The cinematic blogosphere has been resounding today with calls of "What ho!" and "Top o' the morning, govn'r!" since a fair number of America's leading film bloggers have boarded planes courtesy of 20th Century Fox for Jolly Olde England to attend the premiere of The Fantastic Mr. Fox.

This morning, The Fantastically Cranky Mr. Jeffrey Wells gave us a glimpse into the hard-scrabble life of a junketeer with this peek inside the asylum that makes it sound not unlike a posting in Saigon circa 1969:

Arrived at Heathrow this morning at 7:40 am, bought an Oyster card, took the Underground to Hyde Park station and registered at the Dorchester by 10:30 am or so. (Things always take longer than you expect.) I then ordered a pricey breakfast in the salon, sharing a table with the Boston Herald's Stephen Schaefer, also here for the Fantastic Mr. Fox junket. I got about 90 minutes sleep on the plane, at most, and am consequently too fried to write anything. So the best I can do for now is simply post photos.

Later Wells blogged from the home of Roald Dahl, where the junketeers had been dragooned, earning their inter-continental transit with a forced visit (and presumed blog entries to follow) to the historic home of Mr. Fox's author. After posting pictures of the Mr. Fox merch-littered estate, Wells signed off with what seemed a slightly desperate cry for help from one trapped on a promotional bandwagon, saying of his schedule ahead, "Nothing of any substance until this evening, and even then..."

The forced frog-marching however, does not prevent Wells from giving Anderson a chance to respond to Sunday's Los Angeles Times piece in which the Mr. Fox crew filed some eye-raising complaints about the boy genius, including his propensity for staying in a separate country from his movie set. After opening his video interview with a bold compliment of Anderson's footwear, Wells puts it to Anderson of the gripers quoted in the piece, "When you're going to do a film somebody's way, you're obviously going to adhering to a very particular thing and that's all there is to it." (Anderson responded agreeing that one crew member in particular had said "a bunch of things that were a bit outrageous for someone to say about their boss.")

Elsewhere on the junket, things were a bit more serene. At firstshowing.net, blogger Alex Billington advertised a planned an escape for the PR-imprisoned bloggers to the freedom of a genuine, unmonitored pub.

Over at The Hot Blog, David Poland conducts a forthright soul-searching inspired by his own London voyage and a recent fracas sparked by the Tahitian Couples Retreat junket a few of his internet colleagues suffered through. After declaring his own fairly modest annual junketing schedule, Poland points out the conundrum facing entertainment reporters in what passes for the entertainment press today, noting that for many reporters, their jobs are dependent upon serving up a constant stream of timely celebrity interviews and reporting on upcoming films, the sort of interviews and reporting that can only be gotten in conjunction with the PR campaigns for movies and are thus only available on official trips or set visits.

For all but those few working for the dwindling number of publications with a travel budget, the thought of getting your employer to cover your trip to Tahiti is absurd. But nonetheless, that same employer will expect their reporters to provide them with the interview with Vince Vaughn that can only be had in Tahiti. So what's a poor schlub to do but swallow his doubts, and go to Tahiti.

To those who would argue that accepting junkets compromises the ability of a reporter to write critically of a film in production, Poland argues that horse has long since left the barn. The idea that a reporter from Entertainment Tonight or the NY Times would visit a set and come back with a less than approving story is as outdated a concept as a printing press itself. In fact, what was so startling about the LA Times' Mr. Fox story was how rare it was. When was the last time a story in a major paper, magazine, anywhere visited the set of a film and delivered a single remotely critical word? Farther back then we can remember, that is for sure...

In his intro to the list, Guru-master David Poland cautions, "about half of the contenders haven't been seen. Darts are flying in the dark. Some are hitting expected titles and others are real surprises."

How then does the punditry deliver such judgments on films which may still be getting worked over in the cutting room? A combination of factors go into a Oscar savants' calculations - first, as noted above, hitting certain tried and true notes (historic epic, biopic, Clint Eastwood directed) move a film straight onto the field, no questions asked. And then the pundits note the buzz from friends at the studios and in the marketing departments; what they are hearing about the film. One will note that Lovely Bones, which just on the basis of its provenance seemed to have the Best Picture crown locked up two years ago before it was ever shot, now falls surprisingly low on the Guru scale. Could there be some bad buzz flying about from those few on the inside who have seen the film?

One should also note that the September buzz, now 184 days before the March 7, 2010 Oscar telecast, is almost always wrong in some very huge ways. Last year's chart just after Toronto , Frost/Nixon, Milk and Benjamin Button were the early favorites, far outshining eventual winner Slumdog Millionaire, and The Soloist, which ended up being so dreary it ended up dropping out of the Oscar race,its release was pushed back to the following year, was in a respectable seventh place on the pundits round-up.

In 2007, the ultimately dreadful Atonement was far and away the pundits' best bet. In 2006, the early charts were led by Dreamgirls, Flags of Our Fathers and Babel, all of which fizzled far short of trophy night.

Perhaps the greatest fun of the Oscar race is watching these pre-season flame-outs. Every year brings a film or two massively bloated and portentious in its very silhouette; it can be seen standing on a mountain-top overlooking Hollywood, waiting to come down and claim its destiny, which then sputters and tumbles all the way down the hill, hitting Sunset Blvd. with a thud. The aforementioned Soloist comes to mind. Phantom of the Opera, Cold Mountain, Memoirs of a Giesha - wonderful car wrecks all.

Of course, a good percent of the time these bloated monstrosities actually win the race (Gladiator, The English Patient, Titanic and Braveheart, to name a few).

And no Oscar race is officially underway without the first harumph of the season from the LA Times' Patrick Goldstein. To the horror of the Times' ad sales department, Goldstein has been waging war on the Oscar race for several years now, every season making the shocking case that the Oscar derby is not about art, why it's just a contest! And a silly one at that! (Imagine, calling the Oscars silly! The cajones!)

Goldstein's brave stand against contests kicked off this week with his plea to the world to ignore the Oscars, at least until he tells you its time to pay attention. This year, he seems to be bringing some muscle into the mix, promising to review the early predictions next February and hold erring pundits accountable.

At Moviecitynews, the Gurus O' Gold pundits panel have offered their picks on this year's Oscar favorites, in a Best Picture race thrown into pandemonium by the announcement that there will be ten nominees this year, rather than the standard five. The Academy's hope seems to have been that by broadening the field, they would make room for some crowd pleasers, some movies that people have actually seen, to get what used to be called "the general public" perhaps interested in what has largely become a battle of obscure indie dramas.

If that was their intent, however, the Gurus offer little hope in the top slot.

Out of the gate, The Gurus have selected as the one film they clearly have all seen at the slight favorite: Kathryn Bigelow's Iraq bomb defusing drama The Hurt Locker, which after two and a half months of release has raked in all of eleven million dollars.

After Hurt Locker, the field is cluttered with various usual suspecty types of trophy bait, whose log lines and proper nouns read like mash-ups of contenders of yore; A Clint Eastwood directed bio of Nelson Mandela (Invictus), a Weinstein produced musical (Nine), a Jason Juno Reitman/George Clooney film about a corporate downsizer (Up In the Air), the story of an overweight, illiterate teen in Harlem (Precious) Peter Jackson's rendition of a beloved favorite of contemporary quasi-snooty fiction (The Lovely Bones) and Hillary Swank in an Amelia Earhart biopic (Amelia).

That's right people, it is on. Oscars 2010 is here to stay, for the next six months.

· Back before the Internet, Patrick Goldstein used to sit at an old-fashioned typewriter and daydream and have the whooooole Oscar beat to himself at the LA Times. Then came bloggers, whom he couldn't read on his typewriter. Word got back to him they were writing about the Academy Awards! The effrontery!

Grumpy Goldie upgraded and eventually wound up blogging himself, culminating in today's bitter screed arguing: "Anyone who doesn't believe that the Oscars haven't been thoroughly hijacked by a gang of daffy, clown-suit-clad Oscar bloggers making endlessly moronic best picture predictions just hasn't been paying attention." He specifically referred to political commentary like yesterday's insane EW item "How Obama Helps Batman," but the point was clear: Patrick misses his typewriter!

· Not one to back down from an opportunity to write 5,000 words of self-defense from a piece where he isn't even mentioned, early blog adapter David Poland fired back:

[W]e don’t all think like you, Patrick. Sorry. Honestly, I seem to recall you having a broader mind a few years back. But lunch by lunch with agents and studio execs and hack producers trying to get you to peddle their wares, you seem to have forgotten that ideas do not live and die in your cul de sac… except when they are in your word processing program… you BLOGGER!

Oooooohh, that's hateful. But the first rule of Oscar Club is that you don't talk about Oscar club — especially the part about the clown suit.

· Speaking of which, skin-crawling awards freak Tom O'Neil looked down at his floppy shoes and jump suit with animal balloons dangling from its belt loops, grabbed his big red nose and honked out his own reply:

If Goldstein wants to take aim at anything, why not those best-picture victories by Gandhi or Dances With Wolves or the fact that one was denied to what the American Film Institute repeatedly hails as the greatest film ever made, Citizen Kane?

No, Tom, you'll do, but thanks! Is it March yet?

• Election + Oscar pundits = absurd [LAT]

• How Patrick Goldstein Thinks [The Hot Blog]

• What's behind Patrick Goldstein's relentless attacks on Oscar bloggers? [Gold Derby]

And ESPECIALLY when the solution to America's Movie Critic Deathwatch is hidden within the trenchant stream-of-consciousness rant therein. We're just sorry that troubled Hot Blog commenter "LexG" won't be around to reap the rewards of his masterwork after the blog's proprietor, David Poland, cut him off at the knees:

I'M SMARTER THAN HALF THE SO CALLED EXPERTS. I SHOULD BE A FUCKING FILM CRITIC. WHY AM I A WORKADAY POSTHOUSE DOUCHE WHEN I'M SMARTER THAN ANYONE IN THE WORLD?

Our thoughts exactly! But that's hardly everything; taste all the bile after the jump. (Or, if you're Kenneth Turan, Elvis Mitchell or Luke Y. Thompson, maybe just consider skipping to the next item.)

I DON'T GET WHY SOME PEOPLE GET TO BE PROFESSIONAL MOVIE CRITICS WHEN I'M OBVIOUSLY SMARTER THAN THEM.

I HAVE DEGREES IN JOURNALISM, FILM HISTORY, AND ENLIGHT LIT, WITH MINORS IN RUSSIAN LIT, FILMMAKING, AND LIKE 15 OTHER THINGS.

HOW DOES A LUKE THOMPSON OR A FATBODY LIKE ELVIS DOUCHEBAG MITCHELL GET A PAID JOB AS A FILM CRITIC?

OR THAT FAT OLD BITCH KEN TURAN? THAT GUY IS THE WORST MOVIE CRITIC IN AMERICA, AN OLD, ELDERLY, BORING STUFFY BORE. KEN TURAN BLOWS.

LEXG IS SMARTER THAN FUCKING KEN TURAN, WHO'S LIKE THE BORING BOOK CRITIC VERSION OF MICHAEL MEDVED.

YEAH, I SAID IT. FUCK KEN TURAN. WORST MOVIE CRITIC IN AMERICA. OLD FUCK. MAN UP, TURAN, YOU'RE A PUSSY.

KEN TURAN IS GARBAGE.

HIRE THE LEX.

I'M SMARTER THAN HALF THE SO CALLED EXPERTS. I SHOULD BE A FUCKING FILM CRITIC. WHY AM I A WORKADAY POSTHOUSE DOUCHE WHEN I'M SMARTER THAN ANYONE IN THE WORLD?

YES, I AM SMARTER THAN YOU.

YOU ARE A BITCH. I AM GOD. BOW TO ME.

THREE COLLEGE DEGREES, IQ OF 230. [...]

ALCOHOL OWNS. YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

DRINK UP ALL BITCHES— LEXCOUNT = 11 BEERS, HALF A BOTTLE OF THE D.K.A. AND NOW SOME JACK BITCH.

YEP YEP.

KNOW. I AM PLAINVIEW. FUCK EVERYONE.

And there's more. Who's hiring?

• Dumping Posts [The Hot Blog]