Silver had a look at guild votes and other awards histories before calculating next weekend's Oscar odds for New York Magazine. The outcome: Five of the world's six presumed favorites in the top categories haven't changed since nomination day, with only Taraji P. Henson finding new, unexpected traction in the Supporting Actress "race" (thought clinched weeks ago by Penélope Cruz). Indeed, there is actually a spreadsheet somewhere indicating that the Benjamin Button co-star has a 51% chance of winning on Sunday:

Most of the major awards in the Supporting Actress category have been won by Kate Winslet for The Reader - a role the Academy misguidedly considers a lead. That's nice for Winslet, not so nice for our computer. Penélope Cruz, who won the BAFTA for her role in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, would seem the logical default. But computer sez: Benjamin Button's Taraji P. Henson! Button, which looks like a shutout everywhere else, is the only Best Picture nominee with a Supporting Actress nod, and Best Pic nominees tend to have an edge in the other categories.

Unless we're talking about the actors' categories, in which Mickey Rourke is still favored to defeat Milk's Sean Penn and Heath Ledger remains miles ahead of Josh Brolin. But Winslet's seasonal run will pay off in Actress, where Anne Hathaway, Angelina Jolie and Melissa Leo have literally zero chance of winning according to Silver.

And Slumdog is, well, Slumdog. But really: Who's wasting their time and computer resources on this when Miley Cyrus's Kids Choice Awards status hangs in the balance? Let's crunch some real numbers next time.

• Nate Silver Predicts The Oscars [NYM]

Not that there was much countermanding going on Thursday night, when Colbert's epic game of word association still implicated Stewart's favorite Slumdog Millionaire as this year's Oscar winner. But the afterthought of opening a window for Button — which "did seem pretty important," Colbert dismissively notes — no doubt relieved some of the pressure coming down from the top. Expect Carlos Mencia to finish the job by Tuesday's voting deadline, relocating Slumdog's Child-ExploitationGate controversy to East L.A. in a lukewarm, last-ditch bit of satirical sabotage.

• 'The Colbert Report' [Comedy Central]

Instead, Stewart went forward with a few good-natured jibes at his corporate cousin's $150 million Oscar behemoth The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button — if you can call two narcolepsy jokes and extended plot mockery "good-natured." Worse yet, it came while introducing Slumdog's Dev Patel, who was welcomed shortly afterward as the equivalent of Oscar 2009's homecoming king. Worse yet, Stewart's smirking laughter at his own jokes led both his live and viewing audiences to believe they are actually fresher, funnier and/or more influential than they actually are.

So! That does it, right? 0-for-13? Watch your nuts, Jon; Brad Grey just stepped out for lunch. [The Daily Show via LAT]

After all, it takes a special kind of man to chest-punch studio executives and boldly remake Forrest Gump at twice the length and budget without any attribution whatsoever. (And that's not even counting the ButtonGate scandal brewing in Rome.) Where does it come from? A lucky audience in London found out first-hand after a special BFI screening of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button — and naturally, as with so many of Hollywood's most influential assholes, we owe it all to Fox:

I'd always had this naive idea that everybody wants to make movies as good as they can be, which is stupid. [audience laughs] So I learned on [Alien 3] movie that nobody really knows, so therefore no one has to care, so it's always going to be your fault. I'd always thought, "Well, surely you don't want to have the Twentieth Century Fox logo over a shitty movie." And they were like, "Well, as long as it opens."

So I learned then just to be a belligerent asshole, which was really: "You have to get what you need to get out of it." You have to fight for things you believe in, and you have to be smart about how you position it so that you don't just become white noise. On that movie, I was the guy who was constantly the voice of "we need to do this better, we need to do this, this doesn't make sense". And pretty soon, it was like in "Peanuts": WOP WOP WOP WOP WOP! They'd go, "He's doing that again, he's frothing at the mouth, he seems so passionate." They didn't care.

Fine. Still, get over it. There's never any excuse for making Jake Gyllenhaal cry.

• David Fincher [The Guardian]

Lyons appeared this weekend on Fox's late-night hope, Talkshow with Spike Feresten, and the host immediately started grilling Lyons about his Button love, reiterating that the movie was far too similar to Forrest Gump. Nonsense, insisted Lyons: Gump came out 15 years ago. He then added, "Also, I love special effects movies that don't take place in modern times or in the future!" Duly noted? Finally, we know what could probably induce Lyons to watch a black-and-white film: pervasive use of CG. Who wouldn't prefer Bringing Up Baby if Baby was a twenty-story-high Decepticon?

• The Curious Case of Forest Gump [Stop Ben Lyons]

THR reports that an "office worker" and amateur screenwriter named Adriana Pichini claims Button is in fact an unauthorized permutation of her 1994 screenplay Il ritorno di Arthur all'innocenza, or Arthur's Return to Innocence. She's retained a powerful Italian movie-industry lawyer to shepherd her case, legal briefs for which have been filed despite the problematic matter of F. Scott Fitzgerald's original short story and Eric Roth's own self-ripoff of Forrest Gump. (Never mind that Button has yet to even be seen in Italy; it opens there Feb. 13.)

No matter, we're told! Pichini registered her work 15 years ago, sent it off for (fruitless) consideration in the States, and no doubt bristled upon learning that her own epic's soulful gondola pilot had been corrupted as a salty testa di merda like Jared Harris. Surely Paramount and its international partners at Warner Bros. are none too pleased about the development — not when their 0-for-13 fears just received their most stirring rebuke yet from well-connected NYT observer Michael Cieply:

A lot of the mainstream players in these potentially Button-friendly blocs are a little sore at the Academy’s recent bent toward smaller films, which has been fed by an infusion of new members with roots abroad or in the independent film world. The mainstream people, at least some of them, may feel that a vote for a big, expensive picture with vast production values is the best way to protect their future jobs on big, expensive pictures with vast production values.

Fine with us! Adriana Pichini is at least as deserving of an Oscar as Diablo Cody was.

• Curious case against 'Button' in Italy [THR]

• L.A. Dispatch: The Case for 'Benjamin Button' [NYT]

Now, thanks to the Talkshow with Spike Feresten, we bring you this side-by-side treatment showing just how similar the two movies are, only with backwards-aging replacing development retardation as the movie's featured handicap. We'll let them lay out their case now—it's pretty convincing!

One might think that Fincher would owe Ciallela a note of thanks—after all, the director knows from angry outbursts, and he confessed at a New York discussion last night that he was half-masochist, half-sociopath. However, Fincher turned dovish when bringing up the Button gunman, says the NY Times:

When a cell phone went off in the audience at Frederick P. Rose Hall in the Time Warner Center, Kent Jones, the evening’s ringleader and the associate director film programming of the film center, issued a stern reprimand about turning off the darn devices. “Thank God it isn’t Philadelphia,” Mr. Fincher said. “Some dude got shot for talking on his cell phone. I don’t advocate that.”

However, the director added, if a moviegoer with a pistol in the waistband of their sweatpants just happened to encounter Fincher enemy John Goldwyn (say, at a Paramount screening room, maybe tomorrow at 4?), he or she may find a special gift in the mail: an immaculately preserved Jared Leto dreadlock from the set of Panic Room, with a mysterious note inscribed, "XOXO, DF."

• Of Virtual Replicants and Sociopathic Tendencies [NY Times]

As you may recall, the heavily browscaped 29-year-old Iraq War veteran attained instant legend status after shooting a too-talkative audience member during a screening of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Cialella was armed and ready during the previous day's matinee of Delgo, but found no fellow patrons). This week, a judge threw out an attempted murder charge and ordered Cialella held for trial on aggravated assault, reckless endangerment and related charges. Victim Woffard Lomax Jr. also revealed new details about the incident:

Lomax, 31, told the judge he was at the movie with his girlfriend and her three teenagers, enjoying the film and laughing, when a man in front of him _ not Cialella _ told him to quiet down.

"We can't laugh?" Lomax recalled asking.

A second man threw popcorn at the family, and a brawl ensued. Lomax said he was fighting with the first man when the second man pulled out a gun and fired, striking him in the left arm.

A defense lawyer argued that Cialella was being choked and punched as he tried to break up the fight and fired in self-defense.

"He's a marksman," lawyer Greg Pagano said. "If he wanted to shoot to kill, he would have."

Still, we can't help but feel sympathetic to Cialella, and we have a brand-new, charitable suggestion for David Spade: instead of donating rifles to the police, of all people, why not resolve to put a Glock in the hands of every usher at the Arclight?

• Iraq Vet's Lawyer: He Fired In Self-Defense In Shooting Over Noisy Moviegoers [HuffPo]

James Joseph Cialella Jr., 29, allegedly fired one round at an unidentified yakker at a Christmas Day showing of Button. According to reports, Cialella had asked the man and his son to keep quiet; when that failed, Cialella began tossing popcorn at the son. Tempers flared and a confrontation occurred, culminating in the dream of every chat-aggrieved filmgoer alive: Cialella drew a .380 caliber handgun and shot the dad in the arm, soundly ending the family's conversation, scattering other patrons in the crowd, and — perhaps best of all — prompting the gunman back to his seat, where he resumed watching the film in complete, unmolested quiet. For a little while, anyway; police soon hauled Cialella from the Riverview Theatre in handcuffs, later charging him with attempted murder, aggravated assault and weapons violations.

We're no lawyers, but surely we've arrived at a point at which the forcible silencing of chatty theater patrons is as self-defensive as shooting a burglar — particularly when it comes to the exquisite craft of David Fincher, whose reaction to this news no doubt supplanted Button's debut as his "first rimjob" moment. As such, consider this the launch of the Free Cialella campaign. We know tolerating a single act of gun violence can create a slippery slope (shooting your upstairs neighbor who spent the last week rewatching Mamma Mia! at high volume is still not justifiable, alas), but surely some genius defense attorney out there can convince a jury that Cialella was acting on all filmgoers' behalves, and in the interest of cinema in general.

Or, in the instance that he really is just a lunatic, at least get some cultural mileage out of the attack. We could use a hero, batshit South Philly gun-fiend or not.

• Phila. man shot because family talked during movie [Philadelphia Enquirer]

(All figures come from Big Hollywood.)

1. Marley & Me - $13.9 million
Jennifer Aniston's Marley P.R. blitz—featuring dozens of discomforting conversations about yoga positions, half-Windsor knots, and sexual uses for pureed liver—appears to have done the trick. The film, a heart string-tugging story of how a disobedient pet made one family's life immeasurably richer, has logged the highest Christmas Day opening of all time—surely giving Fox reason enough to proceed with its planned sequel, 101 Marleys & Us.

2. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - $11.1 million
This meandering tale of man who was born smelling of VapoRub and egg salad sandwiches, and died smelling like powder and mashed bananas, is second-highest Xmas day opener of all time. It should be on track for a $45 million four-day weekend if its 2988 screens are expanded to the planned 3500, filling hundreds of abandoned ghost theaters once meant for the monkeysaur adventures of Delgo and friends.

3. Bedtime Stories - $9.75 million
Many expected this fantastical family film, featuring Adam Sandler as a loving uncle who discovers a remote control that can bring his wildest imaginings to life (wait—wrong omnipotent Sandler movie), to be the weekend's big earner. Still, expect Disney to act thrilled about its performance, with a statement gushing, "In a field crowded with major holiday releases, ours was the only film in the top five to feature both a gumball hailstorm, a chariot race, and Adam Sandler talking in that high-pitched baby voice that kills us every time. We couldn't be prouder."

4. Valkyrie - $7.35 million
Tom Cruise's latest starring vehicle seems to have indeed found an audience among history buffs, who craved a Führer-detonation thriller this Christmas. Estimates have the four-day take hitting as high as $30 million—a number robust enough to coax MGM employees off their Century City window ledges and onto New Year's Eve dance floors for champagne toasts to their favorite one-eyed, one-handed, Hitler-hunting superstar.

5. The Spirit - $3.15 million
You know your so-bad-it's-bad-unless-you're-tanked-and-then-it's-actually-pretty-good movie is underperforming when its star's snotty Kleenex is grossing higher than its per-screen average.

The Top Five Chinese Dishes Consumed Later by the Jews Who Saw Them:
1. Beef with Broccoli
2. Pork Fried Rice
3. Kung Pao Chicken
4. General Tsao's Chicken
5. Hot and Sour Soup

• Big Hollywood

WHAT'S NEW: High stakes are hardly unusual for a holiday frame, but their sheer volume in 2008 is slightly disturbing: Last week's new-movie nomads shall be consumed wholly by a pack of heavyweight predators in wide release. Their top grosser should be Disney's Bedtime Stories, a sizable stride in the slow Eddie Murphyfication of Adam Sandler, playing a novice storytelling uncle who is shocked when his tales come to life. Hijinks ensue while conjuring the most explicit double entendres he can imagine, thus leaving both the kiddies and himself fulfilled when the gumball rain outside yields a ball-gum flood requiring Keri Russell's careful attention. Expect Stories to win the long weekend with $39.9 million.

The bourgeois-white-assholes-and-their-crazy-fucking-dog tearjerker Marley & Me won't be that far behind at $35.7 million, defying Disney's covert spoiler ops to steer people to their own family offfering. Behind that, look for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button to officially launch its Oscar crusade with $22.6 million, hindered by its nearly three-hour length and more-than-expected siphoning off by Valkyrie (which we'll get to in a bit). At the bottom of the scrum you'll find The Spirit, Frank Miller's spectacularly awful adaptation of Will Eisner's comics classic, pocketing $11.9 million for Lionsgate. Also opening in limited release: The Cannes darling, Oscar-probable animated documentary from Israel, Waltz With Bashir.

THE BIG LOSER: There aren't enough pejoratives in the world to pile onto Revolutionary Road, Sam Mendes's misbegotten attempt to steal another Oscar while the Academy reaches for its collective Kleenex. Or checks its watch; the reunion of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet is an interminable slog that, with any justice, should see its early, positive numbers reverse dramatically as Los Angeles and New York audiences flee theaters in search of refunds. What more can we say? Oh — lots.

THE UNDERDOG: We probably have no right to place a Tom Cruise film in this spot — especially one so expensively ubiquitous of late. But after all those months of speculation and dread surrounding Bryan Singer's $90 million thriller about the failed plot to kill Hitler, let's be fair: Valkyrie is a solid if weird popcorn thriller. The first act drags, Singer gets a little too cute for anyone's good (may we never again be subjected to his spinny Phonograph-Cam™), and you never do totally sink into Cruise and castmates Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson and Kenneth Branagh as English-speaking German officers. Still, the assassination conspiracy and its momentary glimmer of success is a captivating fluke of history handled articulately and tastefully — and sure, entertainingly — by Singer and Cruise. Even if you don't contribute to its $18.2 million opening, it's worth a look in the weeks ahead.

FOR SHUT-INS: This week's new DVD releases include the Statham-y holiday favorite Death Race, the underrated Coen Brothers caper Burn After Reading, Anna Faris's Playboy commercial-cum-college comedy The House Bunny, and a couple of the year's most notorious indie flops, The Women and Hamlet 2. Gather the family, and have a great holiday weekend!

Among films, Doubt leads the SAG field with five nominations for Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Viola Davis and for the ensemble performance as a whole. Benjamin Button and Milk picked up ensemble noms of their own, with Brad Pitt and Sean Penn recognized in the Best Actor category and Taraji P. Henson and Josh Brolin singled out for their supporting roles.

Elsewhere: Robert Downey Jr. and/or Slumdog Millionaire's Dev Patel usurped the Supporting Actor nomination that Michael Sheen should have earned for Frost/Nixon, though the latter film did draw an Ensemble nod, which it still won't win, especially against Doubt. 30 Rock, The Closer, Mad Men Boston Legal and John Adams accrued three nominations apiece on the TV side, with awards-season regulars Glenn Close, David Duchovny, Jeremy Piven and Recount making appearances as well.

Back at the Academy, the year's Best Original Song candidates were pared down to just over four dozen — nearly a quarter of which came from High School Musical 3, virtually assuring it representation (and a performance ZOMG!!!) on Oscar night. They're joined most notably by fellow frontrunners Mariah Carey (Tennessee), Miley Cyrus (Bolt), Clint Eastwood (Gran Torino) and Bruce Springsteen (The Wrestler), with Bond theme-mates Jack White and Alicia Keys on the outside looking in. Tough year, tough break, you two.

• 2009 SAG Scorecard [The Envelope]

• 
  49 Songs Eligible For Oscars [IW]

Granted, it's not what either starlet likely craves, with the Alliance of Women Film Journalists singling out Hudson as 2008's Actress Most in Need Of A New Agent and Olsen as the female half of this year's Most Egregious Age Difference Between Leading Man and Love Interest — duly noting her tryst with Sir Ben Kingsley in The Wackness. Katherine Heigl represents as well, with 27 Dresses entering the organization's Hall of Shame, and The Women and Mamma Mia! sharing the honor of being the Movie You Wanted To Love But Just Couldn‘t.

The AWFJ had the requisite list of conventional awards as well — not nearly as fun, featuring another Best Picture win for Slumdog Millionaire and Best Director Danny Boyle. Actress frontrunner Sally Hawkins split her prize with Kate Winslet (for both Revolutionary Road and The Reader), while Doubt's Viola Davis broke Penelope Cruz's streak for Best Supporting Actress. Sean Penn and Heath Ledger, naturally, won the men's acting hardware.

Elsewhere:

· In what could only have been the most fractious of voting environments, the hometown story Milk all but swept last night's San Francisco Film Critics Circle awards, taking Best Picture, Director, Screenplay and splitting Penn's Best Actor prize with Mickey Rourke. Hawkins and Ledger continued their runs as well, with Marisa Tomei sneaked in as Supporting Actress for The Wrestler.

· St. Louis's film-critic group chose The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for Best Picture, nevertheless recognizing Boyle for his Slumdog direction. Acting accolades went to Penn, Winslet, Ledger and Davis.

· And the more casual, Craigslist-assembled club known as the San Diego Film Critics Society honored Slumdog, Boyle, Rourke, Winslet, Ledger and Tomei in their big six categories. Congrats to all. Again.

Writes Binelli:

In person, Pitt is warm and funny, but is also, at least while he's being interviewed, an extremely fidgety guy. He paces. He musses his hair. He tears little pieces of dried apricot into smaller pieces before popping them into his mouth. He rubs his knee so intensely it brings to mind Lennie from Of Mice and Men petting a rabbit. All of this might have to do with the fact that, despite his repeatedly proven talents as an actor, Pitt remains, for a large number of people, a creature primarily of tabloid fascination. Did he cheat on his ex-wife with his current partner? Will they have another biological child? What war-ravaged destination might they visit next? Does the mustache make him look hot or porn-y?

As for the interview, Binelli gets Pitt to spill about his work, his life, and his thoughts — and there are some revelations.

On Pitt's crappy movies, like The Devil's Own and Meet Joe Black:

"I got lost in the wilderness of fame a bit. There are all of these opportunities you're supposed to be taking. And I got really discombobulated."

On growing up in a religious community:

"I just found it so stifling, my religion. I know it's very comforting for other people. And it was too much of what you shouldn't be doing instead of what you could be doing. I get enraged when people start telling other people how to live their lives. It drives me mental. This Prop. 8 thing just drives me mental."

On his new film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button:

"I find Benjamin is about those universal things we all share — that 95 percent that makes us all the same, wherever we are in the world. Our loves, our hopes, but also the loss that we all walk around with and hide very well, and the ultimate notion that we're all expendable. To me, it's a counterstatement to this divisive period we've been in, where we focused on the two, three, four, five percent of ways in which we're different."

On the future:

"I have this fantasy of my older days, painting or sculpting or making things. I have this fantasy of a bike trip to Chile. I have this fantasy of flying into Morocco. But right now, more and more, it's about getting the work done and getting home to family. I have an adventure every morning, getting up."

One has to wonder, is this a man who gets bored easily? Who loves being on the go? Who dreams of never slowing down? Who dreams of never settling down? And with six kids — and possibly two more on the way — is his family "adventure" enough?

Brad Pitt: The Rolling Stone Interview [Rolling Stone]

[Photo credit: Getty Images]

Examples are vague, however, and we are at a loss ourselves to suggest potential conflicts between Paramount's efforts and Fincher's vision: Perhaps the poster's lettering isn't backwards enough? The reviews aren't unanimously euphoric with praise? It could be anything, really, but we hear at least one 'Mount alum has a new welt to remind him of an ancient-past studio misstep:

After an LA screening, Fincher was rude to John Goldwyn, who was running Paramount in the early '90s when the movie, based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, was first in development. After Goldwyn congratulated Fincher, "he hit Goldwyn in the chest with his hand and hurt him and said, 'That's for you, for not greenlighting the movie when you had a chance.' " The picture, which shows Brad Pitt aging backward, relies on computerized effects that didn't exist 15 years ago.

Not to mention on a director whose film career at the time consisted solely of Alien 3, and nobody thumped him in the chest for wrecking that. Appreciate your breaks where you can catch them, Fincher, and consider keeping these guys closer for the next three months— they aren't Jake Gyllenhaal.

• Director Acts Like a Dope [NYP]

· "David Fincher and screenwriter Eric Roth (Forrest Gump) have delivered an historic achievement, a masterful piece of cinema, and a moving treatise on death, loss, loneliness and love. As the movie proceeds, and Brad Pitt as Button ages backwards, we know where he is headed: it's where we are all going. But he feels he has to go there by himself, without his loved ones. And nobody wants to die alone." — Anne Thompson, Variety

· "Perhaps it’s my youthful cynicism, who knows, but I thought Fincher brought an arm’s length approach to the emotions in the film and I wanted Roth’s reaction to that. Of course, Roth doesn’t particularly agree with my take. Indeed, he was right in the middle of telling me how the bathroom was filled with sobbers after the screening when a beautiful young lady walked up to us and told him how much the movie had affected her. But he took my comment in stride. 'Fincher is the kind of director that brings you right up to the point of sentiment and then brings it back,' he said. 'There’s something to be said for that I think.' " — Kris Tapley, InContention

· "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button represents a richly satisfying serving of deep-dish Hollywood storytelling. [...] Much of the film's romantic and philosophical posture hinges on Benjamin and Daisy getting together at the right time, and they do so in an entirely satisfying way; by the time of consummation, with Brad Pitt now in full physical glory and Blanchett at her womanly peak, they — and the audience — are more than ready for it. [...] In all his physical manifestations, Benjamin is a reactor, not a perpetrator, and Pitt inhabits the role genially, gently and sympathetically. [Cate] Blanchett's Daisy is the more volatile and moody one and, after bluntly revealing the selfish impetuousness of Daisy's youthful self, the thesp fully registers both the passion and insecurity of the mature woman." — Todd McCarthy, Variety

· "[T]his is a film that works on every level. [...] I didn’t think that Fincher could pull off something overly sentimental. I thought it would be a few steps removed and all about the effects and the gimmick. It turns out, though, that this film is about the human experience. It’s about, as Roth and Fincher said, the people who make dents in you, who impact your life. Most of those who teach Benjamin about life are women, older women who have the benefit of wisdom. His life is shaped by them, which is probably the reason I fell so hard for the film. Too often women get the short shrift in films. They aren’t given the credit they’re due as whole human beings. I was touched by the female presence in this film, quite moved by it, I must say." — Sasha Stone, Awards Daily

· "Watching Benjamin Button, occasionally I actively loathed it, but mostly I just felt genuinely disappointed that it seemed so lacking in genuine feeling. [...] Button is the opposite of Pitt’s last Oscar hopeful in that respect: The Assassination of Jesse James was a film in which every frame seemed to invite contemplation. Benjamin Button is a film in which every cut seems designed to block thought. Maybe the earlier film’s failure says it all about the philosophy behind Button’s construction: for audiences and Oscar voters, thinking is bad. Spoon-fed artifice is good." — Karina Longworth, Spout

Publicists put the call into director David Fincher, who was on his way to the theater for a post-screening Q&A, and he made the decision: pull the plug.

The audience was understandably agitated. “Come on, it looks beautiful,” one chimed in. But they all knew Miranda would have felt terrible showing his film in that fashion (and talking to some who’d see the film already, there was a considerable difference, as well as a sound quality issue afoot). “Don’t do it,” another guy said, siding with Miranda and clearly a below-the-line guy that gets it.

As unfortunate as the timing was for this technical snafu, a passion project "18 years in the making," as producers Kathy Kennedy and Gary Marshall introduced it, deserves nothing less. All the more so when it comes from the hands of an obsessive perfectionist like Fincher, who famously went with a bullhorn from theater to theater screening a slightly-too-blue print of Zodiac, and announced to audiences, "*BEEEP* GO HOME NOW. THIS NOT HOW THE KILLINGS HAPPENED. I REPEAT, YOUR ZODIAC EXPERIENCE HAS BEEN COMPROMISED."

• ‘Button’ didn’t happen [In Contention]
• Things get curious at "Button" screening [Retuers]

The first Button item we saw was submitted by an "industry spy"; if it was published by anyone other that Anne Thompson, we'd assume it was just a publicity intern practicing her press-note chops:

The achievement is big and bold and ambitious and life-affirming, but the sentimentality is always toughened by the continual sense of loss and deep sadness at the transitory nature of the human condition. If it sounds like an art movie, it absolutely is, but it's a four-quadrant art film!

Or as director David Fincher might put it, a "four-quadrant rim job." That's a milestone, no doubt, but we'd missed an even earlier, spoiler-heavy read from a blogger who was less sanguine:

I wasn’t as moved by this film as I wanted to be. This was number one on my list of must-see holiday movies and I so wanted to be blown away but it just didn’t happen. This movie is a very ambitious effort—it looks gorgeous, there are some groundbreaking special effects and the rest of the cast also do excellent work but it’s the kind of movie you respect more than love. It’s like a piece of art that you look at and say, “It’s pretty,” but don’t necessarily want to bring home.

And then came Spout's Karina Longworth, who honored every part of the embargo except for the part prohibiting slagging the visual effects. And then came the hater to whom The Playlist attributed an "emotional dud":

While they didn't think it was terrible, they did say the film wasn't the tearjerker we all heard it was supposed to be and was much more of an "emotional dud." They're reaction to it was lukewarm, but they also noted it was the kind of tepidness that the Academy loves. When we probed a little further and asked about its deeper Oscar hopes, the mention of Brad Pitt was practically laughed out of the room.

NOOO! We needed him for our Oscar pool — even though the season's other big Paramount release (with DreamWorks), Revolutionary Road, is prompting lip-loosening hype itself on two sides of the Atlantic. Thompson again had an anonymous impression back on Oct. 29, citing a "very powerful two-hander for Leo and Kate. [...] You can sense the real-life bond that lets them really go for it, all defenses down." Modern classic, etc etc.

Meanwhile, Jeffrey Wells's source in the UK agreed for the most part today:

"Only the ending felt a little unsure; otherwise, I feel Mendes has made serious progress as a director. A daring scene at the breakfast table is pulled off with virtuosity towards the end. I'll say no more than this. Much is demanded of the leads. [...] We're dealing with a lot of heightened emotion bordering on melodrama. But the actors cope well, although Kate Winslet, I feel, is more convincing than Leonardo DiCaprio.

Great. We heard she might be in the running for some sort of honors this year. So! Thanks to everyone for contributing, and we'll see you on the studio blacklist!