Nate Silver predicts the Oscars: [link]

Picture this: Elton John, Jane Austen and a space predator!

Trend alert! First there was Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Now comes news that Elton John's Rocket Pictures has set Will Clark to direct Pride and Predator, which mixes Jane Austen-period costume drama with an alien crash landing.

According to Variety, the alien will butcher the mannered protaganists, who suddenly have more than marriage and inheritance to worry about.

Shooting will begin in London later this year. John executive-produces, and his Rocket partners Steve Hamilton Shaw and David Furnish are producing.

Clark, who directed the award-winning short The Amazing Trousers, wrote the script with Andrew Kemble and John Pape.

John will supervise the music, as he does in each Rocket-produced film.

Oooh, new thread. Bring on the brides and the samurais!

Both of the movies referenced in the title will be broadcast on TCM in the next two weeks. I take this as a blessing.

I saw an obscure oldie called Dreamboat over the weekend. Very odd comedy, but very worthwhile.

Thornton Sayre (Clifton Webb) made some swashbuckling silent movies with Gloria Marlowe (Ginger Rogers) under the name Bruce Blair. Sayre leaves Hollywood, becomes stuffy professor of English at stuffy college (president played by Elsa Lanchester). Has a daughter (Anne Francis) who's even more stuffy and intellectual than he is.

Then television comes along. Marlowe hosts broadcasts of her old movies with "Dreamboat," as she calls him -- and the team becomes even more popular than ever. Someone realizes Professor Sayre (known as "Ironheart") is Dreamboat. University trustees worry about the effect on the school's reputation. It turns out university president is madly in love with Bruce Blair. And father and daughter go to New York, seeking an injunction to stop the broadcasts....

I'll only say that one scene in the hotel bar alone is worth the price of admission.

I'm having a hard time imagining Clifton Webb as any kind of "Dreamboat", but I've probably seen LAURA too many times.

Granted, I have a hard time with LAURA taking Vincent Price seriously as a gigilo, but I've also seen too many of his horror movies over the years.

I love Laura, although I do agree that the Price casting throws you out of the picture for a bit.

I love Laura, although I do agree that the Price casting throws you out of the picture for a bit.

Though he does make a superlative red herring in compensation for the seeming miscasting of the role (though I think that's only retrospective - at the time I don't think it was such odd casting).

Though he does make a superlative red herring in compensation for the seeming miscasting of the role (though I think that's only retrospective - at the time I don't think it was such odd casting).

I think I remember hearing commentary to this effect. Maybe on the "Out of the Past" film noir podcast?

Nate Silver predicts the Oscars: [link]

Interesting, but, having seen The Reader, he's so wrong about this:

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.

I don't know how that role could ever be considered "supporting".

We had friends over this weekend who had never see The Princess Bride (or read it, but they don't read). Now, I realize I may be speaking blasphemy here, but there may be room for a remake.

The script is great, the performances ranged from really good to freaking awesome, the casting was good, the cheesy-fairy-tale look was good. But the pacing. Oh the pacing. Ponderous. Epochal. Like a drip of molasses caught in amber on the back of a narcoleptic tortoise.

Also, the Mark Knopfler soundtrack hasn't aged well.

Maybe the film just needs to be recut and re-scored.