True Story. (Craigslist)

Okay, so technically this movie is called True Story, but the synopsis, via Craigslist's P/T paid gigs pages, reads like it was torn from the Capote non-fiction novel:

SYNOPSIS: STORY OF A JOURNALISTS' RELATIONSHIP WITH A MOST WANTED MURDERER AND A CASE OF STOLEN IDENTITY.

Short. Brief. Succinct. To the point. And more adjectives! (We wonder if Mr. Franco himself wrote the entry?)

The IMDB page fill in a little more of the details:

A drama centered around the relationship between journalist Michael Finkel and Christian Longo, an FBI Most Wanted List murderer who for years lived outside the U.S. under Finkel's name.

So In Cold Blood meets The Identity Thief! And with your chance to play a journalist! How hard could that be? Here's the full listing, for those interested in taking the gig. (We'll see you at the Cattle Call, baby!)

Michelle Williams--who will be nominated. Who else will join her? (Getty Images)

Tomorrow morning will bring that early-morning announcement of this year's Oscar nominees--with the attention-desperate wrinkle that no one knows how many nominees there will be. Herewith, our predictions, for last-minute entries into your office pool (if yours is the sort of office at which Oscar nominations are the subject of a pool. Ours is not, which is why we're writing a blog post).

Best Picture

The Artist

The Descendants

The Help

Hugo

Midnight in Paris

We know any number of films between five and ten can be nominated for Best Picture, but with The Artist and The Descendants sucking up so much oxygen and so many first-place votes, it's easy to imagine no sixth choice gathering enough steam. The likely sixth entry, if there is one, would be Moneyball--but aren't many of those voters who love "adult dramas" more likely to vote in the buzzier Descendants first?

Best Director

Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris

David Fincher, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist

Alexander Payne, The Descendants

Martin Scorsese, Hugo

Mr. Allen, Mr. Scorsese, and Mr. Hazanavicius are clear locks, and Mr. Payne will get in on the strength of his film's reputation. For the fifth spot, Mr. Fincher and Steven Spielberg seem the likeliest (The Help's debut director, Tate Taylor, did not particularly distinguish himself), but the total fade of War Horse's repute gives the advantage to Mr. Fincher for what would be his third nomination in four years.

Best Actor

George Clooney, The Descendants

Jean DuJardin, The Artist

Michael Fassbender, Shame

Ryan Gosling, The Ides of March

Brad Pitt, Moneyball

Leonardo DiCaprio has been nominated for all manner of precursor awards for his role in J. Edgar, but that movie's disappeared from theaters and from the minds of viewers who've seen many, many better movies by now (J. Edgar really is uniquely terrible). Anyone who loves biographical films about controversial figures gets to vote one in with Meryl Streep in Best Actress--and the surprise nominee might be Ryan Gosling, who does nothing too special in The Ides of March but who'd be a big enough star to stand alongside Mr. Clooney and Mr. Pitt.

Best Actress

Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs

Viola Davis, The Help

Rooney Mara, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady

Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn

Ms. Streep, Ms. Davis, and Ms. Williams have all won early awards, and Ms. Close helped produce her own movie, in which she plays a traditionally bait-y role as a female impersonating a male. The notion that four people in Oscar-bait roles would be joined by Tilda Swinton in the avant-garde We Need to Talk About Kevin stretches credulity--silent for long stretches and chronologically disjointed, this doesn't seem like the sort of role that gets an actress to the Kodak. The narrative around Rooney Mara--plucked out of nowhere in the most extensive casting search since Scarlett O'Hara--seems to coalesce towards a surprise nomination.

Best Supporting Actor

Kenneth Branagh, My Week With Marilyn

Armie Hammer, J. Edgar

Jonah Hill, Moneyball

Nick Nolte, Warrior

Christopher Plummer, Beginners

Mr. Plummer is so far ahead here that the rest of the nominees seem plucked from thin air--an impersonation of Lawrence Olivier? Sure! A fairly quiet turn by a popular comic? Definitely! An attempt at a comeback in a movie no one saw? Okay! Armie Hammer's nomination seems the least likely, but the energy he brought to J. Edgar could make him the one element of the film they nominate.

Best Supporting Actress

Bérénice Bejo, The Artist

Jessica Chastain, The Help

Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids

Octavia Spencer, The Help

Shailene Woodley, The Descendants

Three movies with huge amounts of apparent support carry their supporting stars towards a nomination, with the addition of Melissa McCarthy, taking the spot that some believe might have gone to Janet McTeer in the little-seen Albert Nobbs.

Best Original Screenplay

50/50

The Artist

Bridesmaids

Midnight in Paris

Young Adult

This category seems fairly open--besides the two Best Picture nominees, the three other top entries are not traditionally Oscar-y comedies. The Writers' Guild of America nominated Win Win, a sort-of comedy also, here, but that movie seems even less up Oscar's alley than Young Adult, a movie in which past winner Diablo Cody deals with her relationship with fame.

Best Adapted Screenplay

The Descendants

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

The Help

Hugo

Moneyball

This category, on the other hand, has the real heat--it's hard to imagine anything sneaking into a set of screenplays this popular. It's also one of the few categories with true suspense as to the winner--because the real speculation only begins on Tuesday.

Pitt.

Sure, it’s the familiar formula about a losing team (the Oakland Athletics) catapulted to glory by a tough, idealistic general manager (controversial Billy Beane, immortalized in a compelling performance by Brad Pitt, at the top of his game). But thanks to the awesome collaboration of two brilliant Oscar-winning screenwriters, Steven Zaillian (Schindler’s List) and Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network) and one polished director, Bennett Miller (Capote), expect a vacation from clichés and a home run in the final inning with the bases loaded.  Based on the best-seller by writer Michael Lewis, Moneyball details the unconventional strategy devised by Beane shortly after the A’s lost the American League Division Series to the New York Yankees in 2001. In a sink-or-swim decision, he compared the other teams funded by huge budgets with his own team owners and outdated scouts who couldn’t afford to recruit champions, and weighed his options: “We’re the last dog bowl in the room—and you know what happens to the runt of the litter? He dies.” During a strategy meeting to beg favors from the Cleveland Indians, he notices a fat nerdy young economics graduate from Yale named Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) who specializes in team management based on player analysis. To everyone’s amazement and derision, he becomes fascinated by such an oddball and actually hires him as his dorky new assistant. Brand hits the computer and comes up with 25 names they can afford. They rebuilt the team with tapped losers, traded for damaged players and bargained for defective rejects, then switched their positions on the field. Even Art Howe, the pessimistic new team coach (startlingly bald Philip Seymour Hoffman) was hired with a one-year contract because it’s all their budget would allow. Shy, almost socially autistic, and definitely inept in business, Peter nevertheless juggled figures in his head and came up with a scheme that revolutionized major league baseball. “Adapt or die” was the new motto. It was a colossal gamble, but suddenly the game was blackjack and Billy, 44, and his new assistant, 25, became the players who changed the casino rules. Treating baseball as science instead of reverence, they called their eyebrow-raising experiment “moneyball” and the press massacred them for it. But when the Oakland A’s won 19 games in a row—the longest winning streak in baseball—the team soared to American League stardom. The rest is history.

It’s a story that holds up beautifully in the re-telling, but the best thing about Moneyball is the human element. Billy Beane is not soft-pedaled into a deity, and Brad Pitt takes impeccable precautions not to underplay his abrasive personality. Except for caring about his daughter’s respect and a grudging fondness for his remarried ex-wife (Robin Wright, in a one-scene cameo), there’s nothing about his personal life. He shows no hidden compassion for his players as human beings, trading and cutting them at will with no advance warning, and flies into rants and smashes up the furniture at will. You may not admire him, but you can’t help but like Brad Pitt, even when he overdoes his trademark mannerism of saying almost every line with his mouth full of food and drink. (At last week’s Toronto International Film Festival, he admitted he doesn’t even like baseball.) Chubby Jonah Hill is perfect casting as Peter Brand, the computer doofus obsessed with statistics, but his own private life is a blank page, too. Hoffman is largely wasted in the dugout, looking grouchy. Still, in the crack pacing, smart dialogue and exhilarating camerawork by Wally Pfister, any quibbles of mine are minor. This is a subtle, elegant and altogether triumphant film about a subject I thought I was tired of, told with an artistry and freshness that is positively thrilling.

rreed@observer.com

MONEYBALL

Running Time 133 minutes

Written by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin

Directed by Bennett Miller

Starring Brad Pitt, Robin Wright and Jonah Hill

3.5/4

I'd like to tell you how vile this deviation from sanity called Funny People really is, but it is one of those rare times when I am at a loss for words. Judd Apatow, the most tasteless no-talent and truthfully alleged “director” since John Waters and the Farrelly brothers, follows the abominable Knocked Up with a 146-minute mental lapse that should have been dipped in hydrochloric acid in the editing lab.

Chief among the myriad problems infecting this junk heap is that the funny people in the title are simply not funny. Of course, it doesn’t help if you are allergic to Adam Sandler and an aberration called Seth Rogen in the first place. This grim duo is about as funny as two kidney stones. The plot—about a stand-up comic dying of a terminal blood disease—can be written on the head of a pin. The script is as amusing as infanticide, and two and a half hours of any single aspect of it is a torture that is unacceptable even by hopeless 21st-century standards. Mr. Sandler, who by contract should be legally prevented from ever appearing in a bathing suit, is George Simmons, a comedian famous for playing a mermaid and who has been on the cover of Rolling Stone. Mr. Rogen is Ira Wright, a wannabe disaster with a filing cabinet full of jokes about toilet activities and oral intercourse who gets selected to be his protégé. They meet cute in the comedy club’s parking lot. In no time, the green novice is running errands for the seasoned jokester and providing one-liners about diarrhea, masturbation, flatulence, fellatio and talking genitals, to the horror of his jealous roommate (Jason Schwartzman). For anyone with an I.Q. above 40, there is no relief in sight. If there is anyone more repulsive than Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen, it is Jason Schwartzman, who also provided a musical score that makes construction-site jackhammers sound like Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.” Between batteries of blood tests and treatments, we get routines guaranteed to bore a kindergarten at recess. There is even a scene in which everybody takes turns rubbing peanut butter on their face and the dog licks it off. Talk about wasting time to drag out a movie by covering up the fact that there is no movie!

In every film, Mr. Sandler looks more retarded, but never mind. Just when the movie threatens to make a point about the death of comedy or the hypocrisy of the Hollywood laugh machine, his fatal, inoperable (and somewhat mysterious) disease goes into remission and George tries to get his ex-girlfriend back. Enter Leslie Mann, Mr. Apatow’s spouse, who has appeared in both of the director’s other moronic films, The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up—a terrible actress who speaks through her sinus cavities and sounds like she has a speech impediment. For no logical reason, George and Ira pack off for hundreds of miles to the house in Marin County where Laura lives with her obnoxious children and her dopey Australian Muscle McGurk husband, played by Australian Muscle McGurk actor Eric Bana, who has seen better roles (and films) elsewhere. When he comes home and discovers they’ve rekindled their flirtation, a slugfest breaks out and … oh, what the F! This movie has been going nowhere, and it’s about to start now? There is nothing cute or cool or liberating about almost two and a half hours of X-rated excreta by criminally unfunny people feigning to be pros. Funny People seems to have been written with crayolas and directed on a cell phone. There’s probably a reason why the two meatheads are called George and Ira, but the irony is insulting.

This is a waste of two and a half hours of my life that I will never get back again. If you object to public offenses of decency, smut that reduces the oxygen in the brain or just plain lousy, amateurish filmmaking, it’s easy enough to avoid Funny People like the swine flu. Unfortunately, if you’re a movie critic, the luxury of self-protection is not an option.

rreed@observer.com

If the name The Adventurer's Handbook sounds familiar, that's because it's actually already a book by Mick Conefrey that chronicles the history of some selected explorers and what their adventures can teach people. (Like, how to stop an anaconda from eating you whole, for instance.) Mr. Hill's co-written script isn't a straight adaptation of the book (thank goodness), but rather a tale about four 20-something friends who love Mr. Conefrey's tome so much they decide to go on an adventure to find one of the "mysterious locations" mentioned within it. Expect lots of cursing, as the script is reportedly a hard-R, and plenty of bromantic moments between the friends.

We're always happy to see Mr. Hill on screen. (Yes, even in Evan Almighty.) Of all the Apatow Players, he manages to be the only one who can really express full-on rage; when his eyes pop and his voice rises, Mr. Hill reminds us of Chris Penn circa Reservoir Dogs. And while on first glance The Adventurer's Handbook sounds too high concept to actually work, we do appreciate the effort to branch out from his natural comfort zone of slackerdom. To their credit, the current crop of comedy superstars has actively attempted to do that more often. (Seth Rogen might be committing career suicide with his wayward version of The Green Hornet, but at least he's trying!) And the idea of Jonah Hill and his friends playing miniature Indiana Jones' whilst telling dick jokes and getting high seems like a pretty smart way to start accomplishing that. Plus, now that he's boys with Jason Schwartzman, this can only mean one thing: Jonah Hill finding a spot in the next Wes Anderson movie!

Lydia Hearst is expected to continue with Fashion Week, despite being sent to the hospital for kidney stones on Tuesday. [P6] 

Reality show queen Lauren Conrad will be writing a series of three young adult novels for HarperCollins about "a girl who moves to LA and stars in a reality show." Hopefully the kids won't take it too seriously. [People] 

Mary-Kate Olsen is still dating artist Nate Lowman (not actor Jonah Hill, as had been reported). [NYDN] 

Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner has Amagansett's Citizens Advisory Board up in arms over his plans to clear thousands of square feet of native vegetation from his property to improve the view for a meditation tent. [P6] 

New York Post critic Lou Lumenick slapped Roger Ebert at the Toronto Film Festival, but apparently the whole thing was a misunderstanding. [NYDN]

The spread of young men and women features their answers to a hard-hitting questionnaire about their lifestyle preferences: Levi's or J Brand? BlackBerry or iPhone? Jimmy Choo or Christian Louboutin?

And what do we learn?

They love shoes!

Seventeen year-old Emma "Julia's Niece" Roberts, tells the magazine that she owns a little under 50 pairs of shoes and hopes to imitate the Olsen twin look. "I love the way Mary-Kate and Ashley dress. I know that’s probably cliché to say." And Olivia Thirlby, Juno's adorable friend (whom The Observer's Sara Vilkomerson profiled last year) says, "I mean, all my shoes don’t fit in my closet. I'll put it that way. I have shoes on my dresser and shoes on the floor, and I have shoes that my parents are holding on to for me. I have too many shoes."

Gossip Girl's Blake Lively, 20, talks about her videogame obsession. "Guitar Hero for Wii," she said when asked about her favorite game. "I had them write it into the show. But I just bought the Rock Band for Xbox." Meanwhile her co-star—and rumored boyfriend—Penn Badgley talks about his real-life high school experience, which apparently was "strange to nonexistent. I graduated early. Everyone is just so painfully vulnerable and self-conscious." Um, most of us still are...

Other revelations: Taylor Momsen watches marathons of Law and Order SVU, Jonas brothers each own a BlackBerry and an iPhone, and Jonah Hill's style icon it turns out is Jason Schwartzman.

Also, aside from a few that opted out of the political questions like Mr. Badgley who told VF's James Wolcott, "I'm politically apathetic. We were raised in a time when we never had a leader who was a role model at all. Every president has gotten worse and worse—it doesn't make you want to engage," Young Hollywood generally seem to be in the Obama camp:

Browse the complete portfolio of actors and actresses here.