For years, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has had a rule against showing TV commercials for movies during the Oscar show itself. This was an attempt to keep the ceremony as pure as possible. It was also to avoid problems -- people might smell conspiracy if, for example, the studio that bought the most ad time during the show also happened to win the most Oscars.

But now, according to Variety, the Academy has voted to change the rule and start allowing movie ads during the show, effective with next February's telecast. This could be huge in terms of building excitement for new films. The Oscars' massive worldwide audience is obviously the right crowd to show movie ads to, and the studios will undoubtedly roll out their best stuff to capitalize on it. The Oscar show doesn't draw as many viewers as the Super Bowl (currently the most sought-after place to debut a highly anticipated new trailer), but at least the studios can count on everyone in the Oscar audience being a movie fan. That's not necessarily the case with the Super Bowl.

Another reason to be excited about this is a stipulation the Academy has made: They're allowing brand-new, not-yet-aired commercials only. What's more, each distributor is only allowed one. It's not clear whether that's one commercial that can air multiple times during the show, or one shot, period. But either way, it means the studios will have to carefully select the ONE upcoming film that they most want to promote, and then produce the best possible commercial for it. And that's good news for the movie fans watching the show.

I am pretty sure I saw at least two, and possibly three, future Oscar nominees in the new trailer for John Patrick Shanley's Doubt, now available over here. If nothing else, you'd be a fool to bet against 1) Meryl Streep, 2) playing a righteous nun, 3) in an adaptation of a Pulitzer-Prize winning play. There are few sure things in Hollywood, but come on. I'd almost say the same for Philip Seymour Hoffman as a (possible) child molester, and I think the oddly unrecognizable Amy Adams has a sporting chance as well.

Streep's role here -- a stern nun who accuses a priest of sexually abusing a young boy -- looks like a variation on Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada, if The Devil Wears Prada had been serious business instead of silliness. "I was not inviting a guessing game, Sister Raymond." Her response to Hoffman's hateful "I can fight you" is basically the greatest line delivery of all time. "The dragon is hungry," indeed.

I can't wait to see this; I really wanted to see the play on Broadway, but never got around to it. Watching Streep and Hoffman face off, with strong material backing them up, is a dream come true. Doubt is set for a December 12th release.

As we've started to get our fair share of trailers for the coming prestige projects -- Frost/Nixon, The Soloist, Zack and Miri Make a Porno -- I was curious as to why we'd yet to get one for Clint Eastwood's period drama, Changeling, if it were set to open by the end of next month. Particularly after Kim's Cannes review, I wanted to get a proper glimpse beyond a brief clip...

Perhaps hearing my prayers or just tiring of my complaints, Yahoo! Movies saw fit to post the trailer (watch it after the jump as well), in which a young mother (Angelina Jolie) in 1928 Los Angeles finds herself standing up against a corrupt police department when her missing son is returned, or rather replaced by a different child altogether.

Even if the same piece of score hadn't been used in both of their trailers, I'd still have felt a need to draw a correlation between this and last October's missing-kids-and-corrupt-cops powerhouse, Gone Baby Gone (of course, it doesn't hurt that Amy Ryan shows up in both of them). From Eastwood's end comes a particular tinge of Mystic River, and so far as I'm concerned, all of those signs point to something substantial waiting for us when Changeling opens in limited release on October 31.

I'm of two minds when it comes to this fall's sure-fire awards contender, The Soloist. One half of me is in mild awe that, even in 2008, we find ourselves staring down an awards bid in which a failed journalist and a failed musician help restore one another to their former glory, live life to the fullest, so on, so forth, etc. Yeah, I know it's based from a true story, but that doesn't make it instantly inspirational (well, it does for some).

The other half, however, acknowledges that two talented actors could make something special out of the material, and judging from this new trailer over at Yahoo! Movies, Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx might be just the men for the respective roles. (Oh, and Joe Wright's directing, perhaps out of a need to make a film that didn't involve the melodramatic romances carried out by a character played by Keira Knightley.)

So what do you guys think? Will this be as much of a cross between Resurrecting the Champ and Shine as I suspect it to be, or is your personal performance-hunch-o-meter positively a-tingle?

In a combined effort to boost its box office receipts enough to become the highest-grossing film of all time (which it won't) and boost its awards profile enough to garner some Oscars (which it might), That Juggernaut Which We Call The Dark Knight will be re-released this coming January, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

It's the month when the awards rush is high and the mainstream competition is low, and any chance to see it in the IMAX format (had ye missed it, for shame) should be relished regardless of the DVD's December arrival.

And no, even if it doesn't best Titanic, director Christopher Nolan and the Brothers Warner are still looking at the cusp of a billion bucks worldwide. Yeah, so far as consolation prizes go, I've actually heard of worse. Hell, with numbers like that, maybe they could still sway Phillip Seymour Hoffman to climb aboard -- or at least help Michael Caine get his story straightened out...

On a bright Toronto Morning, The Wrestler's director Darren Aronofsky still can't quite wrap his head around his past week: "It's been wild. Look, we started shooting in January; we finished the film five days ago. I was in Venice four days ago, with no buzz; three days ago, we won the Golden Lion out of nowhere, and two days ago, we showed it at Toronto and sold it to Fox Searchlight, so everything changed in five days. ..." Cinematical spoke with Aronofsky about the world of '80s wrestling, the unique possibilities and challenges inherent in working with Mickey Rourke, custom-crafting an old-school Nintendo game on an indie budget, punching up political commentary in post-production and more. ...

Cinematical's podcast content is now available through iTunes; you can subscribe at this link. Also, you can listen directly here at Cinematical by clicking below:



As ever, you can download the entire podcast right here -- and those of you with RSS Podcast readers can find all of Cinematical's podcast content at this link.

(If the version above doesn't work, here's the proper Quicktime link.)

To paraphrase an IM conversation I just had with a friend regarding the trailer for Gus van Sant's forthcoming biopic, Milk: he thought the trailer was "incredible", whereas I felt it painted openly gay elected official Harvey Milk in a bit too saintly a light, at least within those two-and-a-half minutes, much to his chagrin.

I'm not saying that the real-life Milk wasn't a key figure in the fight for gay rights; I'm not saying that he deserved to be assassinated by Dan White (Josh Brolin); I'm not saying that Sean Penn doesn't look or sound just like the guy (that, I cannot speak for) and won't turn in an impressive performance. All I can speak for is the trailer itself and how I felt towards it.

So, as I go to put the 1984 Oscar-winning doc The Trials of Harvey Milk in my Netflix Queue, in the name of knowing better, would any of you care to attest for both the accuracy and anticipation behind this project?

Okay, so the Monsters vs. Aliens and My Life in Ruins trailers may have been leaked and subsequently pulled earlier this week, as was the case with certain awards contender Frost/Nixon, but now we can offer up the trailer straight-up, fully legit, by way of Yahoo! Movies.

The incongruous song selections aside (honestly, though: going from "Baba O'Riley" for the sake of nostalgia to Clint Mansell's wondrous score from The Fountain for the sake of drama in a matter of minutes just distracts me), I have little reason to think that this won't deliver on its considerable stage pedigree.

Frank Langella won a Tony Award for his portrayal of disgraced prez Richard Nixon, and as British talk show host David Frost, Michael Sheen looks to tap into that same sense of dignity under pressure that served him so well as Tony Blair in The Queen. It doesn't hurt that both political dramas share the same writer, and it also doesn't hurt that this looks to be the punchiest thing that Ron Howard has directed in quite some time.

Landing smack-dab in the middle of the Oscar drama blitz, Frost/Nixon should open in select cities on December 5th and will expand through Christmas.

Maybe it's because this was my first summer writing for Cinematical, but it's felt like an exceptionally intense movie season: the event movies just kept coming, and many of them wound up having real traction. There was a lot to watch and a lot to talk about. It's barely ended, and in just a couple of weeks, Telluride and Toronto officially kick off the fall -- and "Oscar season". I'll sleep when I'm dead, I guess.

One of awards season's most formidable contenders -- already slated for the familiar December platform release -- is Ron Howard's Frost/Nixon, based on the acclaimed West End and Broadway play about journalist David Frost's famous televised interviews of post-resignation Richard Nixon; the ones where Nixon delivered the infamous line about how "if the President does it, it's not illegal." There's a well-crafted trailer for it over here, (trailer link removed at request of studio) and yep: we're in Oscar mode.

I saw the play with Frank Langella as Nixon and Michael Sheen as Frost, both of whom reprise their roles in the film. The show was great but very much a stage show, deriving a lot of its power from the foreboding set and the hugeness of Langella's Nixon impression which, from the looks of the trailer, remains very much intact. It worked great in the theater, but I'm worried it might overwhelm the film. I liked Anthony Hopkins' take on Nixon in the Oliver Stone film, where he basically said to hell with the impersonation and did his own thing.

We're well into August, and here in Austin it's hot and dry and the last thing most of us are thinking about is anything going on next March. But over at SXSW, they're ignoring the dog days of summer and preparing like crazy for next year's interactive, music, and (of course) film festival / conference. The 2009 South By Southwest Film Festival is scheduled for March 13-21, as you can see from the new site for next year's festivities, and you can start submitting your films now for consideration. You've got until December to get your short or feature film to the festival if you're dreaming of seeing your name in lights (or at least your film's title) at the Paramount next year.

A few films are already scheduled to be screened at the 2009 fest: the SXSWclick winners, which were recently announced. The Grand Jury award for the short-film contest went to Peter and Ben, by Pinny Grylls, which also won in the documentary shorts category. Little Pumpkin, directed by Tiffany Bartok, took home the Popularity Contest award. You can watch these films and the winning shorts from all categories on the SXSWclick site. In fact, you can watch all the finalists online if you like. So if you want to pretend it's March in Austin, crank up the air conditioning a bit, sit back in a comfy chair with a beer or milkshake (in tribute to Alamo Drafthouse, a favorite SXSW venue), and enjoy the SXSWclick shorts. Then hike a mile back to your car with Scott Weinberg or Will Goss next to you, scarfing down hot wings from a Sixth Street bar and speculating on how many screeners they can watch that night before they pass out from exhaustion. (Okay, maybe you do have to wait for March for that last experience.)

As far as hustling movie producer archetypes go, I tend to prefer Joel Silver over Harvey Weinstein. Sure, Weinstein played a role in some of the great American independent films from the last decade of the twentieth century, but Silver's production credits have more spice to them -- The Matrix, Predator, 48 Hrs. -- hinting at the zany force behind their existence. The movies he has produced don't always please everyone (consider those last two Matrix movies), and sometimes his productions run into unforeseeable setbacks (Joss Whedon's troublesome Wonder Woman script). But now, Silver's trying a radical maneuver that reaffirms his maverick abilities: He's shopping around Guy Ritchie's RocknRolla, which tells the story of a drama surrounding a stolen painting and stars Gerard Butler, to other studios despite the plan to release it through Warner Bros. in October.

According to Patrick Goldstein in The Los Angeles Times, Silver said he showed the movie to Lionsgate and Sony Pictures to get some advice on how to market the film. However, when Goldstein asked Warner Bros.' top executive Alan Horn about the situation, Horn called the movie "very English," not "broadly commercial," and said the studio "might not be willing to spend the marketing money he wants us to." So it follows that Silver probably wants to sell the movie to somebody else.

This kind of thing has happened before. Jonathan Levine's teen horror flick All the Boys Love Mandy Lane was set for a release through The Weinstein Company, but when it was determined that the distributor might not provide the best home for the film, it went to the more agreeable Senator Films (although Senator has yet to release it). What troubles me is Horn's assertion that RocknRolla is "very English." Yeah ... so?

Whether or not you're offended by the use of the word "retard" in Tropic Thunder, it's hard to deny the difference between the intention of the humor and the ire of the groups protesting it. When Ben Stiller's character, Tugg Speedman, learns that he was mistaken in going "full-retard" with his miscalculated awards-bid performance as a mentally challenged man in Simple Jack, you either laugh or you don't, but you definitely get it. Stiller's point is that self-important actors often take crass or poorly formulated roles on the basis of subject matter simply so they can get a chance at the podium. At no point are we forced to laugh at a character meant to be taken as actually retarded; instead, we only get Tugg Speedman's really bad, really offensive interpretation of one.

At his Scanners blog, Jim Emerson gets this point, and smartly rails against complainers like the Special Olympics for making such a big deal out of a scene before even coming to terms with its purpose. He also brings up a brilliant historical parallel: In 1977, Randy Newman's single "Short People" was pulled from the air because it supposedly offended, uh, short people. "If you do satire or parody, you have to expect there will always be fools who will take it literally," writes Emerson. "Those people are called 'literalists.' And there ought to be a law against them."

First we had Sarah Silverman singing about f*cking Matt Damon, then Jimmy Kimmel had his turn with Damon's BFF, Ben Affleck. Now we have something even better: octogenarian actress and Academy Award-winner Cloris Leachman (who still looks damn good, thank you very much) getting all raunchy at a Comedy Central roast for Bob "Full House" Saget, threatening to get it on with "pretty boy" John Stamos on a "filthy bean bag chair" while using her Best Supporting Actress Oscar as a strap-on. There's a mental picture that'll take weeks to get out of your brain cells.

Maybe it's just the hilarity of seeing the stately Leachman talking about going after Stamos -- or perhaps even Jon Lovitz -- and then segueing seamlessly into a bit about performing a "reach-around" on Jack Benny that makes this so funny. I can't imagine it would have the same impact being said by, say, Tilda Swinton or Cate Blanchett. Anyhow, Leachman was way funnier than all the lame jokes about Saget having sex with the Olsen twins. She's still got it -- now, if only Tarantino would cast her in something as an ass-kicking, foul-mouthed granny ...

Thanks to Chris Campbell for blogging about this over on Spout yesterday.

At the age of 83, Tony Curtis is getting some film festival love. Jam! reports that the legendary actor will receive a lifetime achievement tribute at the Montreal Film Festival, which runs from August 21 to September 1. In honor of that, I thought it would be nice to go back some years and see old-school Tony. Since we're in the throes of summer, Don't Make Waves seemed most appropriate. It's a tale of possessions up in flames and saucy forays with sexy swimmers.

Don't Make Waves was the first Sharon Tate film to hit theaters, and in the scene above, she meets Mr. Curtis. Tony wakes up to a beach wonderland of surfers, gymnastics, and more, and he foolishly decides to take a swim amongst the surfers. While out there, he gets knocked out by a surfboard, and gets dragged to shore by the epic Tate and given mouth to mouth.

There's no poll this time around, but here's a bit of trivia. While the film didn't do so well, it was the inspiration for Malibu Barbie, based on Tate's character in the film, Malibu.

Oh, teenagers. We grown-ups might mock you for your questionable taste in entertainment, fashion, and slang terms, but secretly we remember that we were once just like you. Some of us legitimately thought, back in the days of our own youth, that Gremlins was the greatest film ever made. So who are we to laugh at you when you vote Step Up 2 to the Streets (pictured) best movie drama of the year? You'll be embarrassed by that decision years from now, and you'll make fun of the teenagers who, in the year 2018, are selecting Saw XV: Still Sawin' as best drama.

The 10th annual Teen Choice Awards were held last night in L.A. and will be televised tonight on Fox. Miley Cyrus was the host, and early word is that she managed to stay clothed the entire time. As mentioned, Step Up 2 the Streets won the award for "choice movie drama." (They say "choice" instead of "best," perhaps as an acknowledgment that no one really thinks this movie is the best; it's simply the one they've chosen.) The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian won for choice movie action-adventure, and Juno won choice movie comedy.

The rest of the movie-related awards, courtesy of the Associated Press, are after the jump. Should we have given a spoiler warning? Are the people watching the show tonight hoping to be surprised by the results? We face ethical dilemmas like this when awards shows are pre-taped. Anyway, the winners: