The veracity of this claim aside — you might need a shovel for the grains of salt you'd need to believe this — let's just play out this scenario: Day-Lewis would immediately make Sherlock Holmes 2 about ten-times more intriguing; the interactions between the Oscar winner and Robert Downey Jr.'s Sherlock would have all-time potential; and it would be an opportunity to see Day-Lewis do something entirely new — in this case, play the heavy in a big-budget studio affair. There is no downside here, other than this being a crappy movie.

But face it: As much as we all like to hold Daniel Day-Lewis up on a pedestal because of his talent, care of craft and commitment, it's not like he only makes good movies. Would Sherlock Holmes 2 really be worse than Nine? If it includes any scenes of Moriarty singing and dancing or Fergie in any capacity, then yes.

Monday: Late Night With David Letterman

We just can’t wait to see how the big guy handles his lead guest: Anna Wintour. The ever-elegant and chilly editor in chief of Vogue is mysterious, terrifyingly powerful and—even with magazines gasping for existence—as close to royalty in certain publishing circles as you are going to get. But with the release of the documentary The September Issue, a behind-the-curtains look at how the fashion bible is produced (apparently, dissing Sienna Miller’s neck and hair is part of the process!), Ms. Wintour has agreed to appear on Late Night like any other common celebrity to answer Mr. Letterman’s questions. We have so many already! Starting with, what on earth will she be wearing? And does she know how cold Dave likes to keep the studio and to bring a cardigan? Will Dave tell her she smells delicious? We. Can’t. Wait. [11:35 p.m., CBS]

Tuesday: St Elmo’s Fire

Where to start with this movie? First of all, it is not directed by John Hughes but rather auteur Joel Schumacher, though one might be forgiven for being confused. After all, is there a Brat Packier movie than this one? It's got Demi Moore (playing out-of-control wreck Jules. Close your eyes, though, and you’ll swear its Lindsay Lohan. Spooky!), Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, Mare Winningham, our 1985 would-be boyfriend Andrew McCarthy, Rob Lowe as awesome sax-soloist Billy Hicks and even Andie MacDowell, who shows up as a (snarf) doctor with super-pretty hair. ABC recently announced that this movie is being turned into a series, which makes us feel somewhat sad … and old. Here’s hoping the gang will still have cause to chant Booga Booga Booga Wah Wah Wah at least once per episode. [7:30 a.m., AMC]

Wednesday: Grindhouse

Congratulations are in order for Quentin Tarantino: His wacky Nazi-hunting Inglourious Basterds is not only a hit with critics, but also No. 1 this weekend at the box office. Today you can catch the 2007 double feature of Grindhouse, which includes Death Proof  (written and directed by Mr. Tarantino) and Planet Terror (written and directed by Robert Rodriguez), if you happen to have a spare 195 minutes. If not, we humbly recommend Death Proof, because the girls are so foxy and badass and we so love seeing Kurt Russell as a homicidal maniac (casting directors take note!). [1:20 a.m., ENC]

Thursday: Models of the Runway

What’s really kind of amazing is that it took the geniuses at Project Runway this long to spin off of their Project Runway cash cow with Models of the Runway. For the uninitiated, there’s always that fun moment in every Project Runway when all the model ladies come out in little black slips, and are forced to stand on the runway like cattle while the fashion designers pick. One is always out. It has brought some great drama in the past (remember “it’s a motherfucking walkoff”? Or when the normally tactful Tim Gunn described one poor soul as having an elongated marshmallow shape?). Last week’s first episode focused on a rather angry redhead, who is clearly going to bring the drama, but we can’t really tell all those skinny bitches apart yet. Tyra should be very, very worried.  [11 p.m., Lifetime]

Friday: There Will Be Blood

Before we get all caught up in Daniel Day-Lewis, song-and-dance man, which we're sure will happen once we see the much anticipated (with the awesome trailer) Nine, let us sit back and remember him as the shadowy, complicated, darkly misanthropic Daniel Plainview in Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood. For the role that won him the Oscar, Mr. Day-Lewis goes deep and really kinda crazy dark! This is a movie that we promise gets better and more interesting with every viewing. Forget the now infamous “I drink your milkshake” line, what about when he puts that napkin over his face? And don't you think he really slapped Paul Dano around for that one scene? This is art! [4:30 p.m., ShoE]

Tuesday: There Will Be Blood
On the very short list of the best movies to come out in the past decade, There Will Be Blood is nothing short of a towering achievement.

Monday: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
As part of their "31 Days of Oscar," Turner Classic Movies is pulling out all of your dusty old favorites this month. So here's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, one of those movies where everything clicks into place like a tumbler in a lock. William Goldman's Oscar-winning screenplay is tight and effortless; Robert Redford and Paul Newman do it all with their patented brand of winking charm. We hate saying "they don't make movies like this anymore", but with Butch Cassidy we'll make an exception. [TCM, 8 p.m.]

Tuesday: There Will Be Blood
On the very short list of the best movies to come out in the past decade, There Will Be Blood is nothing short of a towering achievement. The genius of Paul Thomas Anderson is that he manages to take parts of Orson Welles, Terrence Malick, Stanley Kubrick, Robert Altman and Martin Scorsese and blend them all together to create something wholly original. While Quentin Tarantino seems content on making mix-tape movies—highlight reels of his favorite films—Mr. Anderson uses his favorites as a baseline for something greater. If someone can explain to us how There Will Be Blood lost to No Country for Old Men at the Oscars last year, we will be forever grateful. [Showtime, 6:15 p.m.]

Wednesday: Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
While the sequel to Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle—a shaggy dog mess of social commentary wrapped in gross-out jokes and pot—already feels pretty dated, there is something sublimely hilarious about watching Neil Patrick Harris ride a unicorn and brand a prostitute on her butt with his initials. Yeah, it's that kind of movie. [More Max, 7:20 p.m.]

Thursday: Grey's Anatomy / Private Practice
When we first heard about the Grey's Anatomy/Private Practice crossover, our eyes glazed over; as if watching one of these crappy shows wasn't enough, now we had to watch both? But something completely unexpected happened: the stunt worked! Each one has benefited from the presence of the other, and their twin successes prove unequivocally that the worst decision Shonda Rhimes ever made was spinning Kate Walsh off of Grey's Anatomy and onto Private Practice. Ms. Walsh is a revelation when paired with Patrick Dempsey, Eric Dane and the rest of the Grey's crew—we're talking Emmy-worthy here, people! And if Ms. Rhimes isn't too busy issuing pat denials about the imminent departures of Katherine Heigl and T. R. Knight, she should give serious thought to consolidating her two soap operas back into one show. [ABC, 9 p.m.]

Friday: Late Night with Conan O'Brien
This week marks the final episodes of Late Night with Conan O'Brien—Mr. O'Brien takes over The Tonight Show starting June 1, while Jimmy Fallon starts his stint as Late Night host on March 2nd. Other than a reunion of the White Stripes, there is no word just yet on what Conan is planning for his very last show, but here's hoping we see Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, a return of Andy Richter and, yes, one final glimpse of the Masturbating Bear. [NBC, 12:30 a.m.]

“For the most part I try to hear the voice, which is one of the most deep and personal ways we present our very selves. It’s like a fingerprint of the soul,” said Daniel Day-Lewis. Last week, the 50-year-old actor was discussing his character, Daniel Plainview, in Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film, There Will Be Blood, based upon Upton Sinclair’s turn-of-the-century novel Oil! “Little by little a voice started to talk in my head, and then the problem becomes how to make those sounds—to get it out of your head.”

Plainview is a complicated, shadowy character: darkly misanthropic with fleeting flashes of kindness, and singularly obsessive in his quest for oil, driven by demons never fully revealed to the audience. Plainview’s speech is elegant and formal, words both clipped and rounded, and when the fury that’s never too far below the surface rises, it grows quieter, becoming more menacing. Mr. Day-Lewis’s natural speaking voice—rich, refined and deep in timbre—is a bit of a surprise to hear after decades of the actor and his voice disappearing into characters. But then again, there’s a lot that’s surprising about meeting Daniel Day-Lewis in person. The famously elusive and revered actor chooses to make fewer movies than his contemporaries (only four in the past decade), and when he’s not working drops out of the public eye. Hence the mystique that’s cropped up around him, particularly about his awesomely intense Methody prowess. (He never breaks character! He learned how to make a canoe during The Last of the Mohicans!) But Daniel Day-Lewis the man—at least on this cold December day—was relaxed, charming and quick to laugh, with long graying hair and sharp green eyes that, combined with his beakish nose, gave him the look of some exotically handsome bird of prey.

“Paul thought we were making a blockbuster,” he said of his director. “I thought we were making a film that would have us sort of drummed out of town with bell, book and candle. … So I feel we’re going to achieve some kind of middle ground.” A blockbuster? The 158-minute film is slow, detailed to the extreme and has almost no dialogue for the first 20 minutes. Mr. Day-Lewis laughed heartily and shook his head. “It’s just so great Paul thought that. I just love it: There’s no woman, no romance, no nothing—just fucking filthy guys digging holes in the ground.”

He was familiar with, and a fan of, the director’s past work, particularly Punch Drunk Love and Adam Sandler’s performance in it. “[Anderson]’s a writer. He’s a writer, simple as that. What interested me so much was the understanding that he had already entered into that world. He wasn’t observing it—he’d entered into it—and indeed he’d populated it with characters who I felt had a life of their own. Almost as if he was a secretary taking it down and putting it on paper. That is always where the best creative work is done—as if you have absolutely nothing to do with it whatsoever. That’s the way you have a chance of revealing something meaningful about yourself. Through losing yourself.”

There Will Be Blood is one of those movies that will likely draw wildly different reactions among audiences (much in the way of the eternally debated raining-frog scenes from Magnolia). Some have compared it in majesty and scope to Citizen Kane (TWBB has already been chosen as the best film of 2007 by L.A. critics), while others are confounded by the film’s final 30 minutes and shocking last scene. “To me, the symmetry was absolutely right. It may be outrageous, that last scene, but to me it seemed absolutely right. I love that there’s an exuberance to it,” Mr. Day-Lewis said of the ending. He chooses not to watch his own work: “It reminds me of how daft the whole experience is. And the older you get, the more you have to protect yourself from that awareness. I dare say the reason one ends up taking things too seriously is some feeble attempt to obliterate the sense of absurdity.” At the film’s premiere party a few days earlier, he had been besieged by reporters, an experience that made him cover his face as he remembered it. “That was an awkward time to be doing interviews. That was their assignment, God help them. When it’s feeding time at the zoo … It’s a chimpanzee’s tea party. I should not be the person wishing to be the one hiding behind the potted plant, but that’s who I am.”

Mr. Day-Lewis, married to writer-director Rebecca Miller, with whom he has two sons, spends the majority of his time in Ireland. But he still has some press responsibilities—junkets, award season red-carpet trotting—ahead of him. “There’s tomorrow, then there’s January, February and so forth. It’s relentless, never ending it seems.” He laughed good-naturedly. “And then there’s Europe to conquer.”

So, obviously, the Academy spoiled the year of the syncopated click-clack. But Rudin has a formula for getting over the disappointment of not seeing Blood secure that all-important ninth nomination:

Keep on keepin' on, Scott.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood (No. 2) expanded into five theaters over the weekend and nearly doubled its tally, averaging an impressive $48,000 per theater. And this was before it garnered the best picture nod from the National Society of Film Critics over No Country for Old Men (No. 9). Just for good measure, Mr. Anderson picked up best director. (After working with Adam Sandler, how do you think it felt to direct Daniel Day-Lewis, like driving an Aston Martin after a mint green 1972 Volvo station wagon? Thought so.)

One Missed Call (No. 3), a horror film from Warner Bros. in the Ring vein and the only new wide release of the weekend, just eeked out Charlie Wilson’s War (No. 4), a film sinking under the weight of its own baggage, in its third week. (Oh, Cholly!!!) Can anything less than an epic support the combined weight of Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Mike Nichols and Aaron Sorkin? Maybe. But now add a dash of Philip Seymour Hoffman! Glub glub! If it'd been Peter Sarsgaard in the lead, Maggie Gyllenhaal or one of her many equivalents in Roberts' shoes, and that guy who directed Maria Full of Grace at the helm, you could keep Seymour Hoffman where he is and have something that’d float.

Next in this middle-of-the-road logjam is Sweeney Todd (No. 5) followed closely by I Am Legend, the most entertaining movie—thanks Will!—that made absolutely no sense of 2007. (By the way, didn’t he act the shit out of his role? This was his Cast Away. Where’re the “For Your Consideration” ads?) It fell a precipitous 45 percent in its fourth week. With $230 million already in the bank, who cares?

And so much for Manhattan’s love affair with Denzel Washington—perhaps American Gangster’s success in the city was due more to our love of ourselves? Most definitely! At least, our love of Denzel can’t get us to sit through The Great Debaters (No. 10), which currently sits at the bottom of our box office chart. Debate may be war, but it sure isn’t profitable.

Notable absences: The Kite Runner (wait for the expansion … any week now), Persepolis (wait for the word-of-mouth), The Bucket List (kicked the bucket, natch), and The Orphanage (wait until it can scare up some business—ha!).

List of theaters: Paris, Zeigfeld, Oprheum, East 85th St., 86th St. East, 84th St., Lincoln Plaza, 62nd and Broadway, Lincoln Square, Magic Johnson, 72nd St East, Cinemas 1, 2 &3rd Ave, 64th and 2nd , Imaginasian, Manhattan Twin, First and 62nd St., Angelika Film Center, Quad, IFC Center, Film Forum, Village East, Village Seven, Cinema Village, Union Square, Essex, Battery Park 11, Sunshine, 34th Street, Empire, E-Walk, Chelsea, 19th Street East, and Kips Bay.

Manhattan Weekend Box Office: How moviegoers in the multiplexes of middle America choose to spend their ten-spot is probably a big deal in Hollywood. But here in Manhattan, the hottest movies aren't always the ones making the big bucks nationwide. Using Nielsen numbers for Manhattan theaters alone and comparing them to the performance of the national weekend box office can tell you a lot about our Blue State sensibilities. Or nothing at all! Each Monday afternoon, we will bring you the results.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s much-touted There Will Be Blood took four prizes, including best picture, at the 42nd annual National Society of Film Critics Awards. Daniel Day-Lewis drew actor kudos, while Mr. Anderson won for director and Robert Elswit for cinematography.

From Day-Lewis' interview with The Observer's Sara Vilkomerson:

For supporting actor, Casey Affleck of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford won the prize. Tamara Jenkins got the screenplay award for The Savages, and No End in Sight claimed top documentary honors. No Country for Old Men, an awards-season darling so far, was surprisingly snubbed.

Bonus: Speaking of critics, listen to a podcast of Glenn Kenny of premier.com, Harry Knowles (aintitcoolnews.com), Jen Yamato (rottentomatoes.com) and Jim Emerson (rogerebert.com) discussing the big winner on the No Country official site.

Here's the full list of winners:

Courtesy of Variety: