The pair are teaming up for the new political thriller “House of Cards,” a 13-episode series created specifically for Netflix. Spacey will star and produce the show, while Fincher (“The Social Network”) will share producing credits and direct the pilot episode. Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley announced today the show will start shooting in his state starting this spring.

The series is based on the novel and British miniseries of the same name dealing with political ambition and intrigue.

Media consumers won’t have to wait much longer to sample the kind of original fare Netflix has in mind as it broadens its content base.

“Lilyhammer,” a mobster out of water series starring “The Sopranos’” Steven Van Zandt, will debut next month on Netflix. And starting Monday, people accessing Hulu and Hulu Plus can watch “Endgame,” that streaming service’s original series about a chess genius who solves crimes in an unorthodox fashion.

Our television world is changing faster that network executives – or anyone else, for that matter – can process. But it’s mostly good news for the consumer. For example, viewers will be able to watch the entire season of “Lilyhammer” at their convenience rather than waiting for a new episode each week.

More choices, more platforms and, let’s hope, more quality programming coming from new sources.

Who else could turn the dawn of Facebook into a crackling drama worth a second and third look?

But with the 2007 film “Zodiac,” based on the non-fiction book of the same name by Robert Graysmith, Fincher dials down the technology to tell the kind of murder mystery too often ignored by today’s storytellers.

Fincher’s trio of tonally disparate leads transform a potentially leaden narrative into one of 2007’s finest efforts. What a shame the film’s box office haul didn’t measure up to its excellence.

Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Graysmith, the boyish editorial cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle circa 1969. Graysmith’s job is to deliver cutting-edge satire, but he allows himself to get sucked into the case of a serial killer with a serious need for attention.

The self-proclaimed Zodiac killer is on the loose in San Francisco, and the Chronicle’s crack crime reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.) is on the case. But this killer proves to be as mysterious as he is lethal, and neither Avery nor the cops assigned to bring him to justice (Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards) can get their man.

“Zodiac” stretches from the Woodstock era to the dawn of the Reagan revolution, methodically ticking away the important breaks in the case. Fincher’s story is nothing if not methodical. Dates flash on the screen to remind us of the timeline, and the just the facts, ma’am screenplay hardly has time to provide unnecessary character build-ups.

All the while, the killer gives clues to his intentions to the baffled press corps. Even famed attorney Melvin Belli (given a pompous airing by Brian Cox) gets enmeshed in the mystery.

One reason “Zodiac” surpasses most whodunnits is the intensity of the crimes in question. Fincher’s camera is unflinching as it records the shootings and stabbings that made headlines across the West Coast. Who could blame Bay-area residents for being afraid to leave their homes?

The film also captures a moment in time when the local newspaper provided both solace and support for a community. Avery is as much a key figure here as the cops working the beat, and it’s not shocking that a cartoonist would play such a big role in the investigation.

“Zodiac” isn’t interested in sensational cop tactics or detectives drowning their sorrows at the local watering hole. Avery’s alcohol problems are documented but not obsessed upon, and the workaday atmosphere surrounding Ruffalo’s character makes his role all the more intriguing.

Graysmith’s decision to focus on the unsolved murders rather than his young family isn’t explored fully enough here. It’s as if the cast became as obsessed with finding the Zodiac killer as those real-life counterparts. Gyllenhaal’s eyes grow blank as he pores over the minute aspects of the case, but the young actor cannot fully convey the sense of clarity he finds in doing his own detective work on the side.

“Zodiac” is long but never tedious, deliberate but rarely distracting. It’s precisely how to recreate an impossibly complex case with more than a few loose ends still remaining.

As entertainment falls further under the thumb of big business, we’re going to have fewer and fewer “movements” in media.  The grunge music of Seattle in the 90s, the pure funkadelic madness that came out of Minneapolis in the 80s, and the string of fun fantasy and sci-fi films produced by Steven Spielberg between 1981 and 1987 are a thing of the past.  The industry is more diverse, with studio executives throwing random things at the dart board, hoping something sticks.

A few things from 2010 will stick.  Here are the five albums and five films that rose above the dreck of the year.  I guess this was the worst year ever for entertainment.  Unless you count 1997.  Boy, did that year suck.

Music

I have a simple rule for music.  If it rocks, it works.  Genres are insignificant.  My ipod playlist makes no sense.  It may be the only place, besides the red carpet at the Grammys, that you can find Snoop Dogg next to Toby Keith.

Grace Potter & The Nocturnals

This eponymously named album sounds like it came out in 1992, right between the Gin Blossoms and Counting Crows.  And that is a-okay with me.  A soulful album that rocks when it needs to, rolls when it wants to.  Her vocals are great, and the orchestrations and shifts between genres elevate this band above the boring female singer/songwriters that fill the airways.  Yes, Sara Bareilles, I’m talking to you.

Covered in Gas - Evil Cowards

Frequent “Red Eye” guest Dick Valentine released this side project while taking a break from his equally awesome band Electric Six.  This album is definitely NSFW, but since when is rock and roll supposed to be safe?  Clever lyrics, crazy synthesizers, and beats that are more infectious than swine flu.  Not everybody will dig it, but if you do, your cool meter just went up from David Lee Roth to Fonzie.

Light Me Up – The Pretty Reckless

Brent Bozell over at Newsbusters has some issues with the band’s lead singer Taylor Momsen.  Point taken Brent, but unlike Miley Cyrus and Lady Gaga, there is a bit of authenticity behind Momsen’s rock star persona.  You get the sense that it isn’t a bunch of Hollywood types exploiting a young girl to appeal to an oversexed male audience, but a young girl exploiting an oversexed male audience.  A messed up young girl, to be sure, but I think she’s driving the car while we all sit in the back sipping our Slurpees.  If you’re like me and you’ve worn out your Hole “Celebrity Skin” CD, this is a worthy successor.  Taylor Momsen may be the reincarnation of Courtney Love.  What, Courtney Love is still alive?  Yeah, right.  Keith Richards is “alive” too.  Suckers.

The Archandroid – Janelle Monae

This album has been discussed on Big Hollywood before.  Like most leftists, Monae confuses ideals and actions, problems with solutions.  Her personal politics may be off base, but the messages in her songs are pitch perfect.  Plus, you’ve never really heard anything like it before.  That’s the mark of a true artist.

Charleston, SC 1966 - Darius Rucker

HOOTIE!!!!   Such a great album.  “I Don’t Care” featuring Brad Paisley is country music perfection.  Smooth vocals and rock solid country stylings make an album you can listen to over and over again.  And I have.

I probably should have mentioned Kanye West’s new album.  It is pretty awesome.  But man, he is such a tool.

Movies

Were there great movies in 2010?  Why, dare I say it? “You Betcha”!  (Note to editors, you can now feel free to tag Sarah Palin in this post to drive up hits.)

Inception

The Mack Daddy of Mack Daddy movies.  An action movie.  A science fiction movie.  An exercise in existentialism.  Everything is pretty damned perfect.  It’s great to watch a master filmmaker at the top of his game.  And hey, he managed to make Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page likable.  That’s some mad skills.

Kick-Ass

I already went into some detail about how this is a great Libertarian manifesto.  You can read it here.  And to sell my point further, I noticed while watching the Blu-Ray that the main character has an “Atlas Shrugged” poster on the wall in his room.  Coincidence?  I think not.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Are people so tired of Michael Cera being Michael Cera that they stayed away from one of the best movies of the year in droves?  Box office says, yes.  That’s a shame.  Edgar Wright’s homage to video games and twenty something angst is one of the most inventive films ever made.  It’s also wildly entertaining.  Although, I will say that the first time I saw it, I left the theater physically exhausted.  Yes, it’s that intense.

The Social Network

This movie is an odd experience.  It’s so well crafted, so engaging, so “interesting” that you can’t help but love it.  Yet, it is so emotionally detached at the end of the day that you feel a bit empty after seeing it.  Wait, it’s a film about Facebook and how a culture run by socially dysfunctional nerds may lack true human interaction?  Whoa, David Fincher, working on multiple levels there.  That empty feeling in my heart was the point?  Nice!

Centurion

How is crap like that new James L. Brooks movie in theaters and this movie barely got any screen time?  I mean it was in and out faster than a date with Jullian Assange.  (I kid, I kid.  You know we love you, you immature, ignorant, narcissistic, fascist douchebag).  This movie has it all.  Overacting British actors.  Ridiculous violence.  Over the top cinematography.  And hot chicks with weapons.  It’s like a Leigh Scott movie not made by Leigh Scott.  I’ll have to watch this over and over until Zach Snyder’s “Sucker Punch” comes out in March to get my fix.

There you have it.  Ten good things about 2010.  Not the worst year ever for music and movies.

Clearly, that was 2003.

—–

John Nolte’s review will post tomorrow.

Because the reviews are all uniformly glowing, there’s only one contrarian to leave you with and that’s the always predictably contrarian Armond White. We wish there were a less predictable contrarian, but for now he’s all we got:

The Social Network glamorizes a new paradigm: How the Internet’s basic disconnect characterizes contemporary public discourse. Director David Fincher’s lustrous video images make instant, stylish mythology out of the way Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg re-popularized the Internet by founding the Facebook in 2003. This brainy, insular 19-year-old pinpointed the Internet as a personal, rather than formal, means of communication and thus became the nation’s youngest billionaire. TV’s Aaron Sorkin concocted a script that pretends to assess Zuckerberg’s sea-change, but it’s Fincher’s mythmaking (his usual yellow-green color scheme, more burnished than ever) that uncannily combines moral confusion, social decline and empire building—although leaving out such crucial details as where the money comes from and the moral consequences of all that glorified disconnection. …

Not Soul Man, Harvard Man nor The Paper Chase—all movies that “got Harvard” to varying instructive degrees—The Social Network is simply Hollywood’s way, post- Obama, of sanctioning Harvard’s “masters of the universe” mystique. It’s an attempt at glorifying a contemporary aristocracy-cumplutocracy through flattery of Zuckerberg and his ilk. Ironically, these are the same shameless tycoons Oliver Stone takes out with sniper precision in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (a title that also fits this Facebook legend).

Like one of those fake-smart, middlebrow TV shows, the speciousness of The Social Network is disguised by topicality. It’s really a movie excusing Hollywood ruthlessness. That’s why it evades Zuckerberg’s background timidity and the mess that the Internet has made of cultural discourse. In interviews, Sorkin brags about the multiple narrative and Fincher has even invoked Citizen Kane—both are grandstanding excuses for Zuckerberg’s repeated masturbatory request for friendship—a mawkish George Clooney ending. Here’s the truth: Kane was not about a brat’s betrayal, but about a sensitive braggart’s psychological and philosophical shift inward. The Social Network is more like Hollywood’s classic film industry selfromance The Bad and the Beautiful. Yet that Kane-lite film never excused its bad-boy protagonist’s sins and ended magnanimously by converging his three injured parties’ points of view into one beautifully clarifying narrative. It admitted our cultural compromises; this is TV-trite. In The Social Network, creepiness is heroized.

Read the full review here.

And yet is that very different from the disastrous decisions Cameron himself has made since Aliens appeared in 1986? Take his Terminator franchise — the director’s initial script note when first conceiving of the sequel read, “Young John Connor and the Terminator who comes back to befriend him.” Cameron’s buddy and fellow Terminator scribe Bill Wisher remembers that “The idea of a boy and the Terminator seemed real funny to me, and we both had a good laugh about it. But after we finished laughing, Jim looked at me seriously and said this was the story we ought to do.”

For those of us who thought that a Cameron-helmed Terminator 2 would build on the space marine look-and-feel introduced in the first film and perfected in Aliens — in the process bringing the story into that way-cool dystopian future, perhaps with Sarah Connor traveling forward in time to somehow reunite with a still-living Reese and change history for the better — Cameron’s decision to make Arnold the good guy and build the movie around a Hollywoodized moppet was the worst possible outcome.

It wasn’t just the decision to make one of the greatest villains in movie history into a joke that ruined Terminator 2: Judgment Day, it was the simplistic preachiness underlying the plot. Joe Morton, the actor who portrayed the doomed Miles Dyson in the film, recalls that, “[Cameron] told me how Terminator 2 was going to be an anti-nuclear film and that it would show authority figures as the real Terminators. I had read the script and so I remember laughing and telling him ‘Sure Jim. I think kids are going to walk out of the theater after seeing this movie, saying ‘Did you see the way the Terminator shot that guy in the knees?’ But Jim insisted that it would be much more than that.”

This sort of creeping socio-political nonsense began with Cameron’s The Abyss, a film that the Los Angeles Times correctly derided by writing, “It’s not hard to think that James Cameron has carried this film in his head since he was seventeen. It’s a seventeen-year-old vision.” Terminator 2 continued that trend, and for me ruined that mythos just as Alien³ destroyed its own franchise. Sure, it made a ton of money, but hey, so did The Phantom Menace. Coming on the heels of The Abyss, it was a sign that the maker of The Terminator and Aliens had lost the essence of what made those two movies great. Twenty years later, Cameron continues to make mega-hits that fall woefully short of that early creative promise.

Making matters worse is how the director has made himself a poster boy for the mean-spirited, audience-insulting, hyperbolic trend in modern Hollywood. He’s called us right-wingers (who form a large swath of his movie-going public) “just people ranting away, lost in their little bubbles of reality, steeped in their own hatred, their own fear and hatred.” Glenn Beck “is a f***ing asshole. . . dangerous because his ideas are poisonous,” while climate-change deniers — i.e., most of the country — are “boneheads” and “swine,” with “their head so deeply up their ass I’m not sure they could hear me.”

All of this scattershot name-calling is tedious because it’s such transparent bluster. That’s why, when Cameron boldly called for a climate change debate with his conservative detractors last March, Big Hollywood’s John Nolte was able to accurately predict how it would eventually play out:

If Beck calls Cameron’s bluff (pretty please, Glenn), I’d bet all kinds of money Cameron locks himself in his air conditioned mansion and refuses to come out.

That of course is exactly what happened once Andrew Breitbart picked up the gauntlet that the director — apparently spurred on by an inflated sense of self-regard fueled by his box-office receipts and technical achievements in Hollywood — had so carelessly tossed down. We should remember what Cameron once said about his method of getting ahead in Tinseltown: “So much relies on personality and not logic. . . it’s hype. . . it’s the pitch.” That might work well when selling studio executives on sci-fi scripts, or when producing “documentaries” worthy of Erich von Däniken, but it’s a lot less effective when going up against intelligent opponents well-versed in the minutiae of real-world problems. He thought that, just like in Hollywood, he could bluff and bully his way to victory, but it was not to be. Oh well — as Cameron himself said about Sigourney Weaver after he taught her how to shoot: “Another liberal bites the dust.”

To Cameron’s credit, sometimes he does come down to earth to join the rest of us, as when he called the engineers working on the gulf oil spill “morons,” only to later backtrack and come clean with: “I got into it and I talked to petroleum engineers and we started this study group …They’re not morons. . . There are good engineers out there. . . working very hard. It’s a very, very complex problem to solve.” Indeed it is — so why not refrain from all the knee-jerk vitriol? What possible good can come of a movie director alienating huge swaths of his audience with such crude, simplistic caricatures?

This impulse hasn’t just harmed his reputation, it’s done palpable damage to his filmmaking. Increasingly, the characters in his movies are painfully one-dimensional, while his plots are chock-full of nonsensical holes. “The beauty of movies,” Cameron has said, “is that they don’t have to be logical. If there’s a visceral, cinematic thing happening that the audience likes, they don’t care if it goes against what’s likely.” In truth, many of the same fans who bristled at the criminal stupidity of other mega-hits like George Lucas’ Star Wars prequels and Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds also harbor a near-incandescent animosity for Avatar.

My suspicion is that time will not be kind to Cameron’s post-Aliens career, that once the effects and spectacle begin showing their age, there won’t be much left worth revisiting. It’s bittersweet to remember how guys like Lucas, Spielberg, and Cameron once entertained audiences of all political persuasions by crafting a shared popular culture that we all enjoyed and took pride in. It was a time when our favorite directors didn’t go on national television to call half of their audience “boneheads” or “swine.” And, perhaps not coincidentally, it was also a time when movies like Aliens — with richly drawn characters, rousing heroism, sparkling humor, and believable, lived-in worlds — came out of Hollywood with something approaching a pleasant regularity.

This concludes our look through a conservative lens at James Cameron and his magnificent space-marine thrill ride Aliens. Come back next week as we study an all-new film from an all-new year, only at Big Hollywood.

Previous posts in the series “James Cameron, Sigourney Weaver, and Aliens”

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

FURTHER READING and VIEWING

You guys might want to wait until October 25 to watch (or re-watch) Aliens. That’s the day when a humongous new Blu-ray set comes out with all the trimmings. The Cameron movie in the set sports the following extras:

1986 Theatrical Version
1991 Special Edition with James Cameron introduction
Audio commentary by director James Cameron, producer Gale Anne Hurd, alien effects creator Stan Winston, visual effects supervisors Robert Skotak and Dennis Skotak, miniature effects supervisor Pat McClung, and actors Michael Biehn, Bill Paxton, Lance Henriksen, Jenette Goldstein, Carrie Henn and Christopher Henn
Final theatrical isolated score by James Horner
Composer’s original isolated score by James Horner
Deleted and extended scenes
MU-TH-UR Mode interactive experience with Weyland-Yutani Datastream

Superior Firepower: Making ALIENS
* 57 Years Later: Continuing the Story
* Building Better Worlds: From Concept to Construction
* Preparing for Battle: Casting and Characterization
* This Time It’s War: Pinewood Studios, 1985
* The Risk Always Lives: Weapons and Action
* Bug Hunt: Creature Design
* Beauty and the Bitch: Power Loader vs. Queen Alien
* Two Orphans: Sigourney Weaver and Carrie Henn
* The Final Countdown: Music, Editing and Sound
* The Power of Real Tech: Visual Effects
* Aliens Unleashed: Reaction to the Film

Pre-Production
Original Treatment by James Cameron
Pre-Visualizations: Multi-Angle Videomatics with Commentary
Storyboard Archive
The Art of Aliens: Image Galleries
Cast Portrait Gallery
Production
Production Image Galleries
Continuity Polaroids
Weapons and Vehicles
Stan Winston’s Workshop
Colonial Marine Helmet Cameras
Video Graphics Gallery
Weyland-Yutani Inquest: Nostromo Dossiers
Pre-Production and Aftermath
Deleted Scene: Burke Cocooned
Deleted Scene Montage
Image Galleries
Special Collector’s Edition LaserDisc Archive
Main Title Exploration
Aliens: Ride at the Speed of Fright
Trailers & TV Spots

I got a boost when half way through the day Jon Heder and Dan Heder came by my booth. Jon was wearing a Dan costume and Dan came as Jon. I loaded them up with books and Jon told me about his new series he’ll be doing for Comedy Central and Dan is doing CG pre-viz work on a Gore Verbinsky project.

I keep bumping into one of my favorite artists, Eric Powell, who is a great artist and a good family man. He’s living the dream with his “Goon” comic book being developed into a CG animated feature by David Fincher.

The rest of the day is too similar to the previous days so I’ll shift to my dinner party I host each year for my forum buddies. We had a surprise guest, Gunnery Sgt. Nick “Pop” Popaditch! In case you haven’t seen his story on TV, he’s the Gunnery Sergeant that took a rocket in the face while battling in Fallujah. I met his family and gave him a copy of my graphic novel Monster Zoo, which was dedicated to our troops. He gave me a signed copy of his autobiography, Once a Marine. He has a bunch of different bitchin’ false eyes he swaps out. Tonight’s featured an image of a tank with cross-hairs.

I ended the night by having a cigar with my pals on the bay as a fireworks show launched from the Del Coronado Bridge. My voice is gone. I miss my kids since I leave for the convention before they wake and come home after they’re already asleep. One more day, one more post, then it’s a wrap.

“Everything is working.” That’s what one studio exec told me today. “With the exception of the Jonas Brothers, it seems like almost every release is out-performing expectations.” January 2009 has gone down as the all-time 8th-best month in modern box office history. It started with excellent holiday holdovers. Six movies, technically released in 2008, did major chunks of their business after New Year’s.

2008 RELEASES WITH MORE THAN $50M IN 2009 TICKET SALES
1. Gran Torino (Warner Bros) – $132.7M
2. Slumdog Millionaire (Fox Searchlight) – $92.8M
3. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Paramount) – $72.7M
4. Marley & Me (Fox) – $69.5M
5. Bedtime Stories (Disney) – $52.75M

Then there was the surprise phenomenon of Paul Blart: Mall Cop (Sony), a low budget comedy from producer Adam Sandler and starring former King of Queens star Kevin James. The movie opened to over $30M on the weekend of January 16, and it is now closing in on $130M. The other $100M hit so far in 2009 is Taken (Fox), the Luc Besson-produced French import, which delivered excellent grosses in Europe before landing in the US. With a star turn by Liam Neeson, Taken had already delivered $11.2M in the UK, $9.4M in France and $5.5M in Spain before it went wide in the US on January 30. The picture has held up extraordinarily well with $108M domestic to-date.

The movie industry is 14% ahead of last year’s January-February take of $1.5 billion and a full 23% stronger than the first two months of 2007, which posted just over $1.35 billion. It’s fair to start speculating about the possibility that 2009 will be Hollywood’s all-time box office high water mark.

March has a definite shot at topping $800M, which would be a third straight monthly record. Watchmen (Warner Bros) looks huge starting Friday (I’ll post a prediction later in the week), Last House on the Left (Universal) appears to be a solid genre pic on Friday the thirteenth along with Disney’s excellent family offering Race to Witch Mountain. On March 20, Duplicity (Universal) starring Julia Roberts and Clive Owen has 25+ appeal and Dreamworks/Paramount is sky-high about I Love You Man. And the month rounds out with Monsters vs. Aliens from Dreamworks Animation.

Back-to-back-to-back all-time monthly records and almost $2.6 billion in the bank by March 31 would be further proof that the movie business is recession proof. In fact, the more dreary the economic news becomes, the more Americans seek refuge at movies. Instead of the annual trip to Disney World or a getaway cruise in the Bahamas, people seem to be spending their pocket change at America’s multiplexes in droves.

Steve Mason is on Facebook and now also on Twitter.

Slumdog Millionaire is about to win the Hollywood's Grand Prize

The “Battle Royale” of the night is Mickey Rouke from The Wrestler (Fox Searchlight) vs. Sean Penn in Milk (Focus) in the Best Actor category. There have been two ties in major categories in Academy Award history. The first was in 1932 when Frederic March in Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde shared Best Actor with Wallace Beery for The Champ. (March had one more vote, but in that era, any finish within 3 votes was rules a tie.) Then in 1968, Katherine Hepburn for The Lion In Winter and Barbara Streisand for Funny Girl tied for Best Actress. If there was any justice, Rourke and Penn would share the award. In any other year, either of them would be a lock. Forced to make a pick, I’m going with Rourke.

Does Streep's upset of Winslet at the SAG Awards set the stage for Meryl's third Oscar win?

Kate Winslet is on the cover of Time Magazine, and she has picked up a wheelbarrow full of hardware during this awards cycle, but a fair number of voters got their fill of Kate when she pulled off the double-win at the Golden Globes. My upset special is Meryl Streep for Doubt (Miramax). This is her 15th career nomination, and she has not won an Academy Award in 25 years (Sophie’s Choice in 1982). That is too long for the most-revered actress in history to go without getting one of those golden guys. Streep won the SAG Award for Lead Actress, and I think she has a real shot here. (It would be a huge upset.)

Finally if my predix hold up, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Paramount) would win only 2 Oscars – Best Visual Effects and Best Makeup – despite 13 nominations. That would be the fewest wins for any movie with 13 or more nominations. In fact, 2 wins would be among the poorest showings ever for a movie with 11 nominations or more.

Tied for the biggest shutout in Oscar history; Benjamin Button could win for Makeup and Visual Effects

FEWEST OSCAR WINS FOR MOVIES WITH 11 NOMINATIONS OR MORE
1. The Color Purple – 0 wins (11 nominations)
2. The Turning Point – 0 wins (11 nominations)
3. Chinatown – 1 win (11 nominations)
4. Johnny Belinda – 1 win (12 nominations)
5. Becket – 1 win (12 nominations)
6. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington – 1 win (11 nominations)
7. Pride of the Yankees – 1 win (11 nominations)
8. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – 2 wins (13 nominations) – predicted
9. Rebecca – 2 wins (11 nominations)
10. Sergeant York – 2 wins (11 nominations)
11. A Passage To India – 2 wins (11 nominations)
12. Judgement at Nuremberg – 2 wins (11 nominations)

After weeks of obsessive study, relentless debate and intense soul-searching, here are my final Oscar predictions for all 24 categories.

BEST PICTURE
My Pick – Slumdog Millionaire
Consensus Pick – Slumdog Millionaire
Dark Horse – Milk

BEST ACTOR
My Pick – Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler
Consensus Pick – Sean Penn, Milk or Rourke
Dark Horse – None

BEST ACTRESS
My Pick – Meryl Streep, Doubt
Consensus Pick – Kate Winslet, The Reader
Dark Horse – Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
My Pick – Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
Consensus Pick – Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
Dark Horse – None

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
My Pick – Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Consensus Pick – Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Dark Horse – Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler

BEST DIRECTOR
My Pick – Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
Consensus Pick – Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
Dark Horse – David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Milk screenwriter Justin Lance Black

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
My Pick – Dustin Lance Black, Milk
Consensus Pick – Andrew Stanton, WALL-E
Dark Horse – Martin McDonagh, In Bruges

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
My Pick – Simon Beaufoy, Slumdog Millionaire
Consensus Pick – Simon Beaufoy, Slumdog Millionaire
Dark Horse – David Hare, The Reader

BEST EDITING
My Pick – Slumdog Millionaire
Consensus Pick – Slumdog Millionaire
Dark Horse – Frost/Nixon

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
My Pick – Anthony Dod Mantle, Slumdog Millionaire
Consensus Pick – Anthony Dod Mantle, Slumdog Millionaire
Dark Horse – Wally Pfister, The Dark Knight

BEST ART DIRECTION
My Pick – The Dark Knight
Consensus Pick – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Dark Horse – The Duchess

BEST SOUND MIXING
My Pick – The Dark Knight
Consensus Pick – The Dark Knight
Dark Horse – Slumdog Millionaire

BEST SOUND EDITING
My Pick – Slumdog Millionaire
Consensus Pick – Slumdog Millionaire
Dark Horse – The Dark Knight

BEST COSTUME DESIGN
My Pick – The Duchess
Consensus Pick – The Duchess
Dark Horse – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
My Pick – A.R. Rahman, Slumdog Millionaire
Consensus Pick – A. R. Rahman, Slumdog Millionaire
Dark Horse – Alexandre Desplat, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
My Pick – Waltz with Bashir
Consensus Pick – Waltz with Bashir
Dark Horse – The Class

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
My Pick – Man on Wire
Consensus Pick – Man On Wire
Dark Horse – Trouble the Water

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
My Pick – WALL-E
Consensus Pick – WALL-E
Dark Horse – Kung Fu Panda

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
My Pick – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Consensus Pick – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Dark Horse – The Dark Knight

BEST MAKEUP
My Pick – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Consensus Pick – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Dark Horse – The Dark Knight

BEST ORIGINAL SONG
My Pick – Jaiho from Slumdog Millionaire
Consensus Pick – Jaiho from Slumdog Millionaire
Dark Horse – Peter Gabriel, Down to Earth from WALL-E

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT
My Pick – Toyland (Spielzeugland)
Consensus Pick – Auf der Strecke
Dark Horse – The Pig

BEST ANIMATED SHORT
My Pick – Presto
Consensus Pick – La Maison en Petits Cubes
Dark Horse – This Way Up

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT
My Pick – The Conscience of Nhem En
Consensus Pick – The Witness
Dark Horse – The Final Inch

Steve Mason is on Facebook and now also on Twitter.

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.