Oscar Speculation - Last but not least - Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close wants to be the Million Dollar Baby (or the John Kerry) of the 2011 Oscar race.

There was much speculation over the last couple of days over Warner Bros' decision not to make sure that Stephen Daldry's 9/11 drama Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close in time for the first batch of critics' awards.  The first official screening will be December 2nd (no, I probably won't be attending that early), which means that the Tom Hanks/Sandra Bullock drama won't be eligible for consideration for the National Board of Review or the New York Film Critics Circle, both of which are so consumed with being 'the first' to announce their year-end plaudits that they aren't even waiting until the last month of the year.  The rumblings run the gamut from 'it won't be done in time' to 'it's not that good' to 'we want to capitalize on positive audience word of mouth'.  All or none of those could be true.  But I think that Warner Bros. is playing a slightly different game.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close gets extremely cloying and incredibly pandering Oscar-bait trailer.

There is a Law and Order episode from late 2002 that deals with a woman who was murdered right before 9/11 and dumped around the World Trader Center wreckage, creating the impression that she was another victim of said terror attacks.  As the truth slowly comes out, there is resistance from the victim's mother, who doesn't want to believe that her daughter was merely a victim of infidelity gone wrong.  Point being, the grieving mother wants to believe that her daughter died in the 9/11 attacks, as if that specific violent end would give her death more importance than if she were merely a victim on a 'normal' murder.  I bring this up because the trailer above, as well as the hoopla surrounding it, is a prime example of what is arguably '9/11 porn'.  In that, I merely mean that it (this trailer and apparently the original Jonathan Safran Foer book as well) uses the 9/11 attacks to add a level of 'importance and prestige' that the story itself does not earn.  Whether the movie is good or not, ask yourself this: Would the film be getting the same sheer amount of preordained Oscar buzz and/or presumptions that it's a 'very important movie' if Tom Hank's character was shot to death in a convenience store robbery?

Jan De Bont returns, will direct live-action Mulan with Zhang Ziyi.

Good news for those nostalgic for 1990s action. After a seven year absence, action icon Jan De Bont is returning to the director's chair. He has signed to helm an English-language, live-action version of the Chinese myth Mulan. Independently financed, the alleged $100 million-budgeted project will star Zhang Ziyi as the icon made popular to US audiences by the 1998 Disney animated musical. It's a pleasant return of someone who really had it all for a few years.