like a small animal staring at oncoming headlights.  I think that instead of babbling about what she didn’t know and when she didn’t know it, she should claim the Twinkie defense just like that other two-bit San Francisco politician, Dan White.  In case you don’t recall, when he went on trial for killing Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone, White’s lawyers, in making their case for diminished capacity, claimed he had been suffering from depression, and that his depression had been made more severe by a junk food diet that included a lot of Twinkies.  I can see Rep. Pelosi taking that defense out of moth balls, dusting it off and blaming all of her recent insanity on cheap confections.  Heck, forget the pastries; she’d only need to mention having to sit through meetings with the likes of Harry Reid, Rahm Emanuel or Arlen Specter, and even I would lessen her sentence.

Secretary Gates insists that Guantanamo has to be shut down because its very name is a source of embarrassment for America throughout the world.  Well, I happen to think the world is an embarrassment and is therefore in no position to judge us.  But the solution in any case is not to shut down Gitmo, especially when it will cost $80 million to do so and when nobody has the slightest idea where to move the terrorists, but to simply change the name of the facility.  We could call it any number of things, ranging from Paradise to Fantasy Island.  Or we could take our lead from the pop singer, Prince, and simply change it to the Prison Formerly Known as Guantanamo.

I don’t know Sonia Sotomayor personally and, so, I don’t dislike her any more than I do any of the other liberal judges on Barack Obama’s short list of Supreme Court nominees.  The difference is that I saw a video of Judge Sotomayor addressing what I assume was a group of law students.  After telling them that the courts are where policy is made, she gave a little laugh and acknowledged that she probably shouldn’t have said that when she knew she was being taped.  But she did say it, and in doing so, she spoke for every left-wing judge in America.  The fact that she also believes that her experience as a Latina will cause her to rule differently from other people isn’t a cause for celebration.  It’s the Constitution that matters, not whether her parents were Puerto Rican, Chinese or Hungarian.  Here in California, judges have over-ruled the vote of the people on capital punishment, illegal immigrants and, before this May 26th, same-sex marriage.  In Washington, the Supremes expanded eminent domain in a way that would have impressed even the likes of Stalin, Hitler and Castro, and decided that when the Founding Fathers included “the pursuit of Happiness” in the Declaration of Independence, what they had in mind were millions and millions of abortions.

The bone I have to pick with the Pope involves his cockeyed sense of priorities.  Recently, I read a gruesome account of Catholic schools in Ireland.  Even Charles Dickens could not have dreamed up such a nightmare.  Apparently, for decades, the priests and nuns running these schools based their teaching philosophy on the precepts laid down by the Nazis who ran the concentration camps.  With disgusting regularity, they beat and sexually molested the children, and suffered no consequences.  At least not here on earth.

Now, I have nothing against the Catholic Church and, unlike some Jews, I don’t condemn it for ancient sins.  However, a while back, when Pope John II was visiting America, he decided to use his influence to save the life of a person who had killed three people and was about to be executed in Missouri.  Being the Pope, he got Governor Carnahan to commute Darrell Mease’s sentence to life without parole.  At the time, I found myself thinking that if the Pope was going to go to bat for a cold-blooded killer, the taxpayers in Missouri shouldn’t be left holding the bag; instead, Pope John should have taken him back to the Vatican and let the Church put him up for the next 40 or 50 years.

Now we have Pope Benedict XVI traveling to the Middle East, spewing out his predictable platitudes, while managing to suggest a moral equivalency between Israel and those dedicated to Israel’s destruction.  As usual, his words fell on deaf ears.  But, then, why should Jews or Muslims really care what he has to say, especially when he refuses to speak out in the one area where his authority is unquestioned?  After all, a couple of thousand years ago, Jesus said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.”  Jesus used “suffer” in the sense of “permit” or “allow,” but in modern times, far too many priests have perverted it to mean actual suffering.  It shouldn’t be asking too much of the Pope that he excoriate and ex-communicate those priests here in America and in Ireland who have brutalized countless Catholic children for their own base pleasure and amusement. 

As for President Obama, I would like to see him quit chastising George Bush while at the same time carrying forth his policies.  Understand, I approve of those policies, which have helped safeguard America for nearly eight years.  But, saying one thing while doing another may fool some of the people some of the time, and fool Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann all of the time, but it doesn’t make Obama look superior to the ex-president; it merely makes him look petty and deceitful.

Furthermore, I would suggest that Barack Obama quit telling us that everything he says and does garners us great respect in the world community.  The majority of that community is made up of lunatics and gangsters, and most Americans don’t want to gain the love and admiration of North Korea, Russia, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, China, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkey, Yemen or Indonesia.  It would be nice, though, if they were at least a little bit afraid of us.

If I had the president’s ear, I would beg him not to be a sucker, and not to think for a second that international villains will succumb to his much-publicized charm.  They will applaud his speeches and return his smiles, and they’ll happily stab him in the back.  I would try to make him realize that the world’s political leaders are just like Chicago’s, except that some of them have nuclear bombs at their disposal.

It’s easy, I would tell the president, to mouth all the usual cliches and be lauded by the various hand puppets and hand maidens at MSNBC and the New York Times, but being politically correct is, unfortunately, not the same thing as being correct politically.

Slumdog Millionaire (Fox Searchlight) is the odds-on Best Picture winner, and it expanded to about 600 additional playdates this weekend for a total screen count of 2,224. The other four contenders for Hollywood’s biggest prize, however, are on a combined 2,508 screens. That means that they are essentially done with their theatrical engagements in the US (barring a truly shocking upset). Even if you wanted to see the other four nominees, you might have trouble finding them at your local multiplex – especially if you live outside a major city.

The United States has approximately 40,000 individual movie screens. Only 11% of them are showing a Best Picture nominee this weekend. That speaks to how decidedly unpopular these movies are. For comparison in 1998, there were about 34,000 screens in the US, and on Oscar weekend 7,586 of them had a Best Picture nominee showing. That’s 22% of all American screens showing a Best Picture contender.

Here is how the Oscar weekend screen counts for 1998 and this year stack up.

1998
Titanic – 3,169 screens
Good Will Hunting – 1,805 screens
As Good As It Gets – 1,604 screens
L.A. Confidential – 723 screens
The Full Monty – 285 screens

2009
Slumdog Millionaire – 2,244 screens
The Reader – 962 screens
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – 754 screens
Milk – 411 screens
Frost/Nixon – 381 screens

Slumdog Millionaire has moved from quirky underdog to beloved box office juggernaut. This weekend, Danny Boyle’s Mumbai masterpiece will close in on the magical $100M barrier.

OSCAR WEEKEND PERFORMANCE FOR BEST PICTURE NOMINEES

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
2,224 screens
$2.1M Friday
$7.5M 3-Day
$97.46M cume
$118M Projected Cume

THE READER
962 screens
$705,000 Friday
$2.53M 3-Day
$22.9M cume
$29M Projected Cume

THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON
754 screens
$320,000 Friday
$1.12M 3-Day
$124.1M cume
$129M Projected Cume

MILK
411 screens
$265,000 Friday
$928,000 3-Day
$28M cume
$34M Projected Cume

FROST/NIXON
381 screens
$494,000 Friday
$17.22M 3-Day
$21M Projected Cume

Steve Mason is on Facebook and now also on Twitter.

But, in the world of gambling, you always want to look for value. What are the films and performances with longer odds that would be worth a wager on Sunday? My purpose here is to establish a betting line for each of the six major categories, and then find the value bet in each category.

Question: Who will win Best Picture? Answer: Still, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

BEST PICTURE
Slumdog Millionaire – 1/7
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – 6/1
Milk – 20/1
Frost/Nixon – 30/1
The Reader – 50/1

VALUE: I believe that in order to win an Academy Award, passion is required. Slumdog Millionaire has a passionate zeal among its supporters that will make it virtually unbeatable. Although I have made The Curious Case of Benjamin Button the second choice here, I give it very little chance of winning. It has major studio backing (Paramount), and it is certainly well-respected, but it is more admired than loved. So, for me the betting value is in Milk. Aside from Slumdog, it is the movie with the largest bloc of zealous fans. Gay and gay-friendly Academy members love the movie, and in the shadow of the passage of Proposition 8 in California, Milk is worth a $2 bet at the window.

Sean Penn's portrayal of Harvey Milk is now a decided underdog to Mickey Rourke

BEST ACTOR
Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler – 1/2
Sean Penn, Milk – 3/2
Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon – 10/1
Brad Pitt, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – 25/1
Richard Jenkins, The Visitor – 35/1

VALUE: After colorful, rambling, verging on obscene acceptance speeches at both the Golden Globes and the BAFTA Awards, Mickey Rourke is the true favorite for Best Actor. Rourke has also campaigned hard, paying the paying the price for that Golden Globe win by schmoozing each and every one of those 95 Hollywood Foreign Press members. Penn just doesn’t play that awards campaign game at all, but actors love him. The only real betting value here is Penn, who still has a chance of winning his second Oscar.

It has been 25 years since Mery Streep won an Oscar

BEST ACTRESS
Kate Winslet, The Reader – 1/2
Meryl Streep, Doubt – 5/2
Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married – 4/1
Angelina Jolie, Changeling – 25/1
Melissa Leo, Frozen River – 35/1

VALUE: It is Kate Winslet’s year. Just ask anybody. She has two outstanding awards-caliber performances in The Reader and Revolutionary Road. If rules would have allowed, she might have been nominated twice in the Best Actress category. She’s 0-fer-5 lifetime at the Academy Awards and deserves to win, but she can be beaten. Jolie and Leo have no shot. Hathaway is the 3rd choice in the field, and a win is not inconceivable, but Streep is the value bet. The undisputed greatest living actress has not won an Oscar in 25 years, despite the fact that this is her eleventh nomination since winning for Sophie’s Choice in 1983.

Ledger is a lock

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Heather Ledger, The Dark Knight – 1/100
Josh Brolin, Milk – 20/1
Robert Downey, Jr., Tropic Thunder – 25/1
Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Doubt – 30/1
Michael Shannon, Revolutionary Road – 50/1

VALUE: None. There is no value in this category. Heath Ledger will win Best Supporting Actor posthumously. If you are unfamiliar with how odds work, 1/100 means that you would have to bet $100 to win just $1, and even then, it would be tough to get anybody to take your wager.

Marisa Tomei's "stripper with a heart of gold" in THE WRESTLER may earn her a second Oscar

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona – 1/2
Viola Davis, Doubt – 3/1
Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler – 5/1
Amy Adams, Doubt – 12/1
Taraji P. Henson, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – 15/1

VALUE: This is, by far, the most competitive of the major awards. The longest shot in the field, Taraji P. Henson from Ben Button, is only a 15-1 longshot. Woody Allen has a knack for helping actresses win in this category (ask Dianne Wiest , who scored for both Hannah and Her Sisters and Bullets Over Broadway). That points to a win for Penelope Cruz, who was raw and sexy as Maria Elena in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Davis can certainly win for her fleeting-but-powerful turn in Doubt, but my value bet is Marisa Tomei. Her first win, for My Cousin Vinny, was viewed by many as a fluke. In fact, there is an urban legend that she really didn’t win. The story goes that Jack Palance, who presented that year, read the wrong name (the legend claims that Vanessa Redgrave was the actual winner for Howard’s End). In reality, there is no doubt that Tomei is an Oscar winning actress, who gives her career-best performance in The Wrestler.

The uncompromising David Fincher

BEST DIRECTOR
Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire – 1/7
David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – 6/1
Gus Van Sant, Milk – 20/1
Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon – 25/1
Stephen Daldry, The Reader – 35/1

VALUE: Nobody is going to beat Danny Boyle, but if I was looking for a strong value bet, I would wager on Fincher. He is a visionary with some amazing movies on his resume, including Se7en, Fight Club and Zodiac. He has worked with countless actors and industry types, and his uncompromising nature makes him tough to like, but easy to respect. If there were an upset in this category, Fincher is the only guy who could pull it off.

Steve Mason is on Facebook and now also on Twitter.