From here, any building buzz for tonight’s Oscars ceremony has been pretty well displaced by the Cablevision-Disney blackout of the broadcast in the tri-state area.

But, all told, disgruntled Cablevision subscribers shouldn’t feel that bad. Because in an indirect way, the loss of some 3.1 million viewers dovetails with the overall lessening of impact that an Academy Award nomination has had on the box office this year:

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences doubled the number of [Best Picture] nominees this year in hopes of drawing more attention to more movies. But the revenue bump for this year’s crop is less than the one enjoyed by last year’s five best-picture hopefuls.

And of that $135 million, all but about $24 million went to the one film in least need of an Oscar bump: the record-smashing “Avatar.” The figures were generated between the nominations Feb. 2 and the last weekend before Sunday’s awards.

Last year’s best picture nominees pulled in $146 million over a comparable period, and most of that went to a film Oscar helped turn into a sensation: “Slumdog Millionaire.” Three of the five 2009 nominees at least doubled their take in that period, something no film in this year’s batch even came close to doing.

So this year, fewer people are watching the Oscars, or the theatrical releases that are up for Oscars. Nice symmetry.

I’m sure the industry reaction will be to amp up the number of nominations, rationalizing that this year’s Best Picture expansion failed because it just didn’t go far enough. How does twenty potential Best Pictures crowding the box office sound? Not that the box office is the true target:

And a nomination lasts forever, whether a movie is in theaters or being offered on Netflix, so the full story of the benefits of the expanded category hasn’t been told yet. Studios make billions of dollars on DVD and Blu-ray disc sales, not to mention what they collect from pay TV outlets at home and abroad.

At the end of the day, it’s just a marketing label. The pomp, circumstance, and statuette are entirely incidental.

The appeal of disaster movies has ebbed and flowed for decades. A recent spate of theatrical releases indicates that, currently, the flow is go: The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Book of Eli, The Road, The Happening, and Legion all attest to our public preoccupation with endtimes.

Whatever the sociological underpinnings for this fascination, better that we play them out on the big screen:

Crave danger but lack a death wish? Not to worry, I’ve got you covered. You and I can get hopped up on disaster porn. We can dream of swamps of fire, we can contemplate the sunspots on the sun. We can surrender to wind and water and meet an angel on the run. We can watch a faster ocean sweep a vaster Himalayan sky. We can get our kicks on the apocalypse. Every time a volcano pops, I get a little closer to Zen. Every time the ice cap crumbles, I feel a little cleansed. Let’s purge our souls as godheads roll and score it all to some slinky 70s soul. With 2012 around the corner, Hollywood’s throwing an eschatological feast.

Who knew the end of the world could give you such a tingly feeling?

Here’s one man’s reaction to a sneak peek of a CGI-rendered Smurf, from the upcoming animated feature film:

AAAAAAAA KILL IT WITH FIRE

A little extreme; I’d say the false sense of scale is making Prototype Smurf look abnormally large, and thus faux-monstrous. But anything that elicits such mock-horror doesn’t deserve any screentime around this blog, so I won’t inflict it on my audience. Let’s just hope the character designs are de-creepified by the time they hit the silver screen in 2011.

True story, via my tweetstream today:

I’m dealing with someone who’s dyslexic when it comes to Roman numerals. Yeah, really.

The catalyst for this backward-Latin enumeration: Saw VI, which my collaborator keeps mis-communicating to me as “Saw IV“. Luckily, we’re really only dealing with the later sequel, so no permanent confusion; but still.

I haven’t had a chance to ask her why she keeps flubbing that VI as IV. I wonder how common this malady was in ancient times — did Romans routinely mix up their numbering system, leading to massive daily miscalculations? Maybe that’s what led to the Empire’s ultimate decline and fall.

By the way, this post’s title is probably not proper Latin (this Latin translator was of little help). But it sounds good, so I’ll swap linguistic accuracy for artistic license. And it’s better than the inevitable alternative.

While it’s terribly predictable of PETA to capitalize on this upcoming Groundhog Day, it’s surprising that the organization proposed a constructive way to preserve the holiday:

Gemma Vaughan, Animals in Entertainment specialist for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said in a letter to organizers of the annual spectacle in Punxsutawney, PA, that groundhogs, which are normally shy and spend much of their time in burrows, “become stressed when they are exposed to large, screaming crowds; flashing lights from perhaps hundreds of cameras; and human handling.”

Vaughan suggests using “animatronic animals” instead.

A robotic critter to handle the hoopla of the February 2nd shadowcasting? A daft idea on the face of it. And yet, I have the perfect candidate, pictured here: The gopher from Caddyshack!

Hey, a ground-burrowing rodent is a ground-burrowing rodent. No need to quibble on specific species. It’s not like there’s an imminent sequel in the works that would occupy Mr. Gopher. A steady annual gig would probably be most welcome. He can throw in his gopher-dancing moves to really jazz up an otherwise staid event.

And to add another pop-cultural layer to all this, consider: Bill Murray, who shared screen time with the gopher on Caddyshack, also made his mark as the star in Groundhog Day. Given that connection, I’d say subbing in a gopher for a groundhog would fly.

There’s a certain amount of irony in Mark Hamill having outgrown his Star Wars typecasting by establishing himself as a voiceover actor — and then, despite ample opportunities in the gaming industry, never applying those skills into a reprise of the Luke Skywalker role:

Hamill’s credited with a bevy of vocal performances in non-Star Wars games, most notably as The Joker in last year’s best-seller Batman: Arkham Asylum, but revealed why he’s never played Luke in a recent interview with PC Zone magazine.

“When I played Luke from 1977 to 1983, games were in their infancy,” Hamill told PC Zone. “I talked about turning a page and starting a new chapter. Those movies had a beginning, middle and end, and everyone sort of moved on… I don’t really know how to answer that, because I’ve never been asked to do it. That’s fine, though.”

“If you’re playing Luke the way he was in the films — from his late teens to mid-20s — I’ve outgrown the role. In the story, Luke is so boy-next-door farm boy, it’s like Dorothy in Oz. All the other characters that surround him are fantastic.”

“Outgrown the role”? We’re talking vocals, not visuals. Hamill’s voice hasn’t changed that much over the years — he still sounds like Luke Skywalker. I’d think the promotional opportunities in having the original Luke voicing a CGI Luke would be huge.

And it just happens to dovetail that way, given Hamill’s second career. It’s not like Harrison Ford or Carrie Fisher would be good fits to do videogame voiceover work for their characters, even if they could be persuaded to do it. But since Hamill’s already working in the same proximity, it’s a natural.

As far as a medium-term cultural impact from Avatar, I believe that Bret Easton Ellis has, via tweet, nailed it on the head:

A lot of gays at Avatar at The Dome tonight. Well, now we know what the most popular Halloween costume in West Hollywood will be this year.

Running around half-naked and coated in blue body paint, validated by popular entertainment. It’s a no-brainer.

As was the case on my flight from New York to LA, I’m once again, on the return trip, blogging from 36,000 feet thanks to GoGo Inflight Internet.

And, like last time, I’m paying nada for it. The other promo code I found worked for this session. So I got about 26 bucks’ worth of free wi-fi-in-the-sky on this cross-country sojourn. I’ll take it!

I’ll keep surfing until this netbook dies on me. And then probably connect with my iTouch.

One thing about GoGo: Their slogan reads, “The sky is no longer the limit”. That’s the same retro-futuristic tagline used in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, for the never-realized Pan-Am passenger space jet. Just throwing that out there…

It’s practically high heresy in the pop-cultural spheres that I frequent to admit that I don’t particularly care for The Big Lebowski. It’s not from lack of trying — I’ve sat down to watch the movie a half-dozen times, but never could attune myself to its rambling groove. Fact is, I’ve never watched more than the first half without bailing on it.

Maybe I need a study guide in the ways and means of His Dudeness, to get in the proper film-watching frame of mind. Toward that end, the academic world is now teeming with dissertations on the movie’s White Russian-fueled leitmotif.

Thankfully, some of those eggheads are showing restraint:

When putting the book ["The Year's Work in Lebowski Studies"] together, [Indiana University professor Edward P.] Comentale said, he and his co-editor “immediately cut out all the papers celebrating the Dude as a hippie hero in a postmodern landscape.” That’s a sober choice. Admirers of the Dude are already dangerously close to becoming Internet-age versions of Parrotheads, the weekend-warrior Jimmy Buffett fans who tip back margaritas — and embarrass their children — while wearing flip-flops, board shorts, Hawaiian shirts and coconut bras.

“Trying to impress your academic colleagues and also make a dent in the popular market, that’s a fine line to walk,” Mr. Comentale added. “We wanted these essays to press the connection between the goofy and the profound.”

I’m not sure The Dude would abide to this drill-down, but there’s no stopping intellectual exploration.

It’s a shame that upcoming new release Legion is such an apparent piece of crap, because I’m partial to angel imagery. Something about the wings. And the rich history of Judeo-Christian-Muslim mythology that those wings represent.

Probably the most distasteful part of this movie is the obvious copycatting of zombie, vampires, and other cinematic supernatural creepies. The freaky shape-shifting exhibited by these scary seraphs makes them nothing more than second-rate horror glyphs, interchangeable with any other movie monster. They could have subbed in space aliens without missing a beat, the Biblical reference to the Legion demon aside.

Oh well. I can always turn to one of my favorite angelic works of art: Salvador Dali’s “Allegorical Saint and Angels in Adoration of the Holy Spirit”, pictured above. Those bold, single brush-strokes that form each wing convey a stark energy worthy of the symbolism on display.

Over the past couple of weeks, it’s slowly dawned on me that many a modern-day woman has a thing for the late Audrey Hepburn.

And why not? A half-century after her iconic turn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Hepburn remains an ideal of simple elegance, eminently approachable and attainable. She evokes a sensibility composed of both sophistication and innocence — a combination that’s considered practically oxymoronic in our more jaded times.

What I can’t figure out, though, is the desire by women to emulate the classic Audrey look, even when it’s not necessarily a natural fit. In separate instances, I’ve been told by female acquaintances (including one via tweet) that they were sold on a dress, hairstyle, etc. because it gave them that Audrey Hepburn quality. In each case, the women in question had physical features that were decidedly unlike Hepburn’s, i.e. curvy, blonde, or olive-skinned. That such a diverse representation of femininity would all aspire to be Audrey says something about the idealization at play.

Along with the real-life examples, I have Penelope Cruz’s recent turn in Broken Embraces on my mind, too. Cruz plays a film-within-a-film role in this movie that’s consciously a Hepburn clone. While she pulls it off nicely, I was reminded that Cruz ordinarily doesn’t come across as Audrey type.

So, what is it? Why does Audrey Hepburn command such devotion among female fans? What’s with all these latter-day Audrey “girl crushes”? My Y chromosome wants to know…

Don’t think that it escaped my attention that, in the latter half of this year, there were three big-time box office productions that used the number 9 as their motif/title:

- Science fiction thriller District 9

- Post-apocalyptic animated fantasy 9

- Romantic musical Nine

Yes, Hollywood does seem to have a one-track mind. The year probably had something to do with this nonatological fixation. I guess Nine is partially excused because that title was inspired by Fellini’s 8½.

Part of the production-prep for this weekend’s blockbuster release of Avatar was the commissioned creation of a full-fledged language for the film’s aliens. And indeed, with the movie now out in theaters, the analytical dissection of Na’vi has heated up.

As with the similar fascination in developing science-fictional tongues like Klingon, I really shake my head at these linguistic exercises. Fill these massive code-sets with all the vocabulary you want, and get as many geeks as you can to speak/write it — that doesn’t change the fundamental fact that they remain fake languages. They don’t exist in any meaningful context, other than a few hours and/or pages of escapist fantasy. It amounts to a lot of intellectual energy expended upon very little.

In fact, in the case of Avatar, which is just getting off the ground as a sci-fi franchise (assuming it will take off as such), this early promotion of the in-film language comes off to me as little more than an overdeveloped marketing stunt. Hardly an inspiring foundation for building a mode of interpersonal communication.

So unbridled is Hollywood screenwriter Roger Avary’s expressive creativity, that even a prison sentence can’t stifle his Twittering.

And his online candor cost him. The publicity accruing from a jailbird-celebrity tweetstream resulted in an incarceration upgrade, from a loosey-goosey work-furlough to, apparently, a real prison:

Thursday evening, @avary — who has been referring to himself as #34 – tweeted, “#34 is ‘rolled up’ to a higher security facility for exercising his first amendment rights. The truth he has discovered is too dangerous.”

[Ventura County Sheriff spokesman Ross] Bonfiglio said that Avary had not previously spent a night in the jail because he posted bail the day he was arrested. When he reported to jail Oct. 26, records show he was remanded at 7:54 a.m. and released 11 minutes later.

Bonfiglio said it was likely a “procedural process” and that Avary was then referred to the work furlough program, where he spent his days on the outside.

But you wouldn’t get that impression from what are believed to be Avary’s tweets, which chronicle life inside amid heroin smuggling, lockdowns and strip searches.

“#34’s new roomie, EZ, takes Yeyo’s old bunk, locker, AND number. He regales awesome tales about his former life as an Oxnard gangbanger,” @avary tweeted Tuesday at 9:17 a.m.

Two weeks earlier @avary tweeted: “‘It’s your birthday! announcing that #34 is to receive a random strip-down and cavity search to be performed by a leering, rotund officer.”

So Avary’s been out and about, yet has been tweeting “Oz”-like dispatches from inside the big house. Obviously there’s a disconnect. Call me crazy, but since we are dealing with someone who writes/directs movies for a living, it’s entirely possible that he’s embellishing just a tad here. I realize that goes against the supposed transparency tenets of social media, but nobody said the mind behind the big-screen version of The Rules of Attraction had to play by Web-etiquette rules.

The point may be moot, as the @avary account is now no longer publicly-viewable. A fitting condition, to match the author’s actual enhanced lockdown.

Wannabe Tyler Durdens across the land will be all gooned-up to watch Fight Club in the soon-to-be-released Blu-ray edition. Imagine the testosterone-depleting buzzkill they’ll experience when, upon loading up that disk, they see the DVD menu/music for Drew Barrymore’s romantic comedy Never Been Kissed cue up.

As they surely will, because director David Fincher decided to be funny:

So, what the what? We talked to [Fox Home Entertainment] and it turns out it’s a late-arriving Fight Club-style gag from Fincher himself, who chose an un-Fight Club-like movie from the same year that Fight Club bombed at the box office. Barrymore, a friend of [FC star Edward] Norton’s, approved the gag.

Not bad. But if Fincher really wanted to pull a fast one, he should have designed a mock menu with a “Calvin and Hobbes” theme. Thus validating the premise that Fight Club is a dark, grown-up version of the classic comic strip.

Deeming the title of the upcoming Ninja Assassin to be an unnecessary doubling-down of one concept, Drew suggests a few different vocations for ninja-related movie mayhem.

My favorite is Number 9, “Ninja Competitive Ballroom Dancer”. I guess cheerleader was left off the list because someone already made that film.

Overall, all this ninj-tastic speculation elicits a dismissive “ninja, please” from me.

Today is a big day in hockey history: The 50th anniversary of the late Montreal great Jacques Plante being the first goaltender to wear a protective facemask during a National Hockey League game. Thus changing the face of the NHL, literally and figuratively.

It’s worth noting that this golden anniversary falls during a November that, in a couple of weeks, will also produce a Friday the 13th. The connection? In pop-cultural terms, the old-style hockey mask that Plante debuted in 1959 really hit the limelight 23 years later, when Jason first donned his in Friday the 13th Part III. Thus turning a highly-visible piece of athletic equipment into an even more recognizable horror-movie icon.

I’ll let you decide if November the 1st or Friday the 13th is the more significant date for hockey-heads. I just like the juxtapositional occurrence of the two dates on this particular anniversary, the 50th commemoration of Plante’s debut.

Times have changed, of course. Plante’s first mask, and the flat-plated ones that became standard netminder equipment during the ’60s and ’70s, morphed into today’s ornately-decorated catcher’s-mask models, with little resemblance to the original designs. Even though Jason Voorhees stuck with the old-school look in his 2009 remake (how could he not?), the on-ice product goes for less scare and more flare.

If you’re attending a Halloween party in Brooklyn next week, and a Chewbacca walks in, lugging an in-pieces C3PO ala the scene from The Empire Strikes Back… Well, there’s a chance that that won’t be just an inanimate prop strapped to his back:

Need an amputee to complete my Halloween costume (Brooklyn)

So this might seem strange and really offensive to some but hopefully someone will reply. I have always loved the scene in Empire Strikes Back where Chewbacca has to carry around a half reconstructed C3PO in a backpack because he hasn’t reattached his lower body yet. For Halloween I would love to dress up like this. I am big enough and strong enough to both pull off the Chewbacca look and to carry around a lot of weight for the night.

So basically I am looking for a double amputee (someone missing both legs – preferably at the hip) to accompany me as C3PO for the evening. We should meet ahead of time so that we can work out the backpack/harness system. There are a few parties that I want to hit and I think we will be the hit of any event we attend. Anyone up for this?

Oh yes, this was a Craigslist ad (now apparently flagged and pulled). I’m not sure if this proposal is less fetishistic than soliciting amputee sex, or more so.

What could be creepier? I suppose a reenactment of Han Solo’s Tauntaun belly-burrow would trump this — especially if that came together via online collaboration…

Here’s an interpretation of the lovely Sienna Miller’s recent work in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra that I hadn’t picked up on:

For half the movie she’s the Baroness, a brainwashed villain in glasses and dark hair who looks unnervingly like Sarah Palin.

What’s the official backstory on The Baroness? Does she happen to be descended from a clan of exiled Russian royalty who have a centuries-old estate in — wait for it — Alaska?

Otherwise, the character’s long dark hair and rimless sunglasses certainly do evoke everyone’s favorite former Alaskan governor. I’m sure this is just an outcropping of the New York Times’ stealth bias against the fringe Republican sweetheart. Still, I feel a bit unclean now, since Miller as a brunette badass in skintight leather actually made me consider going to see the flick.

Underlining how irrelevant a 24-hour weather broadcast is nowadays, The Weather Channel is breaking its forecasting cycle by showing movies on Friday nights.

The films are either weather-themed or have plots in which weather plays a key role, [chief programmer Geoffrey] Darby said. Meteorologist Jennifer Carfagno will host movie night and offer commentary.

Other movies include the documentary “March of the Penguins,” the thriller “Deep Blue Sea” and “Misery,” for which Kathy Bates won an Academy Award.

The weather angle is pretty clear in “The Perfect Storm,” but “Misery”? Darby noted the nightmare endured by James Caan’s character begins with a blinding snowstorm.

For The Weather Channel, the risk lies in alienating its regular weather-obsessed viewers, who tune in for news of high pressure systems rather than high drama. The potential reward is that new fans will tune in, and they’ll stay on the station for a longer period, pleasing advertisers.

It’s nothing new: Whenever a single-purpose cable channel starts adding off-focus content like movies, reality shows, etc., it’s because it can’t talk to a certain segment of advertisers otherwise. Whatever devoted audience it had is essentially abandoned at that point, with the hoped-for tradeoff of higher viewer volume.

So since TWC has made the jump, should we anticipate “Rainy Day Movies” to debut soon — flicks that roll in sync with local atmospheric conditions? Might as well synergize the hell out of this whole deal.

A few days ago, I was visiting with my precocious godniece Jamie. She was trying to finagle a whole dollar from me, in exchange for fetching me a soda.

I pointed out that she’d have to abandon what she was doing at that moment (general fun-having), and hike a fair distance and back (for an 8-year-old), to earn her scratch. With a meek smile, she reached out her arm in the direction of the soft drink source, mimicking an extended, superhero-like stretch.

“Like Mister Fantastic, right?” I said, playing along with her latest goofy suggestion.

A brief look of confusion flashed across Jamie’s face. Then she recovered and stated — not without some indignation — “No, like Mrs. Incredible!”

Because Elastigirl/Mrs. Incredible, of The Incredibles fame, is a girl. So that makes more sense than invoking Reed Richards. Of course. Comparison of the adjective-based super-names is a dead heat otherwise, and is secondary next to the gender-identification consideration.

Yet again, I misread female communication. At least this time it cost me only the dollar that I gave her anyway.