Earlier: Oprah's Favorite Things 2007: The Audience Freaks Out!

Natalie Portman cements her position as Ethereal Goddess to the fan boy population by signing off to star in Thor: a movie about the Norse god of thunder. [THR]

Did you know that Neil Patrick Harris is going to host the Emmys? Of course you did! Here's a press release about the worst kept secret in Hollywood. [Variety]

Beaver! Is the name of the ‘whimsical drama' Jodie Foster might direct and co-star in alongside Mel Gibson. Both Steve Carell and Jim Carrey were circling the role earlier but it looks like Gibson will be the one zipping up that suit. [LA Times]

Shark Tank is a new reality show slated to premiere in the fall on NBC. The premise is: an inventor pitches a room of dour looking investors. If the inventor woos them, they invest their oodles of capital into the inventor's dreams. Here's a clip from the Brittish verision which I'm sure is more droll but nevertheless heart-warming! [THR]

A&E is working on a reality project with the media shy Jackson family. [THR]

Just weeks after 20th Century Fox put the brakes on Tony Scott's "Unstoppable" -– the runaway-train with a ballooning budget — now Denzel Washington has backed out! What other indigities must befall the locomotive industry be we learn to appreciate them again?! Denzel was set to play a veteran engineer who jumps into a locomotive (the coal kind!) with a young conductor (Star Trek's Chris Pine) to halt an unmanned runaway train filled with a toxic chemical. [Variety]

When asked if she believed if some of Heath Ledger's die-hard fans would be upset about producers reviving Heath's role in the TV adaption of 10 Things I Hate About You. Meaghan Jette Martin, who will play Julia Stiles role in the TV Show responded, "That's such an interesting thing because the movie is an adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew and Shakespeare passed away. Was the movie disrespecting Shakespeare?" The question is ageless. [TV Guide]

Slumdog Millionaire dominated as expected, an international sweep in a night studded with British, Indian and Australian wins. Not that there was much danger of nationalist unity within Hollywood; host Hugh Jackman managed to work some surprisingly vicious showbiz digs into the show, including lines from Steve Martin and Tina Fey not-so-subtly mocking Scientology and Ben Stiller's unsparing imitation of Joaquin Phoenix.

There were some misfires, like the lengthy nominee tributes involving top stars giving overlong, wedding-toast-style speeches for each contender in top categories like Best Actor and Actress. But there were also more memorable moments than any viewer had a right to expect. The best:

10. Franco and Rogen turn the Reader into stoner comedy

"Their giggling and guffawing at The Reader is somehow more damning (and more exposing of the film's overweening pomposity) than a thousand bad reviews." —Guardian. (OK, sure, but Kate Winslet's little gold man begs to disagree about the Reader.)

9. Angelina Jolie grins big at Jennifer Aniston

You just had to cut to Jolie during Aniston's animation award presentation, didn't you, ABC? OK, so we secretly enjoyed the shot of the Brad Pitt-stealer's wide grin, but that's not the point.

8. Philippe Petit's statuette-balancing magic trick

The star of Best Documentary Man on the Wire was making a naked bid to become the stuntman for all future Academy Award ceremonies. We're all for it, as long as the Frenchman returns each year with his charming white scarf.

7. Host Hugh Jackman: "The Musical Is Back"

Is it? Because some of us felt like we were stuck on the lido deck of a cruise. Including Penelope Cruz, judging by her arched eyebrows at the close of the biggest number.

6. Ben Stiller as Joaquin Phoenix

Oscar presenters don't normally go after their own. Stiller did. His deadpan, unmistakable imitation of Phoenix's notorious performance on David Letternan is as good a sign as any that Phoenix, who has declared himself retired from acting, is now being as much pushed out of the Hollywood community as leaving it.

5. Tina Fey and Steve Martin's Scientology dig

Or maybe they were talking about some other "made up" religion involving an alien king scattering seeds across the Earth to "fuel our positive transfers." But you don't have to be a Clear to know that's unlikely. (Though this is the best bit, Fey and Martin's overall routine was excellent. As was their rapport.)

4. Heath Ledger's family accepts his award

The late Dark Knight actor received a touching tribute from his father, mother and eager sister. But what happened to the mother of his child, Michelle Williams? She wasn't even mentioned.

3. Kate Winslet's whistle

The Englishwoman's Best Actress win was widely expected; her sweet call-and-response with her father was not.

2. Dustin Lance Black on gay rights: "God does love you."

The Mormon-raised Milk screenwriter once found inspiration and emotional sustenance in California. With his heartfelt message to "gay and lesbian kids," Black returned the favor.

1. Sean Penn: "You Commie, homo-loving sons of guns."

Accepting for Best Actor, Penn killed. The tightly-wound actor was charmingly self-deprecating. And his cutting comments on California's gay marriage ban, which came near the end of the Oscar telecast, provided the perfect bookend for Black's statements, near the start.

Which isn't to say that anyone has yet confirmed his or her role as the Sunday night's official Best Supporting Actor proxy. Maybe the mystery is just one component of the Condon/Mark Surprise Parade™, or, as seems increasingly likely, it reflects uncertainty among the Ledgers, Michelle Williams and Warner Bros. over just who should stand for the late actor upon his imminent Oscar victory Sunday night.

At the very least, we thought it was agreed that the Academy would hold the statuette for 3-year-old Matilda Ledger until she reached 18. But her grandfather was ambiguous on Thursday, noting to TMZ's tape-wielding hellhounds that he'll hold it for her "forever." As shrieked at the top of Tom O'Neil's lungs, that's not really how it works, but we've long sought an unprecedented Oscar custody battle, so may the best Ledger win. Or, should the Academy lose its nerve, may it simplify everything and just give the award to Robert Downey Jr.

• Ledger's Dad — Thinking About an Oscar Speech [TMZ]

• Heath Ledger's family plans to take his Oscar... [LAT]

A Fox News study of awards-season sales on eBay revealed that Benjamin Button-related items have outsold Slumdog Millionaire-ish merchandise by a rate of 491 to 297. The Button crap's average value is nearly $6 more than that of Millionaire, with Pitt also kicking Best Actor foes Sean Penn and Mickey Rourke's asses — combined — by more than two-to-one.

Meanwhile Jolie outranks both Kate Winslet and Meryl Streep in Best Actress, selling almost 4,600 trinkets, videos, garments and titanium orphan traps in recent months. Only Heath Ledger's runaway Oscar odds coincide with his massive eBay popularity, likely after producers Bill Condon and Larry Mark spiked demand with their top-secret plans to offer Joker bobbleheads to the first 500 people in attendance.

• Are EBay 'Oscar Items' Proof of Hollywood's Disconnect With Ticket-Buying Public? [Fox News]

The Ultimate Joker founder Fer Barbella never wants to see the Joker in the movies again. TV, fine. Animation, fine. But Heath Ledger was so good, he says, that the character deserves permanent retirement. And the only way to achieve that, apparently, is to gather 50,000 signatures in an impassioned plea for geek solidarity. More than 30,000 readers have contributed in two weeks; by the end of the month Barbella may fulfill his pledge to organize a march on Warner Bros.

But please — no hate mail. The organizers acknowledge their deficiencies:

Regarding some aggressive and radical comments here… to all of them… WHY SO SERIOUS? Just share your POV, but as well as we have the right to ask for this cause without being rude with you, you have the right to show some respect and class writing like a normal person. Please, do not overuse the f… word, for God's sake. And yes, we're morons, idiots and all that stuff… so what?

Oh, which reminds us: The Stop Uwe Boll petition is stalled well short of its million-signer goal. Don't let democracy pass you by.

• 'The Ultimate Joker' [via Carpetbagger]

But how gentle is "gentle"? David Carr asks and mostly answers that question in today's NYT, best characterizing Warner Bros.' strategy as some balance of print ads and ignoring press requests for comment. Which is no doubt working, as is the self-perpetuating momentum of critical and Globes plaudits. Yet oddly downplayed in the equation is the viability of a dead nominee — especially one of Ledger's stature, talent and now legend. Beyond the obvious boost for a film just theatrically re-released, why would Warner's spend any money pushing Ledger for an award his untimely death and ensuing mythology has bought and paid for already?

That's not to say Ledger's performance isn't excellent, awards-worthy, iconic, whatever, and Academy voters will reward it in accordance with its "competition" — a dude in blackface, the guy who killed Harvey Milk, Revolutionary Road's token nod and Philip Seymour Hoffman, who stole the 2005 acting Oscar that Ledger deserved in the first place for Brokeback Mountain. As Carr points out (and we recall from first-hand experience), Ledger was a lousy campaigner then.

His ghost, however, is not, which makes Warner's job much less complicated than today's survey implies. The studio's marketers are really the only ones who can get in his way, and it's mildly surprising they'd hazard the exploitation factor naturally accompanying Ledger's Oscar ads. We know that's "the way it's done" and everything, but it's not like it has to be. If the guy's grown wings, jumping on his back seems worse than ghoulish. It's just senseless.

• Delicately Campaigning for a Star Now Departed [NYT]

After working with Ledger in Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus just before his death, Troyer was moved to replicate part of the actor's signature—a heart—as a tattoo on his hand. Troyer recounted his memories in a sober, touching story that belied its setting: an episode of the UK's Celebrity Big Brother. Luckily, Troyer managed to keep the moment respectful; the only flicker of inappropriate reality show camp came just before he began, as the narrator noted, "4:48 pm. Coolio is in the kitchen." [ONTD]

That's according to Us Weekly, which placed the actor at the Hollywood Improv this month for a $50 anti-Prop 8 show. Though the cost of a ticket went to Equality California, Pattinson was feeling less than charitable about the humor:

According to a witness at the No on H8 show at The ­Improv in Hollywood on Dec. 16, Twilight star Robert Pattinson, 22, booed a comic who said, "Here's my impression of Heath Ledger," then collapsed and began faking convulsions.

[...]

"Robert and his friend went nuts yelling at him," the source tells Us Weekly. "[Pattinson screamed] f—k you! You suck!"

So much for our fantasies: At one point, we'd dreamed of squiring the actor to a show of alt-comedy at UCB or the Largo, then running our hands through his thick unwashed mane in between onstage performers. Now that Pattinson is freshly shorn and we've learned he's more of an Improv guy (points for the charity, though!), we think we'll take Kristen Stewart instead—that is, if we can pull her away from her honey bear bong and a night of premieres on Adult Swim.

• Robert Pattinson Defends Heath Ledger [Us]

· The American Film Institute yesterday named its Top 10 Films of 2008, from which Slumdog Millionaire was actually ineligible because it isn't, well, American. That didn't stop AFI's jury from recognizing pretty much every other laurel-bearer from the last two weeks of Oscar season — The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Dark Knight, "Frost/Nixon, Frozen River, Gran Torino, Milk, Wall-E and The Wrestler — with Iron Man and Wendy and Lucy filling in where Slumdog and Happy-Go-Lucky likely would have gone had they not been produced in lesser regions of the planet. That will teach them.

· The Boston Film Critics Association couldn't make its minds up about anything on Sunday, when Slumdog shared its Best Picture hardware with WALL-E, and Sean Penn and Mickey Rourke tied for Best Actor. Then it gave Best Director to Gus Van Sant for Milk as well as Paranoid Park, his skater thriller that mostly made the fest rounds in 2006 before petering out in limited release last March. You know the rest: Sally Hawkins, Heath Ledger and Penélope Cruz claimed the other acting awards; WALL-E took Best Animated Film; and Man on Wire won Best Documentary.

· Among smaller orgs, New York Film Critics Online fell in line behind Boston and pretty much everyone else, mixing it up just enough to honor Danny Boyle as Best Director for Slumdog.

· The ninth-annual Black Reel Awards were announced as well, bucking all convention by naming Cadillac Records its Best Picture and handing out acting awards to Queen Latifah (The Secret Life of Bees), Viola Davis (Doubt), Jeffrey Wright (Cadillac Records) and Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire). Next year, Beyoncé.

A series insider reports an upcoming plot is "supposed to be about Heath Ledger" and features a male supermodel, played by Ryan Locke, who "has a great career and gets all the ladies." Perhaps the eeriest comparison is to Ledger's actual death by overdose when the character "leaves a club with a girl. They have sex and do drugs, and the next morning, his friend finds him dead."

Yes, very eerie. Even eerier: that's not how Ledger died! Also eerie: Ledger was found by his masseuse, not a "friend." Plus, an eerie honorable mention: Ledger was an Academy Award-nominated actor, not a male model. Still, kudos to model/actor Ryan Locke for somehow getting his name in this totally questionable item! "Hollywood P.R. Man" Hal Lifson, we've got a potential new client we'd love you to meet...

• 'LAW' & LEDGER [NY Post]

Classy, right? At $160 per (and on backorder through next week), they'd better be. But what if the kids want to be a disfigured, lip-smacking serial killer as well? Lucky them — that's covered, too.

Even your little guy or gal can get in on the trick-or-treat sociopathy, as pictured here. And failing that, there's always the tormented anti-hero get-up (with or without muscled chest) for maximum doorstep brooding — viciously murdered ex-girlfriend sold separately, natch.

• http://www.link.com">Mr. Costumes Takes On 'The Dark Knight' [PRWeb]

WSJ: What effect did the success of "Brokeback Mountain" have on your writing life, if any?

Ms. Proulx: "Brokeback Mountain" has had little effect on my writing life, but is the source of constant irritation in my private life. There are countless people out there who think the story is open range to explore their fantasies and to correct what they see as an unbearably disappointing story. They constantly send ghastly manuscripts and pornish rewrites of the story to me, expecting me to reply with praise and applause for "fixing" the story. They certainly don't get the message that if you can't fix it you've got to stand it. Most of these "fix-it" tales have the character Ennis finding a husky boyfriend and living happily ever after, or discovering the character Jack is not really dead after all, or having the two men's children meet and marry, etc., etc. Nearly all of these remedial writers are men, and most of them begin, "I'm not gay but…." They do not understand the original story, they know nothing of copyright infringement—i.e., that the characters Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar are my intellectual property—and, beneath every mangled rewrite is the unspoken assumption that because they are men they can write this story better than a woman can. They have not a clue that the original "Brokeback Mountain" was part of a collection of stories about Wyoming exploring mores and myths. The general impression I get is that they are bouncing off the film, not the story. There's more, but that is enough, ok?

OK! We can see Proulx's point; after all, it somewhat dilutes the gist of the original story if a sequel just happens to involve Ennis Del Mar meeting the slain Jack Twist's identical twin (coincidentally, also gay!). When will the internet accept that Proulx's simple, elegant tale simply can't be done justice by a poorly written Livejournal follow-up? Instead, it needs a wildly ambitious, UFO-set pas a deux that takes the cowboys to an alien world where homosexuality is the norm and instead of farming sheep, you farm gleepdorps. Annie, rights are still available!

• Return to the Range [WSJ]

A. Joan Rivers

B. Andy Dick

C. Grazerhead

"You don't wait around in a hot rental market like this," said one broker at the time. "As ghoulish as it sounds, people will rent that place in a heartbeat." ...

Ledger began renting the fourth-floor unit at 419-421 Broome St. last September after finishing his Joker role. It includes three bedrooms, 2½ bathrooms, an office, a laundry room, a gourmet kitchen and an 80-square-foot balcony. Also featured are 15-foot tin ceilings, exposed brick walls and a wood-burning fireplace.

And, for no extra charge, the inherent promise of Terry Gilliam hating you almost instantly. Really, some opportunities just transcend money.

• Go For Joker [NYP]

"She was so freaked out, her eyes welled up, and she actually bit her nails at one point," says the spy. "When someone pretended to dump Estelle Getty's ashes on [30 Rock star] Jack McBrayer's head, Brooke got up and walked offstage."

"She watched the rest of the show from behind a curtain backstage, with a grimace."

Shields' spokesman said she left to talk to the writers before she was about to go on.

Content that her concerns were heard, Shields returned to the panel, only to once again storm off when a simple improv exercise solicited the suggestion of, "You're a frequent narrator! And you're in a 1997 Nissan Maxima!"

• Brooke Shields balks at 'dead' gag [NY Daily News]