The dubious potboiler earned the stars both of the night's top acting prizes, while The Secret Life of Bees outmaneuvered that, Cadillac Records, The Family That Preys and Miracle at St. Anna for the evening's Best Picture award. Bees's Jennifer Hudson won Supporting Actress in addition to three music prizes, including Best Album and New Artist. Event co-host Tyler Perry failed miserably on the film side while claiming four TV awards for his House of Payne series.

Shocker of the night: Jenny Lumet — snubbed by both the WGA and Oscars for the multiethnic utopian melodrama of Rachel Getting Married — won the evening's Best Original Screenplay hardware. Though consider adding an asterisk: It didn't have to face the formidable, jellyfish-aided denouement of Seven Pounds. Recount!

• Jennifer Hudson wins big at Image Awards [THR]

Towards the end, the interviewer asked Smith about a formative incident at age 16: A girl broke his heart, and he swore to himself that from that day forth he would never be denied anything ever again. How, he wonders, did Smith use this early experience to achieve the seemingly impossible, and become the Biggest Star in the Universe. The secret, it turns out, is in something Smith calls "spiritual physics."

there are what I would refer to as spiritual physics, right? So, the idea that energy is infectious, right? So, I can infect you right now. I can infect you positively, or I can infect you negatively. I can affect how you go home and deal with people, and friends and family, and all of that, and for me, the spiritual physics of that are flawless. So, as long as I can continue to affect people, and infect people, positively, there is no version of me not winning, at the box-office. It's just the spiritual physics don't work that way...

If the basic concepts of spiritual physics sound similar to Scientology's precepts, that's because they are: L. Ron Hubbard wrote in the introduction to The Way to Happiness: "You are important to other people. You are listened to. You can influence others...The happiness or unhappiness of others you could name is important to you...It is in your power to point the way to a less dangerous and happier life."

Smith still declines to affiliate himself openly with the Church, though his charitable contributions and youth indoctrination center's curriculum suggest otherwise.

Regardless of what he calls it, however, Smith is clearly a man who approaches the politics of human interaction as a (highly contagious) quantifiable science—a concept more commonly known in Hollywood as "ass kissing." If you were wondering what all that fake-laughing is about, he's just trying to infect you with his love.

• Will Smith... On a boat [YouTube]

The fake-laughing, niacin-loving superstar sat down with Britain's Daily Express and revealed a long-held theory proven correct by the presidential election:

"It was as if some part of me was validated. It was something that I've known for a long time that I couldn't really say: 'You know guys, I really don't think America is a racist nation.' I know that I feel like that sometimes but I just don't believe that. There are racist people who live there but I don't think America as a whole is a racist nation. Before Obama won the presidency I wasn't allowed to say that out loud because people would say: 'Oh yeah, of course for you, Mr Hollywood!' "

Yes, except that Hollywood? Still racist! Moments later, Smith is asked whether executives are too nervous to give him love scenes opposite white actresses:

"Definitely nervous. You spend millions on a movie and the studio wants to do everything they can to protect their investment. The idea of a black guy kissing a white girl on screen becomes huge news in the States. Outside the country it's no big deal but in the US it's still a big racial issue."

Is Smith having his frosting-blind cake and eating it too, or has he pulled an untenable, Dixie Chicks-like act by criticizing from foreign soil the Hollywood executives who refused Leah Remini a Seven Pounds screen test? One can only hope that in our new, post-racial Obama nation, blandly written love interest parts will go to the actresses who most deserve them.

[Photo Credit: AP]

• AN INTERVIEW WITH WILL SMITH [Daily Express]

So Bad it's Good: The Spirit (Dec. 25). Perhaps it's best to know as little as possible going into this adaptation of Will Eisner's classic 1940s comic series, written and directed by Eisner acolyte Frank Miller in the arresting visual style of his debut (with Robert Rodriguez) Sin City. But the silhouettes, snow and sooty (if green-screened) Central City backdrops are less-convincing a reason to have a look than the gleeful pageantry of Miller's bad taste: The Spirit (Gabriel Macht), essentially a zombie cop turned oversexed masked-vigilante enforcer, introduces himself by way of an epic fight with equally unkillable Central City crime lord The Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson). Mud is thrown, balls are crushed, toilets are slammed, and expectations are dashed. "This," you should expect to mutter to yourself and/or your incredulous date, "is fucking terrible."

Well, kind of. Your first impression — that Miller has no idea what he's doing — eventually surrenders to an intrigue with what he'll do next. Will Scarlett Johansson put her beguiling badness to work as Octopus right-hand Silken Floss, or simply stand around like a line-reading cleavage prop? Will Eva Mendes (as jewel thief Sand Saref) test the PG-13 rating with her de rigeur gratuitous nudity? Will doctor Sarah Paulson ever tire of her male-slut superhero crush? Will Jackson's fat, annoying cloned henchmen ever shut up? And is that actually Sam Jackson up there in Nazi regalia, shouting about eggs?

By the time Miller answers most of these questions, you're already barreling toward The Spirit's climax — a convergence of the hero, villain and their intimates for a hyper-violent This is Your Life variant for the soul of Central City. With spectacle to spare and absolutely no interest in Iron Man's optimism, The Incredible Hulk's self-seriousness or The Dark Knight's social criticism, The Spirit instead emerges as the comics genre's semi-lucid inbred cousin. Hating this movie would be like booing at the Special Olympics.

So Bad it's Bad: Seven Pounds (now playing). At some point one might expect an ebb to the extraordinary critical tsunami that helped devastate Will Smith's morality play. Or at least a backlash of some kind, anything pledging some redeemability to the story of a purported IRS agent making a set of mysterious rounds to help an ensemble of sick, blind and otherwise downtrodden strangers.

Alas, we won't be the ones inaugurating that movement. Seven Pounds is everything its detractors say, with baffling plot contrivances and dramatic ineptitude compounded by the cardinal sin of utter boredom. As Smith's mission crystallizes and his motivations surface — in a twist so random it really does defy spoiling here — the likelihood of any emotional payoff diminishes behind the vast horizon of its star's ego. We imagine Seven Pounds' final 40 minutes may someday acquire some esteem in the Cult-Classic Canon for its adroit interweaving of printing-press repair, bone-marrow transplants, bad sex and killer jellyfish. But for want of anything worthwhile preceding them, it begs the question: If Will Smith falls in the forest and the audience walked out around the one-hour mark, does he make a sound?

So Bad it's Ugly: Revolutionary Road (Dec. 25) . While novelist John Cheever traced the glide path of America's fall from post-WWII euphoria to disillusioned ennui, his contemporary Richard Yates was the black box that captured every primal, panicked cry in the seconds before the crash. Nearly 50 years on, Sam Mendes likely fancies himself to share a little of each man's qualities, with his decade's worth of moodily revisionist entries surveying suburbia (American Beauty), crime and the Depression (Road to Perdition), the first Iraq War (Jarhead) and now Revolutionary Road, Yates's debut novel about an idealistic young couple's suffocation in the Connecticut suburbs.

But Mendes crafted not so much an adaptation here as he did a stunt. It was one thing to reunite wife Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, tricking the Titanic generation into a bit of po-mo awards-season whiplash; it was another entirely to impose his semi-literate condescension on Frank and April Wheeler, Yates's doomed ad man and his housewife, whose shared yearning for a life beyond the social constraints of their titular street capsizes in devastating slow-motion. Their unraveling was a symbolic end to the optimism of Eisenhower's '50s, no less nightmarish for its yowling, virtually unprecedented depiction of complacency's costs. It created a stir that never altogether faded, influencing American Beauty itself and prompting no fewer than a dozen failed screen attempts before Mendes and Scott Rudin coaxed around $40 million of DreamWorks' money to smear their quasi-pedigreed patina over the Wheeler family's implosion.

It would have been bad enough with screenwriter Justin Haythe digesting Yates's piercing dialogue into compact, Oscar-clip-compatible bursts. It would have been bad enough with DiCaprio and Winslet, each miscast, delivering those bursts in furrow-browed, you-shout-now-I-shout order. It would have been bad enough with Michael Shannon dropping by as the neighbors' candid loony son, the Connecticut equivalent of Southern dramas' "magical Negro" whose cruelly omniscient nuggets coincide conveniently with key junctures of the Wheelers' dissolution.

But Revolutionary Road's real failure transcends tone-deafness. Here, Mendes actively perverts his source's vanguard qualities — grossly commodifying the Wheelers, fetishizing their anguish, and in fact reveling in the excruciating emotional turmoil that tormented Yates until his death in 1992. We knew Mendes was a bit of a serial masturbator, but a necrophiliac? Moreover, a cold-blooded cultural murderer? Quick — someone save Kate.

Even the generally unflappable David Letterman seems to marvel at Smith's pseudogiddy range: the "Oh, a magazine photo of me" chuckle; the "What the fuck am I doing here" guffaw; the "I wasn't listening to your question" belly laugh; and other bought-and-paid for Celebrity Centre chestnuts.

Or, a little more optimistically, Smith was conditioning himself for his upcoming film It's Gonna Be Hot, which will reteam the Oscar nominee with his Seven Pounds director for the stirring true story of Arthur, a Port-au-Prince meteorologist whose hearty good humor and uncanny skill save thousands of underprivileged Haitians from the most scorching heat wave in a generation. Like Schindler's List, but with weather. Tell us we're wrong:

[Thanks to video whizzes Mike Byhoff and Josh Rachford for the editing.]

• The Late Show [CBS]

WHAT'S NEW: Warners, Sony and Universal are the first round of studios to drop what's left of their 2009 slates — not quite the grand finale any of them were looking for, if reviews and box-office forecasts are any indication. Yes Man and Seven Pounds will battle for the week's top spot, with Jim Carrey's comedy about a man who says "yes" to everything (including shagging Zooey Deschanal, despite himself, we're sure) favored to defeat Will Smith's suck-a-riffic Seven Pounds by less than a couple million dollars. We're calling Yes for $28.4 million versus Pounds' $26.7 million, thus ending Smith's No. 1-opening run dating back to 2002. Or maybe the sheer virtuosity of pans like A.O. Scott's or Scott Foundas's will compel more viewers than they alienate, like footage of the Hindenberg explosion or news reports coaxing spectators to the site of a uniquely spectacular train derailment.

Universal will open third with the animated mouse fable The Tale of Despereaux, which will benefit from a bit of adult/counterprogramming crossover to a take around $17.3 million. The art-house infantry is bringing up the rear, led in part by Paul Schrader and Jeff Goldblum's post-Holocaust curio Adam Resurrected, the Valerie Plame/Judy Miller dramatization Nothing But the Truth, and, all the way from France in its Oscar-qualifying run, the Cannes prize-winner The Class.

Also opening: The acclaimed, brutal Italian mob-novel adaptation Gomorrah; Bruce Campbell's misbegotten paean to himself, My Name is Bruce; John Leguizamo's working-class drama Where God Left His Shoes; the Southern-fried ensemble piece (led by William Hurt) The Yellow Handkerchief; and — ZOMG! — Uwe Boll's nasty Vietnam War venture Tunnel Rats.

THE BIG LOSER: Nothing opening this week will flop as mightily as, say, Delgo (what ever could?), but if Six Flags doesn't soon develop a Day the Earth Stood Still Hell Plunge — "the steepest drop of any film-themed thrill ride in America!" — to commemorate the film's 65% freefall in week two, we'll trademark that shit ourselves as the main attraction at Defamer Gardens.

THE UNDERDOG: Neither The Wrestler nor Mickey Rourke need our help to pull in about $260,000 in limited release this weekend, but listen: Like last week's recommendation of Gran Torino, our interest is in your total filmgoing satisfaction in the face of the Carrey/Smith threat. And The Wrestler is as good as you've heard (Kenneth Turan be damned): Rourke is a staggering screen hero in a season full of mere mortals, Marisa Tomei does some of the most dynamic clothes-optional work of her career, and Darren Aronofsky directs with purpose thought lost after the over-indulgence of The Fountain. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll cringe, you'll never handle a stapler the same way again. Increasingly this fall, we don't take that kind of magic for granted, and you shouldn't either.

FOR SHUT-INS: This week's new DVD's include your aunt's fourth most-requested holiday gift Mamma Mia!; the season's gag-gift sensation The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor; the HBO miniseries Generation Kill; and the Criterion edition of Wong Kar-wai's Chungking Express. Spend wisely, and make your own sage recommendations below.

Rosario Dawson, meanwhile, came away from shooting the feature with some lingering questions of her own: particularly, doubts regarding her own desirability over co-star/CoS-dabbler Will Smith's seeming reluctance to dive into their scheduled love scenes. From LAT:

"Will wouldn't start kissing for weeks," she said, laughing. "It would be on the schedule, we'd have lights and everything set up, and he would end up being like, 'I'm not feeling it tonight. I don't think it's going to happen. Let's wait another week.' I was checking my breath, smelling myself, trying to see: 'Am I offending the man in some way?' "

"But we were talking about it from the beginning: He'd only done one other love scene, and that was with Jada [Pinkett Smith, his wife] in 'Ali.' I talked with Jada about it, and he asked if she could be there. It was a very, very endearing thing to see him be nervous."

It's sad that Dawson immediately pulled the old sexual-deficiency switcheroo of blaming herself, sulking back to her trailer worried that she may have put off her co-star with unpleasant body odors. Will is merely a consummate perfectionist—if one of cinema's more prudish leading men—and he was simply approaching the scenes from the truest place he could: by wooing his fictional lady with the same icked-out apprehension that greets her real-life counterpart whenever the Smiths get together for their monthly, Church-enforced conjugal visits.

• Rosario Dawson gets romantic in 'Seven Pounds' [LAT]

Well, for one, he's busy giving lots of that money away, and a hefty chunk is going to the Church of Scientology (of which he is most certainly not a member, OK?). Fox News breaks down the totals:

He also gave a combined $122,500 to the Church of Scientology, broken into these donations: $67,500 to the New York Rescue Workers Detoxication Fund, $50,000 to the group’s Celebrity Center in Hollywood and $5,000 to ABLE, another Scientology offshoot. Smith and his wife have also supported a private school called New Village Academy they opened this fall in suburban Los Angeles that uses Scientology learning concepts.

How psyched is the niacin industry right now? Considerably more psyched than Smith is, we'd wager; Variety didn't simply trash Seven Pounds, they actively called his sanity into question for making it:

Nor can it be said that Smith, whose most recent box office barn-burners, “I Am Legend” and “Hancock,” seemed consciously designed to set the star apart from the rest of humanity, shies away from the saintlike status conferred upon his character. Indeed, he embraces it in a way so convincing that it proves disturbing as an indication of how highly this or any momentarily anointed superstar may regard himself.

HAHAHAHAHA, Variety's Todd McCarthy. HAHAHAHAHA. Maybe you could use a little education, HAHAHA! Next time you've got the time, why don't you stop by Calabasas, where visiting professor Leah Remini is teaching a class on "Unlocking the Non-Critical Critic Inside You (What I Learned on the Summer Arc of Saved By The Bell)." SP's can audit for free!

• Will Smith Gives $1.3 Million to Charities [Fox News]

• Seven Pounds [Variety]

Things like, y'know, karate, or a character who can plausibly bear the name of Mr. Miyagi. We've made our suggestions on the topic, but it looks like producers intend to go in a wildly different direction, according to Will Smith (whose son Jaden will be stepping into Ralph Maccio's bare feet). In fact, now that they've gotten budgetary incentives from China, there will have to be some important changes:

Interestingly, though the original movie was set in the United States, the new version will take place in China, and that means key characters will change with it. “We’re making it with the China Film Group, so it’ll be based in Beijing. Mr. Miyagi was originally Japanese, so there’ll be a Chinese adaptation to it.”

But wait, isn’t karate a Japanese martial art in the first place?

“Fortunately, karate is originally a Chinese art form, so that’s the area we’re playing around in.” (Ed. Note: Though karate was developed in Japan, it is based upon Kenpō, a Chinese fighting style.)

Will Mr. Miyagi now become Mr. Mao, and will he teach kenpo in Beijing instead of karate in the San Fernando Valley? Will "Sweep the leg!" become "Envision the white infidel Sharon Stone"? Sorry, Elisabeth Shue — looks like that phone call you placed to your agent may languish on the "to call" list forever.

• Will Smith’s Search For Mr. Miyagi Continues As ‘Karate Kid’ Remake Moves To China [MTV]

No one can be too sure for now, with the studio's review embargo firmly in place until Pounds' Dec. 19 release date and only the trailer to hint at the saccharine to come. But at least NY Post critic Lou Lumenick isn't waiting to hoard massive, steaming piles of rancor for opening day, teasing the film's big twist ending (which he actually gave away in a recent conversation with colleague Kyle Smith) and suggesting awards oversights are the least of Sony's problems with this one:

This diabetes-inducing reunion with director Gabriele Muccino (The Pursuit of Happyness) also didn't score any nods from the easily persuaded Broadcast Film Critics Association, not to mention any awards from the L.A. or New York film critics (there were lots of snickers when somebody jokingly nominated Smith at yesterday's NYFCC meeting, which gives you an idea of the critical reception Seven Pounds is likely to receive when it opens) [...]

I wasn't giving away anything that couldn't be deduced from looking at the trailers or a careful consideration of what the title Seven Pounds is actually referring to. Even with the world's biggest star, Seven Pounds is going to be a very tough sell without nominations or good reviews [...] and an ending ... well, I'll let you figure it out for yourself.

Well, let's see: Smith is a moody guy. Who lives by the ocean. And sits in cars a lot. And wants to help a few lucky, if infirm people, including a blind Woody Harrelson and comely Rosario Dawson. And he's giving stuff away, like belongings and money. So... he turns out to be the Publishers Clearing House Prize Van driver? We're stumped. Help us suss further in the comments, and thanks for nothing, Lumenick.

• No Awards Happyness for Smith, Sony Or 'Seven Hundred Pounds of Schmaltz' [NYP]

1. Nicolas Cage
We can think of no other actor more capable of tapping into both Miyagi's quiet dignity and flying-insect-assassinating ferocity than Cage—to say nothing of his intimate familiarity with Far East mysticism, having served for years as a pachinko pitchman on Japanese TV:

2. Dwayne Johnson
The professional wrestler turned movie star seems determined to prove to Hollywood he's more than a handsome action-lunk. What better challenge, then, than playing a 60-year-old, 5'5" Japanese WWII veteran and vintage auto enthusiast? If the physical transformation is convincing enough, perhaps there's even an Oscar nomination in the cards—as there was for Pat Morita.

3. Jackie Chan
The tender moments of surrogate father-son bonding captured by the original can only be enhanced by saucy half-pint Smith barking, "A CRANE KICK?! ARE YOU NUTS, MR. MIYAGE? I AIN'T DOIN' NO CRANE KICKS! MY KNEE IS SWOLLEN UP LIKE A CANTALOUPE!" as his sensei frantically responds something unintelligible back in comically broken Chenglish.

4. Jean-Claude Van Damme
Van Damme is overdue for a comeback—but while the Kaufmanesque and undeniably foreign JCVD may have won over the international critical community, it's not going to really satisfy the VD-craving masses. This is the part. This is the film. Bienvenue, vieil ami.

5. Samuel L. Jackson
Eleven words: "I want this motherfucking wax ON and OFF my motherfucking CAR."

• Jaden Smith set for 'Karate Kid' redo [Variety]

Perhaps Smith is just looking for a new screen challenge after mastering his simulated-sex technique, but the kinetic bloodletting of director Chan-wook Park's original — which came one Michael Moore doc shy of winning the Cannes Film Festival in 2003 — won't likely wash with the mainstream. And the watering-down of legendary set pieces like those above won't make friends with the genre geeks lunging into Universal City today with pitchforks and torches.

Also, [SPOILER ALERT] Americans don't do incest subplots and ambiguous endings. These aren't exactly tweakable story factors in Oldboy, though perhaps Spielberg can turn Smith's daughter into an alien in some third-act reveal that dazzles us into FX submission. Again, fellas, take our benefit of the doubt, just don't make us regret sharing it.

Either way, we know Smith doesn't do live squid (link NSFW), and a California roll just won't be the same. We've changed our mind: Stop this remake.

• Spielberg, Smith in talks for 'Oldboy' [Variety]

Nikki Finke evidently thinks this will have some bearing on the presidential race; more usefully, she also passed along an open letter from a small army of showrunners including Tina Fey, Mad Men creator Matt Weiner and TV legend Larry Gelbart:

This season, scripted television programming will consist of about 150 shows employing 1,200 writers.

Of that universe, 149 shows and 1,193 writers will produce shows covered by the Writers Guild’s Minimum Basic Agreement. The MBA guarantees minimum compensation, residuals, health coverage, and pension in addition to other benefits.

The big exception? Tyler Perry's House of Payne and the seven writers who, collectively, played a key role in producing over 100 episodes of one of television's most successful sitcoms. [...]

We all know that producing television is a tough and uncertain business. But some things are simply not acceptable.

Like not sending Tina Fey an invitation to the opening of Tyler Perry Studios. Even Barry Bonds got invited! Why shouldn't WGA be pissed?

[Photos: (L) Terence Long, WGAW; (R) AP]

• WGA Pickets Tyler Perry Studios [DHD]

Boomp3.com

Mega movie star Will Smith celebrated his 40th birthday in grand style as he went to town on a bag of Nacho Cheese flavored Doritos. Smith munched on a bag of the triangular taste explosions while taking in his son's football game. However, the former fresh prince of Bel Air's spent most of his time at the game making sure Dorito dust didn't land on his sharp white shirt. Smith said, “That’s what pants are for!”

[Photo Credit: Splash Pics]

*A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

After the jump: Spielberg contemplates sci-fi, Travolta visits Paris, and at last! Fag hags get a show of their own!

· Boldly empowered by his newfound independence from Paramount, Steven Spielberg's next film may finally tackle his risky, long-unexplored interest in child/alien relationships. [THR]
· Parlez vous Flopz™? John Travolta and Jonathan Rhys Meyers are off to France as a spy and embassy worker in the thriller From Paris With Love. [Variety]
· In our favorite Media Irony of the Day, masthead vagabond Tina Brown's HBO deal will officially launch with I Am Charlotte Simmons, a series adapted from Tom Wolfe's novel. [Gawker]
· Are you a "girl who likes boys who likes boys?" If so, you might be Bravo's next big star! [La Daily Musto]

I told him I’d heard he’d given a press conference to the group called Anonymous, which protests Scientology.

“Not exactly a press conference, but I did talk to them,” he said. Mind you, Will had just gone to the buffet and was carrying a plate of food. [...] So, what’s the story? Is Will a Scientologist? “I am not,” he told me. The school is using one of Scientology's teaching tools, but Will said, “You can take different parts of things you like and put them all together.”

This is similar to what he told the Anonymous people (who remain, I presume, unknown). In their recent press release, the group said, "We appreciate Will's interest in our efforts and his openness in speaking with us directly. It shows his concern both as a parent and educator. ... We will be keeping an eye on the situation to make sure that NVLA lives up to the goals Will Smith has for it, which include keeping the Church of Scientology out of the classrooms."

OK, fine — if it's good enough for Anonymous, then it's good enough for us. Come to think of it, "study technology" just sounds like a fancy euphemism for the basics underwriting "No Child Left Behind." We probably would have attributed it to "L.R. Hubbard" ourselves, given the choice.

• Will Smith Clears the Air [Fox News]