For the second year in a row, CollegeHumor Media’s jest.com has enlisted a gang of deadpanning kids to re-enact the nominees for Best Picture.

This extremely slick two-part Academy Awards goof is quickly–and deservedly–going viral. In Part 1 (below), the Moneyball and Midnight in Paris bits work especially well:

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In today’s LA Times print editions, the awards season supplemental section “The Envelope” clocks in at a record 68 pages. Another sign of just how robust this year’s studio ad-driven film kudos coverage business is looking to be, after several lean years.

Meanwhile, on the online side of things, Focus Features will this Sunday begin a month-long exclusive sponsorship of TheEnvelope.com’s video content. The irony is that today’s cover boy, Woody Allen, is right up there with the late Marlon Brando in terms of the importance he ascribes to such things as the Oscars. Per reporter Sam Adams‘ interview:

With Midnight in Paris, Allen has done more than merely survive: He’s connected with a mass audience to the greatest extent since 1986′s Hannah and Her Sisters. “People do come up to me more on the street,” Allen says. “I noticed it before I went away for the summer.” Hannah also won supporting actor Oscars for Michael Caine and Dianne Weist and the original screenplay prize for Allen. It also notched a further four nominations, which augurs well for Allen come award season.

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The fall of 1978 was not kind to Hollywood Elsewhere’s Jeffrey Wells. In between working as a Connecticut tree surgeon on weekends and borrowing rent money from his dad, he was writing film reviews for free and sharing magazine article pitches with individuals who seemed to have attained their position by means of something other than editorial competence.

Then it happened. Blogging wistfully over the weekend, Wells recalled crashing a film shoot at an art gallery near West Broadway and Prince, where he availed himself of craft service and stumbled into a bespectacled muse:

I walked into the main gallery room and there, sitting in a canvas chair and reading something intently, was young Woody Allen. He was being left alone, nobody hovering. Glasses, dark brownish-red hair, flannel shirt… and sitting absolutely still, like a Duane Hanson sculpture.

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Actor/director Paul Mazurksy, of Down and Out in Beverly Hills fame, was just named the new film critic for VanityFair.com.

“I wanted a film critic who’s been inside the Hollywood trenches; one who would bring a richly seasoned viewpoint to current cinema,” Vanity Fair EIC Graydon Carter says of the hire. “Mazursky fits the bill to a T. There isn’t an aspect of moviemaking that he doesn’t know first hand. And he has the scars to prove it.”

It’s definitely an interesting hire. Mazursky brings an insider element to the job that gives him technical and industry expertise your average critic lacks. He also, obviously, brings an air of celebrity–which doesn’t hurt in attracting eyeballs.

Mazursky addresses the role of the 21st century film critic in his introductory post.

So, do critics matter? It depends on to whom. To the young audience? I’m not sure they even read reviews, in the era of RottenTomatoes.com. Does it matter to the over-45s? Sure, if they want culture and social problems—and don’t mind a little sex and violence. I’d like to believe they want to be moved to tears by the end of a great film.

Do reviews matter to the studios? Sure. They’ll be happy with a rave. But they’re capable of manufacturing a full-page ad with blockbuster quotes from Grade C critics.

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Scarlett Johansson is speaking publicly about the phone hack that spread naked shots of her all over the Internet, prompting an FBI investigation that nailed a creepy Florida man. She talks about the whole affair as the cover story of this month’s Vanity Fair.

Not surprisingly, for someone who looks like Johansson, she isn’t embarrassed by the shots. “I know my best angles,” she told the mag, with what the writer describes as “her trademark insouciance.”

The photos were apparently intended for her then-husband Ryan Reynolds. “There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s not like I was shooting a porno,” she says. “Although there’s nothing wrong with that either.”

Johansson then digresses into her and Woody Allen‘s shared Hypochondria and why he isn’t casting her in movies any more.

The issue will hit LA newsstands (all three of them) on November 3. iPad geeks will have to wait a few extra days.

It’s always been a major bone of contention at FishbowlLA, so we’re glad to see someone else take up the battle cry against the routine practice of failing to adjust for box office inflation.

Ed Driscoll, San Jose editor and political producer for Pajamas Media, notes that the Hollywood Reporter, IFC, and Entertainment Weekly have all been guilty of parroting figures for Woody Allen‘s summer hit Midnight in Paris without placing the numbers in a proper historical context. Only a few journalists, he argues, are digging down to the real story, like the New York Post‘s Kyle Smith in a July 9 blog item:

Annie Hall grossed $38.3 million–in 1977. That’s the equivalent of $143 million today. Midnight in Paris is nowhere near being Woody Allen’s biggest hit. Why does Sony Pictures Classics care? Because they want to be able to run print and (later) DVD ads proclaiming that this is Woody Allen’s biggest hit ever.

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Forget about Paris. The real sign that Sony Pictures Classics has a massive hit on its hands with Woody Allen‘s Midnight in Paris can be found closer to home.

Studio co-chairman Michael Barker tells LA Times columnist Patrick Goldstein that the $70 million plus worldwide indie blockbuster is the first time one of his movies has played in his hometown of Kerrville, Texas. In this small hamlet of 20,000 or so residents, Midnight in Paris screened at the Rio 10 Cinema for a solid month:

“That’s definitely a first for us,” Barker says. “My stepmother is really happy, because she finally can take all her friends to see one of our films. But that’s what makes this film such a pleasure. It’s playing in theaters that have never played a Woody Allen film before. It’s getting big numbers in theaters in Idaho and Montana, in Mississippi and Alabama.”

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At this point, there’s really only one person who can properly decipher the motives of our shamed ex-Governor and one-time box office king – his fellow Austrian Sigmund Freud. Of course, the real Freud died in 1939, but this is Hollywood, so the good news is there are any number of other Freud’s to choose from for a candid, heartfelt low-budget sit-down in the vein of My Dinner with Andre.

Too bad Viggo Mortensen is already taken as Freud, via David Cronenberg‘s upcoming drama A Dangerous Method. He would have been perfect.

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The folks at Variety are no dummies. They have decided to park their extensive, short shelf-life coverage of the 2011 Cannes Film Festival beyond the website’s paywall, making it freely available to one and all.

So, much like Owen Wilson‘s 1920s time traveling character in Woody Allen‘s opening night gala Midnight in Paris, it’s December 2009 all over again at Variety.com, the point at which the barrier was erected. The trade’s contingent at the festival includes long-time editor Pat Saperstein, reviewers Justin Chang and Peter Debruge, Variety.com news editor Stuart Oldham, and veteran reporter David McNary.

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Berkeley atheist and blogger Brody S. (pictured) returned to San Francisco’s edition of SantaCon this past weekend to repeat a most endearing 2009 stunt. Among the sea of Jolly Old St. Nick’s, hers was the only Santa costume decked out in greyscale rather than the usual red and white, so as to create the real-life effect of a Photoshop manipulation.

LA Times blogger Tiffany Hsu shares the fascinating details of “Desaturated Santa”:

Brody bought a sewing pattern and made herself a Santa suit in a dark gray fabric. She took the cloth to a Kryolan SF, a cosmetics and beauty supply store, and color-matched some makeup for her skin.

Then came the gray wig and contacts. A photographer friend taught her how to paint her face. The entire get-up took months to assemble.

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