The Hollywood awards season is like spring during global warming or the presidential primary season: it keeps starting earlier. With that, the Independent Spirit Awards are upon us, and Todd Haynes' quasi-Bob Dylan movie "I'm Not There" had the most with four. Here is the complete list.

As a show of solidarity with the striking writers of the WGA, America's actors are speaking out, in part, by making a series of online public service announcements called "Speechless." The gist is meant to be ironic: we're watching these little movies in the very medium whose space the writers aren't being paid to fill. By the clips are humbling, too -- please, please give us something to say because we're nothing without you.

To that end, Susan Sarandon and Chazz Palminteri go "blah-blah-blah" at each other in one clip (it's like something from "Outside the Actors Studio") and another consists of a long montage of actors (Marcia Cross, Demi Moore, Martin Sheen, et al.) holding a blank script, looking befuddled. Most of these are sloppily made and earnestly dull. Sean Penn talks, but we can't hear what he's saying. Ed Asner chews his lunch. And Holly Hunter dials up for a writer and gets an operator in Bangalore. (Oh no. Thanks to the strike, comedy's been outsourced, too!)

The actors' idea might be to make themselves seem boring and witless without writers. And so a curious empathy emerges: all the stars seem lost and intellectually underfed. You want them fed. Where is the Sally Struthers of the entertainment-industry malnourished?

One of the most effective (and persuasively heartfelt) documents to come out of the strike is "The Office Is Closed," an "Office"-ish explication from the writers of that show, which epitomizes the conflict since it's a big online hit. NBC even commissioned exclusive web content -- "webisodes." Listening to Mike Schur and Mindy Kaling makes a case for themselves as exploited laborers is a lot more convincing than not hearing Sean Penn speak. (There might be a few producers who'd consider that a reason to prolong this situation.Who knows?) The television writers have more 9-5-ish jobs and, on-average, make less money than their Hollywood counterparts. The effect on them -- and us -- is already apparent. They also don't seem as, well, vain as the rich, scriptless stars who've admirably risen to their defense.

(Behind the scenes, George Clooney and others have donated money to help the far less well-off survive the shutdown. And Barack Obama and John Edwards, who gave a speech on the picket line the other day, have threatened to pull out of next month's CBS debate if the strike hasn't ended. It's a classy if odd move. Was "The Late Show" staff writing their opening remarks? Edwards's appearance was like something out of John Sayles.)

The director George Hickenlooper is one of the folks behind this "Speechless" campaign, and he's vowed to keep it going until they get to about 50 -- unless, of course, the producers come to their senses first. The money people were guilty of plain-old avarice before. But allowing the strike to go on long enough for Hickenlooper's viral-video brainchild to swell to 50 is pure evil.

Everyone got something to eat at the movies over the Thanksgiving holidays, with five new studio releases combining for a healthy upturn in overall box office grosses. Seriously; you could just about hear the Hollywood execs groaning from the turkey-related tryptomine overdose on the living room couch.

Disney's "Enchanted" was the runaway winner, with $35 million over the weekend and a $50 mill five-day haul. A star got born, too: Amy Adams now sits atop the Internet Movie Database Starmeter.

But "Enchanted" was at 3,700 movie theaters and thus unavoidable; good word of mouth and positive reviews wrapped it up. More interesting is the appearance of buppie holiday comedy-drama "This Christmas" in the No. 2 spot, with $18.6 million over the weekend and $27 mill for the five-day span. At 1,858 theaters, that translates to a $14.5K per-theater-average -- higher than "Enchanted."

Actioner "Hitman" ($21 million), goopy family drama "August Rush" ($13 million), and Stephen King-derived horror film "The Mist" ($13 million) all played well to their respective post-prandial niches. In other words, in the weekend's feast they were the equivalent of the cranberry sauce, squash, and that peas-and-pearl onions dish your aunt makes that nobody eats. Except that this time someone ate it.

For further numbers, check out the Box Office Mojo chart and Leonard Klady at Movie City News.

"Don't Look Back," D.A. Pennebaker's monumental 1967 documentary about Zimmy's 1965 tour, just became available on iTunes for $10. Sounds like a deal to me. See where Haynes swipes the visual cliches for the Blanchett sequences. See Bob humiliate Donovan and everyone else within earshot. Wonder at how someone so malicious can be so ungodly attractive.

The movies bumrush the theaters today instead of Friday, the better to make money when we just can't stand being in the house with our relatives anymore. (Although if you're feeling masochistic and want to watch other familes make each other miserable, by all means toddle off to see either "This Christmas" or Noah Baumbach's "Margot at the Wedding." In the latter, Nicole Kidman is so brilliantly horrific that she'll make that dysfunctional second cousin of yours look like a pillar of sanity.)

The weekend box office success will probably be "Enchanted," the Disney animation/real-life comedy-drama that even the critics seem to love. (I haven't seen it yet, but I'll be taking the girls this weekend.) Wesley says that Amy Adams emerges a star. I say it's about time.

The artistic success is easily "I'm Not There," Todd Haynes' megalicious deconstruction/celebration of the man who says he's Bob Dylan (yeah, but which one?). I got 1,200 words out this movie in the paper and could have gone on for 2,000 more, because this dense, funny, wise, exasperating movie is the gift that keeps on giving. I could have pointed out the drive-by tribute to Godard's "Masculin Feminin" when the onscreen Dylan goes to the movies and thinks "It wasn't the film we had dreamed, the film we all carried in our hearts, the film we wanted to make... and secretly wanted to live." I could have wondered where all the other Dylans were: mid-80s Rabbi Dylan (played by Sandler, perhaps), aging lounge lizard Dylan (Wayne Newton), the Jesus-Dylan who turns up at the end of "The Last Waltz." I could have pointed out where Haynes misses the boat entirely (Blanchett's Jude sneers at a socialite: "Just like a woman" -- Oy vey.) Or how Blanchett manages to seem exactly like 1965-era Bob even with a voice an octave higher. Or how Christian Bale sings "Pressing On" so well in the born-again sequence that you'd hardly know he's lip-syncing John Doe.

Lots of stuff. By the way, every time I mention this movie, Wesley rolls his eyes and changes the subject. Maybe it's a boomer thing. Hopefully he'll weigh in here on why the movie leaves him cold.

Big horror movie from Stephen King and Frank Darabont, "The Mist." No, it's not a remake of "The Fog". For one thing, the ending's a lot worse. I give it away in the review, so tread carefully. Excellent severed-torso and death-by-giant-mosquito effects, though.

"Hitman" and "August Rush" only if you have a craving for turkey.

By the way, if you're really hard up on Thanksgiving (or tonight), the Brattle is showing the 1973 Robert Mitchum classic "The Friends of Eddie Coyle." Forget about "Mystic River," "Gone Baby Gone," and "The Depahted" -- this is the great Boston movie. It's even based on a George V. Higgins novel.

Go easy on the gravy, folks.

Thanks to GreenCine Daily for alerting me to the fact that the good folks at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have announced their list of fifteen eligible feature documentaries for the 2007 Doc Oscar, chosen from an original list of 70 films. They are:

?Autism: The Musical?
?Body of War?
?For the Bible Tells Me So? (Ty's review)
?Lake of Fire?
?Nanking?
?No End in Sight? (Wesley's review)
?Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience? (Janice Page's review)
?Please Vote for Me?
?The Price of Sugar? (Wesley's review)
?A Promise to the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman?
?The Rape of Europa? (Mark Feeney's review)
?Sicko? (Ty's review)
?Taxi to the Dark Side?
?War/Dance?
?White Light/Black Rain?

It's a war-obsessed list, in terms of both history and current events, whch is fine. Tony Kaye's hellacious abortion doc "Lake of Fire" may be the most audacious of the bunch, but it may scare some off. "Sicko"? Pfff, the bloom is off Michael Moore's rose, at least as Hollywood's concerned. My way-too-early guess is that either "Nanking" or "No End in Sight" will go the distance.

A few days back, AMPAS also announced a list of the 12 animated films that will be eligible in the Best Animated Feature category. It's much more depressing. (Links are to Globe reviews, where available.)

?Alvin and the Chipmunks?
?Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters?
?Bee Movie?
?Beowulf?
?Meet the Robinsons?
?Persepolis? (image, above)
?Ratatouille?
?Shrek the Third?
?The Simpsons Movie?
?Surf?s Up?
?Tekkonkinkreet? (Say what? It's an anime. Here's the IMDb link.)
?TMNT?

*Sigh* With luck, the classy craft of "Ratatouille" or the witty, low-res storytelling of "Persepolis" will sneak into the final five. At least half of this stuff is crap, though.

All I knew to expect from this film was nitty-gritty British realism. I didn’t even know what the story line was, but from the first scene I was gripped - and for much of the time, tense and upset. Director Paul Andrew Williams throws us headfirst into a chaotic and panicky scene in which prostitute Kelly (Lorraine Stanley) hides the petrified 12-year-old Joanne (Georgia Groome) in a public toilet somewhere in London, while she goes out to earn them some money so they can get out of the city. Despite sporting a fresh black-eye, Kelly manages to make some money at King’s Cross and returns with enough cash for them to take a train to Brighton.
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If there’s one genre that will never recover from the countless (inevitable) clichés then it would be the horror genre. You either go for cult, classic stuff or for cheap entertainment. Only a few titles hover somewhere in between and as far as I’m concerned that’s where the interesting stuff is. Judging by its rather tantalizing trailer, the prospects for 30 Days of Night by one David Slade - yes the man from Hard Candy - looked rather good. And in fact, the first half hour was very promising, yet Slade made the fundamental mistake (of the type I’d like to refer to as The Village-syndrome) of giving away too much of the scary vampires. (more…)

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As both a film buff and aspiring screenwriter, I have been watching the developments in the Hollywood strike talks, specifically the WGA/writer’s strike, which as of Monday, November 5th, is official. Hopefully it won’t be as long as the 1988 strike, which affected several TV shows and awards programs. (more…)

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