We received a tip late yesterday about some seemingly inconsequential new Hollywood awards show, the Golden Groundhog Awards. Set for February 2, the Groundhogs are designed, according to the promotional website, to "recognize genuinely outstanding films from the previous year that lacked the distribution and marketing support needed to propel them into the public consciousness." That is to say, they must have grossed less than $1 million worldwide.

Today's LAT looks at the current tug-of-war between studios and talent over the always prickly issue of money, with studios complaining that movies are way too expensive for top stars and filmmakers to continue to get first-dollar gross, and actors and directors carping about the studios' creative accounting practices when they get to recoup shadily defined costs before doling out profit participation. Here are the arguments in sound-bite form:

The media shitstorm accompanying the revelation that A Million Little Pieces author James Frey embellished moments from his life to appear more bad-ass than it actually was (maybe that gunfight with three hundred Ohio cops was just a speeding ticket, but such is the subjective nature of drug-addled memory) has certainly thrown some heat on the big-screen adaptation of the book, currently in development at Warner Bros. Frey's allegedly mused about landing Tobey Maguire, Orlando Bloom, or Jake Gyllenhaal to play him, but if the producers want to eschew pretty starpower for a deeper commitment to physiognomy, we see a clear choice for the role: boybander-turned-actor Joey Fatone.

Larry Wachowski, the half of the Matrix trilogy writer-director sibling team who is widely rumored to have had a sex change, and is currently shacking up with a dominatrix by the name of Ilsa Stix, clearly isn't screwing around when it comes to his "alternative lifestyle" existence. But with their upcoming movie, V for Vendetta, soon to unleash a shorn Natalie Portman onto the world, the spotlight-shirking filmmaker will inevitably have to contend with the fact that his life is about to become an open, though deeply confusing, book:

CNN uses the impending release of Jerry Bruckheimer's Glory Road (coming to a theater near you this Friday!), the story of the first all-African-American college basketball team who won the national title in 1966, to examine the "brand" that the superproducer's billions-grossing body of work has created. While Bruck evasively touts the simple power of his own taste in his selection of material ("I don't know what you like, I don't know what an audience likes; I know what I like. It's what I try to do."), he does explain what drew him to the current project:

The introduction to film critic Andrew Sarris's best-films list for 2005, published in The New York Observer on January 11, 2006:

Writer Bill Schulz visited the set of gore flick Hostel for a Stuff magazine assignment; short on extras, the movie crew started grabbing anyone available for some blood-soaked scenes. Lucky for Bill, he had the chops to nab a plum role as the recipient of a testical-removal.

The Million Little Piecesgate shitstorm continues to rage you don't make Oprah, Queen of the Universe, look stupid without some serious consequences with threatening letters from legal pitbull Marty Singer flying (we feel your pain, Smoking Gun), the first brusque responses from accused memoir embellishist James Frey posted to his website ("I won t dignify this bullshit with any sort of further response,"), with further bullshit non-dignification to follow on his Larry King appearance tonight. And lest we not forget the JT Leroy scandal, which serendipitously (for trend watchers, at least) broke on the very same day: According to the NY Times, the supposedly HIV+ male truck-stop hooker turned memoirist and literary darling is a complete fabrication and played by a woman. With both authors' books in various stages of movie development, THR examines what effect the scandals will have on the productions, if any. In doing so, they stumble onto a fascinating philosophical dialogue on the ultimate nature of truth (as it applies to getting your movie made):

It's a proven fact: Even the least consequential gossip item becomes 200 percent more enjoyable when slathered in a healthy coat of inscrutable British slang. Take MegaStar's version of a story about Scarlett Johansson and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers' flirty on-set relationship while shooting Match Point, in which we learned at least two new euphemisms for breasts, we think:

Now that The Smoking Gun has revealed that much of the latest ascendant to the Oprah Book Club throne, the supposedly 100% true crime and addiction memoir A Million Little Pieces, was either embellished and/or completely fabricated by its author James Frey (for the reading averse, Gawker sums it up nicely), we are left stunned, disillusioned, not to mention completely in the dark with respect to the only thing we actually care about: What's the deal with the movie?! From TSG's report:

Today's LAT explores the possibility that Brokeback Mountain's critical reception and early success in limited theatrical release may recast the movie's now-iconic gay cowboys as gay messiahs sent to resurrect various similarly themed (read: gay) projects from development hell. While it's definitely nice to imagine Ennis and Jack galloping onto a movie lot and setting up a production ranch where they can nurture such endeavors, some insiders tell the Times that the studios don't see enough dollar signs to totally flip over for Brokeback Mania:

This is about as good an illustration of the average Hollywood career trajectory as you're likely to stumble across on a Friday afternoon: A mere four years ago, Jay Hernandez was rolling around naked with Kirsten Dunst in Crazy/Beautiful, daydreaming about what up-and-coming starlet to choose for his next big sex scene. This weekend, he's biting a ball gag in the low-budget splatter flick Hostel, wondering how much more time he has before his agent at CAA calls security if he drops by to chat unannounced.

Despite the fact that Daniel "New Bond" Craig's Munich is a Spielberg film playing in about 1,500 theaters and Pierce "Old Bond" Brosnan's The Matador is an entry from Sundance in January just now making its way into 28, ABC News thinks we should all look at this weekend as some kind of Bond-off between the two actors. Brosnan, however, doesn't want to take the bait:

Back Stage's Cuts blog noticed this ad for Capote that ran in the LAT this weekend and found its juxtaposition of holiday whimsy and serious subject matter pretty jarring. No, it's not exactly Munich's assassins in Santa hats, but we see their point. If anything, we think that the folks at Sony Pictures Classics marketing department really missed an opportunity to fully explore the New Year's promotional concept and completely destroy Philip Seymour Hoffman's credibility. We pick up the slack for them after the jump:

Miffed that the critics and guilds have snubbed his meditative essay on the existential futilities of combat duty whilst stuffing your junk into seasonal headgear, Jarhead director Sam Mendes has spoken out on the subject of his misunderstood masterpiece. The problem, dear Americans, lies in your thick skulls:

• We hate Time-Warner cable and their pathetic high-speed internet service, almost as much as we hate dealing with their mentally handicapped and surly customer service reps. If, however, we had Time-Warner CEO Dick Parsons to make those service phone calls for us, we might change our tune. [Consumerist]
• Because the money isn't the only thing that's dirty on Wall Street, enjoy some limericks. [UndertheCounter]
• Contrary to B&T belief, the coolest shoes do NOT come from Long Island City. We're not sure Long Island City has the "coolest" anything, to be honest. [What's the Code]
• And yet more insight into the strange syrupy smell, which seems to be more associated with Thursdays than Must See TV. [NYT]
• Mr. Pibb and Red Vines equals crazy delicious, yes, but wearing the thought does not. [Boing Boing]
• SAG and DGA awards nominees are announced, which means Academy members have to do a lot less thinking about their Oscar votes. [ABC]
• Google continues its reign of terror, dominating you in the most pleasurable, visual ways. [Reuters]
• And finally, congratulations to Nadine Nunnelee, the first teacher of 2006 to be arrested for having sex with a student. It's going to be a good year! [TSG]

No matter how many times the commercials and one-sheets promised us that a motley crew of tuxedo-clad casino burglars were teaming up for a final job, we knew that the Ocean's gang would find another way to get together for another "last" score. Reports Variety:

Despite nearly a year's worth of hand-wringing in the media about 2005's five-percent-ish downturn at the box office (commonly referred to as The Slump, and accompanied by the sound of air-raid sirens), the business appears healthy enough overall; most studio executives haven't found themselves the victims of a movie-watching paradigm shift that would send them scrambling to sell their Lexus SUV's to meet their monthly coke bills just yet. Today's LAT writes off the supposedly apocalyptic effects on the industry of last year's "blip," but we're still reminded that the hysteria caused by a year of Aeon Fluxes and Stealths still claimed some high-profile victims:

This post is really just an excuse to use our favorite self-fashioned infographic, though pardon us if we feel it's reasonable to say that our dark prediction is already coming to pass:

· Extra! Extra! Smaller "niche" films such as The Constant Gardener perform healthily at overseas box office! And in blogging news, associate editor sticks head in oven over pathetically boring news day. [Variety]
· Fox pushes the release of Just My Luck, starring road menace Lindsay Lohan, to May 12, hoping it will find an audience of teenage girls who have no interest in Warner Bros.' Poseidon Adventure remake. And for the rest of us? Let's hope there's a nice "niche" film opening that weekend. [Variety]
· Paramount Network TV hires Kate Adler as their new VP of comedy. Adler used to be in scripted development at Worldwide Pants but then went on to become a reality producer on Survivor. Which just goes to prove that old saying: "A development executive who starts in scripted comedy but then forges a career in reality can still get work in scripted if she changes her mind later." [Variety]
· A THR analysis of the outcome of the Guilds' demands for industry standards for forced brand integration whoring has come to the conclusion that they are being completely ignored. Are you going to take that sitting down, Radical Rosenberg?! [THR]
· The Weinstein Co. has reverted all distribution rights of their Cannes pick up Wu Ji/The Promise back to its producers, with the new, leaner Harv just not wanting to put Hero-type money behind its promotion. [THR]