I haven't really done any comprehensive Oscar predicting this year. There's a glut of prognosticators, and I'm not any good at it anyway. But I figure I should go out on one limb the day before nominations are announced -- how else can I look foolish on the 22nd? -- and here it is: I predict that Wall-E slips into the Best Picture final five and leaves The Dark Knight in the cold.

Now, I'll admit that I'm doing this partially to annoy Josh "Snub It And There Will Be Consequences" Tyler (because seriously, that was insane). But here's the thing: if you accept the conventional wisdom that four of the five Best Picture slots will be occupied by Slumdog Millionaire, Frost/Nixon, Milk and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, that leaves Dark Knight and Wall-E (and possibly Doubt) fighting for #5. Since we're talking about Academy voters here, I think the smart money is on the beloved, endlessly charming Pixar flick over the pitch-black superhero epic. It's less divisive and more accessible. (I'll agree that it's not quite as awesome.) The Bat will content itself with tech noms and Heath Ledger.

So that's my last-minute sucker's bet. You got any? Aronofsky for Best Director? Dev Patel for Best Actor? Last chance, kids.

Fans of a certain cave-dwelling rubber-fetishist have cause to celebrate: The Dark Knight has been nominated for best picture by the Producers Guild of America, whose nominations tend to reflect the Oscars very, very closely. The other four nominees are The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, and Slumdog Millionaire.

The Producers Guild of America has officially existed since 1962, when separate groups for TV and film merged, but the PGA didn't start giving out awards until 1990. Since then, the PGA best picture winner has matched the Oscar winner 12 out of 19 times. They lined up last year (No Country for Old Men), but conflicted for three years in a row before that. So whichever film wins the PGA award on Jan. 24 has a reasonably good chance -- but by no means a slam-dunk -- of winning the Oscar, too.

But the more immediate question is whether The Dark Knight will even be nominated for the Oscar. The other four PGA nominees are likely Oscar candidates; it's The Dark Knight that's had the big ol' question mark next to it in people's guesses and predictions. A comprehensive list of past PGA nominees is hard to come by, even at the guild's own website, but Gold Derby's Tom O'Neil has done some number-crunching. He reports that of the 95 Best Picture Oscar nominees between 1990 and 2008, 72 were also PGA nominees. Statistically speaking, that means The Dark Knight now has about a 75% chance of getting an Oscar nomination.

When we were kicking around ideas for year-end superlative Cinematical Sevens, I was proudly tasked with chronicling the year's finest in big-screen mayhem, violence, destruction and other such shenanigans. When I was kicking around ideas for said feature between me, myself, and I, there were too many titles to leave off the list, so instead of highlighting only a mere couple of movies, I've opted to sort these puppies out by specific manner of cinematic excess.

So there.

1. Most pervasive destruction - The Joker may have terrorized Gotham to the tune of a destroyed hospital, a wrecked helicopter, a sunken SWAT truck, a toasty fire engine, and a golden district attorney, but even he can't top the Cloverfield monster's swath of destruction across the real-life Gotham. Statue of Liberty? Gone. Brooklyn Bridge? History. Central Park? Adios. And that's not including all the Hollister stores that our protagonists might've fled to. (On a smaller scale, though, Inside's lady in black terrorizes a pregnant woman on Christmas Eve to the point of all but painting every last wall in her house with the blood of her victims. Gotta love the French!)

400 Screens, 400 Blows is a weekly column that takes an in-depth look at the films playing below the radar, beneath the top ten, and on 400 screens or less.

Not long ago, newspapers began showing signs of trouble, which included the laying off of film critics. At around the same time, and probably not connected in any way, studios began increasingly to open movies in theaters without screening for the press, realizing that stupid Tyler Perry movies, or horror remakes, or what have you, would probably make money regardless of what the reviews said. These combined factors led to a series of editorials asking about the necessity of film critics. Thankfully, that discussion has died down, and we're still here. And I can add that I don't think The Dark Knight (375 screens) would have done such monster business without the enthusiastic approval of nearly every critic on the planet.

But what needs to be discussed now is the necessity of directors. If film criticism was viewed yesterday as a job that anyone could do (no knowledge of film or film history necessary!) then film directing today is viewed in much the same way. Take a look at the colossal mess that is Mamma Mia! (279 screens). Here's a film that cost $50 million, and it was entrusted to Phyllida Lloyd, who had no experience. From the looks of things, Lloyd probably decided that, as long as it looks like everyone is having fun, then it doesn't matter if things like tone, moods and pacing ever matches up. You can have self-conscious musical numbers one moment, then moody, emotional ones the next. You can have a knockout performance by Meryl Streep and a mixed one by Pierce Brosnan.

It's difficult (and a little silly) to try and judge an entire quarter-year's movies in one lump sum -- but that's what we seem to do at the end of every Summer Movie Season. That's when all our excitement, expectations, and final reactions come colliding together and we find ourselves thinking: "Was I actually looking forward to that piece of crap for four months?" But to me, each summer is like a walk through a carnival: Some of the attractions dazzle me, others simply don't interest me, and a few are just a waste of tickets. But once early May rolls around, I'm always ready for another trip to the Hollywood Movie Carnival. (It's where you find all the tentpoles!)

So while I'm elated to greet the upcoming season of "prestige movies," there's little denying that we've had one hell of a good summer, cinematical-ly speaking. I'm not talking about box office grosses, because frankly that stuff is so unimportant. What matters is that we got some good flicks, a few pieces of mindless (yet well-made) popcorn adventures, and even a few great films that will enjoy a very long shelf life. So while I'm not exactly sure that 2008 represents the finest Summer Movie Season of all time, I'd definitely say it was more good than bad. But if you can think of a summer that was better than this one, you know where to throw your comments. (In the comments section.)

Look, I thought The Dark Knight had a lot of strong selling points: Combine a deft pace with thoughtful characterizations and a whopping IMAX design that turns the entire experience into a plot-driven theme park ride, and you've got one hefty dose of Batman adrenaline.

Still, comparisons to The Godfather Part II notwithstanding, The Dark Knight isn't foolproof -- in fact, no single movie in history is foolproof. The subjective experience of movie watching ensures that nothing can be universally liked by everyone, and rules of civility insist that humanity respect that truism. It's acceptable to feel passionately about a great work of art, and defend that perspective with rigorous argumentation, but much of the outrage over the minority perspective that The Dark Knight isn't any good has made such practical thinking impossible.

Deemed the first critic to pan the movie, New York's David Edelstein went out of his way to list the allegations against him sent along by various Batman fans. The House Next Door editor Keith Uhlich, meanwhile, fielded over a hundred rants in the comments section following his astute critique of director Christopher Nolan's questionable portrayals of violence. What's particularly shocking about this frightful deluge of negative responses is that many of these people began posting their disapproval before they even saw the movie.

Well, it is. Or so say the Internet Movie Database users, who have already rocketed the film to the #1 spot on IMDb's Top 250 list with a rating of 9.5 out of 10 and about 47,000 votes. It displaces The Godfather -- a film that doesn't even HAVE a pencil-wielding psycho-clown -- which had held the top spot for about a decade (according to our pal Peter at SlashFilm).

The rest of the top 10 on IMDb's list isn't as depressing as I thought it would be: Shawshank Redemption, The Godfather Part II, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Pulp Fiction, Schindler's List, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Empire Strikes Back, and Casablanca. I was expecting to see nothing older than about 1990, and certainly nothing in black-and-white.

IMDb notes that for the Top 250 list, "only votes from regular voters are considered," but they fail to define "regular voters." Does that mean people who vote regularly? Or do they mean "regular voters" as opposed to "guest voters" or something? Either way, these apparently aren't people who, in a rush of enthusiasm for The Dark Knight, hurried home and gave it a 10 out of 10 despite never having rated anything else on IMDb before. Apparently they have exercised their right to vote before, and presumably they know what they're doing.

Now, I loved The Dark Knight and all, but come on: the best film ever made? Surely that is not an opinion held by very many people, if any.

In the last twenty-four hours alone, countless news articles have compared the late Heath Ledger to James Dean. Of course it helps that the two actors -- whose careers lie fifty years apart -- bear physical resemblances to each other. The real reason for the frequency of the comparison, however, revolves around the possibility that Ledger, like Dean, might end up with a posthumous Oscar nomination.

Other than Dean, whose death in a 1955 car accident was preceded by two nominations back-to-back, six actors have landed the distinction -- but only one, Peter Finch, actually won (for Network in 1976). However, Ledger is now perceived an actor who possessed a potential he never quite realized, while Dean was already an icon by the time of his death (and he still didn't win the prize). If Ledger gets nominated for his performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight, the award will also acknowledge the great career that never was. Dean surely would have followed Giant with other wonderful performances, but his brief filmography also allowed the actor to reach a level of prestige that Ledger would have needed a few more movies to attain. So does this comparison really hold up?

The media certainly seems to think so. "Like Dean, he could endure as a mythic figure of talent silenced before his time," writes the AP. "People are aflutter over seeing the final performance of a new James Dean," reports The Huffington Post. " One quality that Ledger and Dean did share is rapid growth," notes the Baltimore Sun.

Back in December we ran an article covering some of The Dark Knight's promotional activities, and not to toot my own horn or anything, but I posted what I thought was an extremely witty and observant comment: "I'm just glad they're doing something to raise awareness of this small film that might have otherwise slipped through the cracks."

Admit it, that's probably the funniest joke you've ever read. Because The Dark Knight isn't a small film at all, you see! It's a huge film that already has a great deal of public awareness! See how that's super funny?

Anyway, though we all had a good laugh at how funny I am, I also brought up a puzzling aspect of the Hollywood machinery. Warner Bros. is spending untold millions to promote The Dark Knight, and expending a lot of creative effort, too, with viral sites and games and events and so forth -- and for what? To promote a film that everyone was already going to see anyway. It's a highly anticipated sequel to a hugely popular film, it's gotten terrific buzz from those who have seen it, and it has the unfortunate-but-attention-getting Heath Ledger connection. You'd think the WB promotional team could relax a bit and let the film sell itself -- or, better yet, use that money to promote some lower-profile films that do need the help. So why didn't they?

Bearing in mind that attempts to grasp the logic of a Hollywood studio usually end in frustration, we can generally trace the thought process back to one thing: money.

What are the most anticipated movies at this year's Tribeca Film Festival? And has that (relatively) young festival in fact found a voice yet? And what does Tribeca's premiering Baby Mama and Speed Racer at this year's fest say about the uneasy relationship between high art and big headlines in New York's media world? Plus, what the end of New Line Cinema says about the state of the industry, and can Warner Brothers market The Dark Knight while still honoring Heath Ledger? Joining us this week on The Rocchi Review to talk about Tribeca and summer entertainment is film critic David Fear of Time Out New York as we discuss all of the above and more ... Cinematical's podcast content now has even better sound quality, and is now in iTunes; you can subscribe at this link. Also, you can listen directly here at Cinematical by clicking below:



As ever, you can download the entire podcast right here -- and those of you with RSS Podcast readers can find all of Cinematical's podcast content at this link.