Martin Scorsese‘s latest, Shutter Island (trailer below), was set for release October 2nd, but Paramount has decided to move it to February 19th, taking it out of contention for the 2009 Oscars (and a February release won’t help their chances in 2010 either).  Via Nikke Finke:

An insider tells me. “It tested in the high 80s/low 90s and Scorsese even brought it down to 2 hours.” So what’s the problem? I hear that Paramount told the filmmakers it doesn’t have the financing in 2009 to spend the $50M to $60M necessary to market a big awards pic like this. [...] I’m also told that, among the many reasons for the move, Leo [DiCaprio] wasn’t going to be available to promote the pic internationally. So the studio settled on the release date of February 19th because “that’s when Silence Of The Lambs came out” back in 1991 and it won the Oscar.

Now Paramount can throw their full weight behind their other two big Oscar contenders, GI Joe and Transformers 2.

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(“I wish this had chocolate in it.”)

At a press conference this morning in Beverly Hills, Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Science president Sid Ganis (pronounced “gay anus”) announced that the Best Picture category will expand to include 10 nominees.

It’s a dramatic change that is sure to roil future Oscar contests, beginning with the upcoming one set for March 7 at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood. Actually, though, this is a return to the way the Oscars were run in its earliest years [they switched from 10 to five nominees in 1944 -Ed.]. The change effects only the one Oscar category. [NYTimes]

I’m not sure what this means for an organization that awards best picture to movies like Crash and Slumdog Millionaire, and nominates The Reader while totally shafting The Wrestler.  Will more nominees make them love retarded people and the holocaust any less?  I doubt it.  Retards and the holocaust are like the Beach Boys and lab puppies to the academy. I guess what I’m saying is, this could be your year, Britney Spears time-traveling Holocaust movie.

So the Oscars, aka the Super Bowl for Gays happened last night.  I’ll try to combine all the thrilling action into one post:

- Mickey Rourke wore a necklace with a picture of his dear departed dog on it.  Aww, won’t someone adopt him?  He may not be housebroken, but he’s freakin’ adorable!

- Sean Penn beat Rourke for Best Actor in one the few awards I had any interest in.  I’d rather have seen shark tooth win (Sean Penn is a great actor, but everything about Milk was just so… expected), but at least it wasn’t like he got beat by someone totally undeserving, like Halle Berry, or that hack Meryl Streep.

- Kate Winslet won Best Actress for The Reader, making this the last time you’ll hear anything about The Reader.  Let’s see: main character who looks like he has Downs, protagonists who read poetry and take baths, ahck-tores viss fake jer-man ack saints… gosh, I haven’t been so excited to see something since The Hours!  Cross-eyed cats > Dyslexic Nazis.

- Slumdog Millionaire won everything ever. At this point I’m tired of pointing out that it wasn’t good.  If I wanted to watch people I don’t give a shit about fall in love I’d eat at the Olive Garden.  Or another sentence that would actually make sense. Tell ya one thing though, Danny Boyle’s daughter’s tits should’ve won something.

- Host Hugh Jackman danced and sang in that weird vibrato that only theater people have.  The opening number was okay, but his medley with Beyonce, Zac Efron, and the Mamma Mia people was so bad that when he gave Baz Luhrmann the credit for writing it, Baz practically hid underneath his seat.  But the important thing is that lots of people paid attention to Hugh Jackman.  “Hey, everyone, look what I can do!”

- Reese Witherspoon won the ugliest dress award. Hiiid-eeee-ouuuuuth…

- That list of “leaked winners” didn’t last one award.  Hope you didn’t bet the farm.  [FULL LIST OF WINNERS BELOW]

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All nine actors who play the three main characters in Slumdog Millionaire will be attending the Oscars, even the two youngest ones, whom some have alleged were mistreated by the filmmakers.

Also attending will be Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, 10, and Rubina Ali, 9, both of whom were plucked from their homes in a Mumbai slum by director Danny Boyle and his team. The trip will be their first on an airplane and their first out of the country, relatives said.
“I’m very happy that I’m going to the Oscars,” Rubina said in her home Friday, hours before she was to leave for the United States. “My friends are saying, ‘your fate is so good.’”
“I’m not scared,” said Rubina, who will be traveling with her uncle. “I’m going to go and take a lot of pictures and show them to people over here.” [AP]

Oh sure, it’s all about fate. See what this movie has done, you idiots?  Why go to school, right kids? Clearly you can learn all you need from living on the street, and if you’re ever meant to raise youself out of a life of poverty, destiny will take care of everything.  Anyway, I know I said I hated this stupid collection of clichés that everyone’s calling best picture, but I’m happy for these kids.  When you spend your childhood wearing contact lenses made of fly eggs and crying yourself to sleep on a pillow made of a sibling’s bloated corpse… well, at that point it’s fair to say you’ve earned your giftbag full of iPods and Restylane.

A no-name blog has posted a cryptic list of what it says are the leaked winners of the 2009 Oscars.  Its validity seems slightly doubtful considering the ballots were due at 5 pm Tuesday and the post went up only an hour after that (seems like they’d take longer than that to count, no?).  But then again, the Academy are nothing if not predictable old farts, so most of these are still probably a pretty good bet.  Here they are:

Actor in a leading role: Mickey Rourke [Yay!]
Actor in a supporting role: Heath Ledger [Duh]
Actress in a leading role: Kate Winslet [Meh?]
Actress in a supporting role: Amy Adams [Sure, why not]
Animated Feature Film: WALL•E [f-ck, I thought Bolt had it locked up]
Art Direction: The Dark Knight
Cinematography: Slumdog Millionaire
Costume Design: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Directing: Slumdog Millionaire
Documentary feature: Man on Wire
Documentary short: The Conscience of Nhem En
Film editing: Milk
Foreign language film: Departures
Makeup: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Music (Score): Defiance
Music (Song): Down to Earth (WALL•E)
Best Picture: Slumdog Millionaire [Duh. Ugh.]
Short film (animated): Presto
Short film (live action): Auf Der Strecke (On The Line)
Sound editing: WALL•E
Sound mixing: The Dark Knight
Visual effects: Iron Man
Writing (Adapted screenplay): The Reader
Writing (Original screenplay): In Bruges

I know, I know, it’s just not the same without Hugh Jackman singing a gay song about them. Speaking of gay, the super secret list of presenters is rumored to include Robert Pattinson, Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens, Dominic Cooper [ed note: I have no idea who that is], Amanda Seyfried, Beyoncé, and some say, Miley Cyrus.  Hooray for half-assed plans to attract younger viewers!  Shit, why not just get John Cena to host and call it the People’s Choice Awards?  And the best kill sequence set to Limp Bizkit goes to: Saw XVIII…

[thanks to Spout with the assist]