There were a number of odd omissions in yesterday’s Oscar column.  They have been corrected in the column, but since I can’t expect you all to go back…

The most often e-mailed about error was my exclusion of Michelle Pfeiffer from the Best Supporting Actress group.  I typed it in my head, but that doesn’t count.  And while I was at it, I added Alison Lohman to the Dark Horse category as Best Actress.  Slots for the screenplays of Antwone Fisher and The 25^th Hour were mistakenly in the Original Screenplay category, when both are adaptations.  And one that somehow managed to completely slip my mind was Jude Law in Road to Perdition, whom I consider a serious contender for Best Supporting Actor.

THE REAL STORY:  When Superman vs. Batman was dumped and Wolfgang Petersen moved on to Troy, I knew there was something wrong with the story as told.  When Coming Attractions and Ain’t It Cool were running stories that the choice of Superman over Superman vs. Batman happened because Warners was unsatisfied by the SvsB script and liked the J.J. Abrams script so much more, I knew something major missing from that story.  And when Lorenzo di Bonaventura jumped or was pushed out of his executive suite at Warner Bros. sixteen days ago, I wrote about it as a testament to his rough run at the box office and all the confusion over Superman/Batman, etc.  But I knew that there had to be more to the story.

And on Sunday, The New York Times’ Laura Holson got the story… pretty much the complete story.  And instantly, I was reminded of why journalists are journalists and sites that print e-mails coming from “inside sources” are dangerous.  It is now fair to assume that the e-mails touting JJ Abrams’ screenplay came from either Abrams’ people or Jon Peters’ people.  It obviously did not come from Lorenzo’s office.  And the odds of this enthusiastic leak coming out of Alan Horn’s office are minimal.  News is context. 

The magical answer to all of it was that JJ Abrams’ script established the base of a trilogy… something very Time-Warner these days, with Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings carrying the AOL-weighted company.  Why didn’t any of the e-mailing insiders let loose with this spectacularly important element with which Batman: Year One and Superman vs. Batman, neither of which we are likely to see before 2010, simply could not compete?  Hmmm…

In any case, what Holson’s top-drawer story doesn’t say in so many words, as it is the New York Times, is that di Bonaventura has been chafing under Alan Horn’s unquestionable control over greenlights from day one and that di Bonaventura’s meeting with Richard Parsons and Jeff Bewkes on August 29, when di Bonaventura was in New York for the City by the Sea premiere, was the straw that broke the camel’s back for both sides.  His exit settlement was announced four days later.

Some have said that di Bonaventura demanded that longtime thorn-in-his-side Horn be moved out of the way and that Lorenzo would have the absolute right to greenlight, using the Pluto Nash disaster that came from Horn’s old stomping grounds at Castle Rock as ballast… and that Parsons and Bewkes literally laughed in his face.  Having attempted a coup and failed, Lorenzo had to go.

Others contend that di Bonaventura is far too savvy a politician for such a crude demand and that his frustration with the series of summer-ending stories focusing on Pluto Nash, a movie he had almost no control over, combined with the political loss on Superman, sent him over the edge.  When faced with two top executives who could no longer work together, Parsons chose Horn… just as he and Gerry Levin had three years earlier when they hired him and Barry Meyer to fill the Daly/Semel gap instead of moving di Bonaventura up.

Regardless, we are unlikely to know what exactly happened in that office on August 29^th anytime soon.  All we know for sure is that the die was cast before DeNiro hit the screen that night. 

Considering the blanket covering this story since it broke on the September 3, Holson deserves heavy kudos for getting it done and getting it done right while the rest of Hollywood’s journalists went to Toronto, avoided the story or just acted as though a WB press release answered every question.  Read her story here.

ALSO GREAT:  Anita Busch is back at the L.A. Times and back in high style.  Busch’s Wednesday story on Columbia’s Trapped and its troubled release is the best examination of the internal process in a situation like this – Columbia is afraid of backlash on their child abduction movie in the wake of the Van Dam case – in a period when similar excuses have been for a wide variety of post 9/11 movies. 

The one objection I have is that a six month delay for a $30 million movie that the studio really believes in would not be a problem.  The studio says to the press that they are being sensitive to the myriad child abduction stories of the summer and they move to spring.  If they really believed in the movie, they could even show it to us now and ask for a blackout, but prove that they aren’t trying to hide anything up their sleeves.  The media troubles on release-date shifts come not from the shifts but from the collateral signs of distress.  Big Trouble was a problem film before it got shifted.  Arnold Schwarzenegger’s box office clout was falling before Collateral Damage got delayed.  The fact that almost no one has seen The Trouble With Charlie or Gangs of New York yet is what worries most journalists… not the release dates. 

In any case, a six-month delay for the smoke to clear would cost less than $2 million in added interest, which is a lot less than a poorly supported opening this weekend will cost them.  But if the studio isn’t so sure about the movie, this choice gives them millions in P&A savings, a built-in excuse for a poor box office showing and a politically correct plum all in one.

And, as if you needed another reason to read Anita’s excellent story, Matt Drudge pointedly avoided linking to it on his site, choosing a brief Sacramento Bee version of the story.  Sometimes I don’t know who is pissier, the entertainment press or our subjects.  Anita’s story is here.

BACK TO NEW YORK:  An interesting Rick Lyman story on the growing business of movie “sanitizing.”  The big question is whether this is an infringement on artists’ rights or just good sense.  I’m going to let you guys chime in first before I offer an opinion tomorrow.  Lyman’s story is here.

SEXY REXY:  Rex Reed can be a bit over the top sometimes, but damned if his look at the Toronto Film Festival is not more down-home sassy fun than anything else I’ve read on the topic, including my own tome.  Read it here.

KEVIN’S DIARY:  Kevin Smith just kicked in a second chapter of his production diary for Jersey Girl.  Read it here.

READER OF THE DAY:  RAJ’S LINE writes:  “I haven't seen "Far From Heaven", of course, but to dismiss Dennis Quaid from any possibility of not getting a Best Actor nod in "The Rookie" is absurd. Not only is it one of the best things he's ever done, but he carried the picture pretty much by himself (with a little help from Rachel Griffiths) and kept the film from being hokey.”

And PEACE SCHEMATIC says of Ya-Ya Sisterhood:  “The fact you even mention this film as a possibility is scary. A quality film? In what universe?”

Finally, NOT THE BALLPLAYER writes:  “A lot of us envy film critics because you guys get to see all the great movies months before the rest of us.  But what a lot of us don't realize is that you also have to sit through a lot of lousy movies before and after you see that great one.

Can you give us a rough estimate?  For every good or great movie you get to see, how many crappy ones do you have to sit through?  Is it really worth it to see one great movie if you have to sit through twenty lousy ones in the same month?”

E ME:  What do y’all think?  Is there stuff that you just don’t want to see?  And how many bad movies do you see for every good one?  And would you let some company in Utah cut out the stuff you didn’t like?