The way casting announcements and pics of a pudgier Matt Damon had come down the pike, one had every reason to think that Steven Soderbergh's The Informant! (now with exclamation point) was going to skew more serious than its newly debuted trailer sells.

It's not that there's anything wrong with telling the real-life story of a bi-polar whistle-blower (Damon) with a more decidedly comedic bent, but 'thriller', this does not scream. Then again, maybe Soderbergh just wanted to lighten things up after the epic Che and the austere The Girlfriend Experience, and if that's indeed the case, things do seem to be heading more towards the Ocean's Whatever lark end of his spectrum.

Although most sites seem to have The Informant! with an October 9th release date, the trailer and the page around it (you know, with the 40-Year-Old Virgin-like possible poster art) both state September (in line with a 9/18 date we've seen floating around elsewhere). Either way, I suspect that an appearance at one of this fall's high-profile festivals will help assure us that the film does indeed merit its especially enthused punctuation and that the Damon does indeed merit his schlub-tastic appearance.

Now that the Academy Awards have extended the best picture category to include ten nominees instead of five, you bet your bottom half we're going to start seeing some pretty bold claims when it comes to fan favorites, like Star Trek, Watchmen and the upcoming Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. With a couple weeks still to go before Half-Blood Prince finally hits theaters, Hollywood.com's Paul Dergarabedian looks to be the first to champion the film for a possible best picture nomination.

Having watched the movie at an advanced screening, he says, "... the Potter loving beast in me has been unleashed after having witnessed a film that was not only exquisite in its production values, but was also charming, funny, scary, enchanting, moving (stop me, the adjectives could go on and on) and dare I say, sexy. Brilliantly directed by David Yates (he directed 2007's "Harry Potter and the Order of The Phoenix"), "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" is a tour-de-force that combines style and substance, special effects and heart and most importantly great performances from all of the actors young and not-so-young. Not only that, half-way through I'm thinking the unthinkable - "ten academy awards nominations are available this year, hmm I wonder...."

Granted, the folks from Hollywood.com could be angling themselves for some Potter quotes in print and in future trailers, but seeing as Lord of the Rings had its time in the Oscar spotlight -- coupled with the fact that Potter is nearing his big-screen finale -- I wouldn't be surprised if Half-Blood Prince nabbed one of those ten spots. You?

Some critics' groups rush to hand out awards weeks before the year of eligility is over. Other groups, like the Academy of Science Fiction Fantasy & Horror Films, prefer to take their time. The 35th annual Saturn Awards were presented last night in beautiful downtown Burbank, California, honoring the best in genre films for the 2008 calendar year. The top awards, as listed by FearNet, went to Iron Man (Science Fiction), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Fantasy), Hellboy II: The Golden Army (Horror), and The Dark Knight (Action / Adventure / Thriller).

The Academy also found room to honor Angelina Jolie as Best Actress for Changeling, which makes me wonder how that film could possibly qualify as a genre flick. Horror, perhaps? More major awards went to Robert Downey, Jr. as Best Actor and Jon Favreau as Best Director for Iron Man, Heath Ledger as Best Supporting Actor, and Tilda Swinton as Best Supporting Actress. Wall-E took home Best Animated Film and Let the Right One In was presented with the Best International Film award. And here are the awards that make the Saturns stand out for genre fans: Lance Henriksen received the Life Career Award, and Leonard Nimoy nabbed the Lifetime Achievement Award.

I was following the awards show via Twitter, and the most entertaining account was the one by loquaciousmuse; she made it sound like a blast. If you're out of state, $40 buys an Academy membership with award voting privileges. The least expensive in-state membership is $150, which also grants access to more than 100 special screenings.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is going to pull a Sir Mix-A-Lot and "Uh! Double up, uh uh!" the Best Picture category next year with ten nominees instead of the usual five. That's twice as many nominations as before, although it seems to only be limited to the Best Picture category, which is a shame because opening up at least the major categories could make things a lot more interesting.

The announcement on Variety today was extremely short, but the Academy has a press release up already stating that they're hearkening back to Oscars roots when the Best Picture category sometimes contained ten films (or more -- 12 in 1934 and 1935), although that hasn't been the case since 1943. Despite the doubling, Academy president Sid Ganis wants to remind you, "The final outcome, of course, will be the same -– one Best Picture winner."

Gee, thanks Sid. For a minute there we thought you'd really just decided to shoot for the moon and feature three Best Picture winners in a publicity stunt. Now how about you guys get to work on the show for next year and get Stephen Colbert to host? That's worth doubling up for.

Which films do you think will now make the cut? Pixar's Up is a definite contender ... what else?

Maybe it gives away my age, but I really do think I remember a time when awards were given to people purely because an organization thought they'd actually earned them. I'm not crazy, am I? That really used to happen, right?

Well, this week Michael Douglas was honored by the American Film Institute, who threw a gala black-tie shindig at Sony Pictures Studio and handed him their 37th AFI Life Achievement Award. Bob Dylan sang a song, and Douglas' wife Catherine Zeta-Jones performed an adorable little tap dance number, and Jack Nicholson was Jack Nicholson, and a stuntman fell through the ceiling in an homage to the ending of The Game. All in all, a nice evening of entertainment that'll be televised next month. But ... Michael Douglas?

The AFI award started out as a true Lifetime Achievement trophy -- the first went to John Ford in 1973. Over the next two decades, the awards went to actors and directors with long, impressive bodies of work, like Orson Welles, William Wyler, Bette Davis, Gene Kelly, John Huston, David Lean, and Sidney Poitier. It was actually a rather distinguished honor.

AFI later decided to relax the standards, however, so that they could give awards to people who'd be more appealing to an increasingly younger-skewed market. The awards have always been televised, and it's a condition of the award that the honoree actually shows up, so box-office popularity became a priority in choosing who would get one. Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, George Lucas and Al Pacino have been honored, as have Harrison Ford and Meryl Streep.

Seriously, though. Michael Douglas? Yes, the man has won Academy Awards (Best Actor for Wall Street, and one for producing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), and yes, he's considered a "mover and shaker" in the biz. Plus, he admittedly does a kick-ass imitation of producer Robert Evans as the smarmy ghost-uncle in the otherwise unremarkable Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.

As I drink my fourth cup of coffee and contemplate a nap, I look to my right at smiling, dapper Clint Eastwood and desperately want to know his secret to life. Because he's already finished his Nelson Mandela biopic / rugby film, and is probably prepping Hereafter or casting around his desk drawers for another script to film as he casually puts it on the awards path. How do you do it, Clint? How?!

According to Variety, Invictus, formerly The Human Factor, will arrive in theaters on December 11, 2009. Starring Matt Damon as rugby player Francois Pienaar, and Morgan Freeman in the daunting role of Mandela, it's based on John Carlin's book Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation. It follows Nelson's release from prison, his election as president, the fall of apartheid, and his use of the 1995 Rugby World Cup to heal the nation. Its new title comes from the the William Ernest Henley poem which Nelson has recited often. And while that's a lot of history for one movie, this is also the director who did two WWII movies in one year.

Invictus' release date pits it against the long awaited The Lovely Bones, which is also being groomed for award season. Who will be victorious? Who will fail? Who cares, as long as Eastwood's still in the game, right?

The Cannes Film Festival drew to a close on Sunday evening with the presentation of the Palme d'Or to Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon. Filmed in black and white, it's "a two-and-a-half hour parable of political and social ideas set entirely in a north German village in 1913 and 1914," says Dave Calhoun at Time Out London. Haneke "solidly resists answering the 'what's it all about?' question and makes you work hard to make sense of what you're seeing." David Hudson at IFC's The Daily has gathered the reviews, some of which endeavor to answer the "What's it all about?" question.

As is often the case, the nine-member jury passed out awards to as many films as possible. The Grand Prix (or runner-up) went to Jacques Audiard's A Prophet; Special Jury Prize to Alain Resnais for Wild Grass; and Best Director to Brillante Mendoza for Kinatay. Christoph Walz won Best Actor for his performance in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds and Charlotte Gainsbourg won Best Actress for Lars von Trier's controversial Antichrist. The complete list of winners can be easily viewed at indieWIRE. The festival's official site has a great set of award ceremony photos.

Here's a roundup of Cannes films we can expect to see in coming months. Corrections and updates will be appreciated.

CANNES TITLES WITH U.S. DISTRIBUTION

• Antichrist (IFC)
• A Prophet (Sony Pictures Classics)
• Bright Star (Bob Berney and Bill Polhad)
• Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky (Sony Pictures Classics)
• Drag Me to Hell (Universal)
• Humpday (Magnolia Pictures)
• I Love You Phillip Morris (Consolidated Pictures Group)
• Inglourious Basterds (Weinstein Co.)
• Looking For Eric (IFC)
• Precious (Lionsgate)
• Taking Woodstock (Focus Features)
• Tales From the Golden Age (IFC)
• Thirst (Focus Features)
• Up (Disney Pixar)
• The White Ribbon (Sony Pictures Classics)

You can access all our Cannes coverage via this handy link.

It's all over but the shouting. The last two titles in Competition for the Palme d'Or, which will be awarded on Sunday, screened on Saturday to general disinterest as industry attendees continued to flock home. But some were still happy just to be able to see a movie -- any movie -- at Cannes; Roger Ebert tells of a young man who followed the example of Ebert's granddaughter and "begged" for a ticket. He was happy and proud to get in. Ebert shares some photographs; he says: "I have no idea why they are all of beautiful women."

Key Screenings. Competition: Tsai Ming-Liang's Face (Taiwanese filmmaker makes a movie in France), Isabel Coixet's Map of the Sounds of Tokyo (Tokyo fish market employee also works as a hit woman).

Awards. Some observers felt the Un Certain Regard section featured higher-quality selection than the main Competition, so it's of note that Yorgos Lanthimos' Dogtooth won the top prize, according to indieWIRE. The Greek film received warm praise from the few reviewers who have seen it. Karina Longworth of Spout says it's the only narrative she's seen in Cannes "that really feels like it represents the work an emerging new talent." The film revolves around an odd family, in which the three 20-something children have never even left their house, while their parents "have created a complex mythology ... to keep the family together." She called it a "dark comedy," though she also noted that "its depiction of forced incest, two explicitly not-fake images of sex acts, liberation via very bloody self-harm and the on-screen disemboweling of a housecat."

The true mark of a good film festival is going to see a myriad of films, really digging them, and then seeing a whole slew of others win the year's awards. It's a finely honed talent to miss all the award-winners, and yes, it can certainly be quite aggravating to always pick films that don't get the award love they deserve. However, it also means that there are too many goodies to choose from.

On Friday night, Hot Docs announced this year's award winners -- a group of excellent docs that were certainly buzzed about during the festival -- and once again, a whole slew of films I wasn't able to catch for you. Since the winners won't pop up in the dispatches I'll share with you all this week, read on to not only read what they are, but also what they're about, and any other information I can scrounge together. Check it all out after the jump.

MTV has announced the nominees for the 18th annual MTV Movie Awards, to the delight of whoever it is that watches MTV or is interested in the opinions of those who do. Predictably, the film with the most nominations is Synecdoche, New York, Charlie Kaufman's dizzyingly surreal examination of mankind's fear of mortality. No, I'm kidding, it's Twilight.

The creepy-but-not-the-way-they-intended vampire romance leads the pack with seven nominations, including best movie, best female performance (Kristen Stewart), breakthrough male performance (Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner), best fight, best kiss, and best song (apparently Twilight had a song).

The other best movie nominees are, in ascending order of WTF-ness, Slumdog Millionaire, The Dark Knight, Iron Man, and High School Musical 3: Senior Year. Speaking of which, they've added two new categories: the best song group (which also includes Bruce Springsteen's Oscar-snubbed theme from The Wrestler), and best WTF? moment (nominees include Amy Poehler peeing in the sink in Baby Mama).

Heath Ledger is posthumously nominated in the best villain category, where his competition includes Dwayne Johnson in Get Smart (I guess that's a spoiler, since we don't find out he's a bad guy until the end) and Johnathon Schaech from Prom Night. Do you suppose Ledger's family will fly in from Australia to accept the award like they did at the Oscars? Will the experience be diminished by having the golden popcorn trophy handed to them by Lady Gaga?

Andy Samberg will host the show, airing live on MTV on Sunday, May 31. Eminem is among the scheduled performers. MTV viewers selected the nominees, and anyone can vote for them at MTV's site. This is democracy in action, people. Take your responsibility seriously.