ScottFeinberg.com

By Molly Sullivan

Ashton Kutcher has probably lost a whole lot of fans in recent months, and Miranda Lambert can now be added to the bunch.

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• Ken Tucker’s TV: Ken Tucker posts footage of actress Gwyneth Paltrow singing “her brains out” at Wednesday evening’s Country Music Awards, where the actress debuted the title song of “Country Strong,” an upcoming film in which she portrays a country music singer. “Strumming an acoustic guitar, looking a little nervous but singing the movie’s title song in an expressive, surging tone, she didn’t really need the assistance of the wonderful Vince Gill, there to give a polite country-industry imprimatur to Paltrow’s efforts,” writes Tucker. The Oscar winning actress got a standing ovation from many in the audience (including fellow thespian Nicole Kidman, who is married to country singer Keith Urban).
• The Wrap: Steve Pond previews tomorrow night’s second annual Academy Governors Awards, an untelevised dinner at which director Francis Ford Coppola will receive the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award and historian/preservationist Kevin Brownlow, director Jean-Luc Godard, and actor Eli Wallach will be presented with honorary Oscars for their contributions to film. Earlier this week, former Academy president Sid Ganis cheerfully told TheWrap, “Whatever those honorees are planning to say on Saturday, nobody’s going to be there counting down from 45!”
• Variety: Pamela McClintock learns that yesterday, Columbia Pictures, which is distributing James L. Brooks’s rom-com “How Do You Know,” lost its appeal to the MPAA’s “Classification and Rating Appeals Board” to overturn the R-rating that it received for using the f-word three times in the film. (The MPAA insists that PG-13 films can only feature no more than one use of it.) Therefore, the studio has decided to recut the film “to eliminate certain language” and, in so doing, to make it accessible to a larger audience.
• Vanity Fair: John Lopez praises Ed Harris’s performance “as a tough-as-nails American caught in the Gulag” in Peter Weir’s epic drama “The Way Back,” noting that the veteran actor “milked goats, chopped trees, and peeled bark” to prepare for the film’s 15-week shoot. Harris, whose breakthrough role was in “The Right Stuff” (1983), has previously been Oscar-nominated for his work in four films: “Apollo 13” (1995), “The Truman Show” (1998), “Pollock” (2000), and “The Hours” (2002).
• Thompson on Hollywood: Anthony d’Alessandro explores the correlation between a film’s box office showing and its awards potential. This year, he notes, “A number of arthouse releases — ‘Let Me In’ ($12 million), ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story’ ($6.2 million), ‘Conviction’ ($5.2 million), ‘Never Let Me Go’ ($2.3 million), and ‘Welcome to the Rileys‘ ($80,000) — have struggled at the multiplex, undermining their chances in a highly competitive awards season… At the other end of the spectrum, the successes of ‘The Town’ ($90 million) and ‘For Colored Girls’ ($23 million) have bolstered their award potential.”
• The Race: Tim Appelo reports that the “Amazon.com Best of 2010 Movies and TV Editors’ Picks” list was emailed to Amazon customers this Monday. While it is largely “ignored by movie cognoscenti,” it does reach a “vast audience” and could conceivably impact the race. As Appelo acknowledges, it’s “unlikely to affect voters’ views of blockbusters, but might conceivably help worthy indies like Focus Features’ ‘The Kids Are All Right’ or Roadside Attractions’ great Oscar hope ‘Winter’s Bone.’”

Photo: Gwyneth Paltrow in “Country Strong.” Credit: Screen Gems.

• Star: The gossip rag’s latest cover features an unauthorized photograph of “Solitary Man”/“Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” star Michael Douglas, who is battling throat cancer, looking extremely sick. Douglas’s hair has gone completely white; his face is now wrinkled everywhere; his eyes look sunken in; and his throat appears to be severely scarred. To see a man who was so vibrant reduced to this is enough to bring tears to the eyes.
• Slash Film: Peter Sciretta, in a post from June that we only discovered today, exposes the “Easter Eggs” — “hidden little bits of trivia that act as inside jokes to fans of Pixar’s films” — that the digital animation studio snuck in to “Toy Story 3.” Among them: numerous references to the number 95 (the year in which the first “Toy Story” was released); a letter from “Carl and Ellie Fredrickson” (the elderly couple in “Up”); and a flyer for Pizza Planet (a fictional restaurant that has been referenced in all every Pixar film except “The Incredibles”).
• Los Angeles Times: Stephen Zeitchik wonders why Clint Eastwood’s “Hereafter,” which opens nationwide tomorrow, appears to have divided critics “along generational lines.” He surveys reviews of the film and concludes, “Many younger reviewers — those in their 30s and 40s, and maybe inching into their early 50s — are coming down hard on the movie. Most of those among the older generation? They’re finding much to embrace.” Why? “The simple explanation, I suppose, is that a movie preoccupied with mortality will appeal more to older filmgoers than younger ones.”
• Knoxville: Terry Morrow, in a post from August that we only discovered today, reports that “Get Low,” which has been advertised as “a true tall tale,” is actually more true and less “tall tale” than most people realize. As it turns out, there really was a Felix Bush (the tortured character portrayed by Robert Duvall) — Felix Breazeale (nickname: “Bush”), to be precise — and, much like the character in the movie, he teamed up with a local funeral home operator and organized a “pre-death” funeral “party” for himself that “turned into one of the biggest community gatherings in the history of Roane County.”
• INDIEwire: Pete Knegt performs a post-mortem on the nominations for the Gotham Independent Film Awards that were announced on Monday and concludes “there’s probably very little the Gothams have suggested about the overall awards race” except for the strength of Debra Granik’s “Winter’s Bone.” That little indie wound up with the same three nominations that “The Hurt Locker” received en route to winning the best picture Oscar — “which is not at all to suggest that ‘Winter’s Bone’ is going to surprise anyone in that regard,” Knegt hastens to add.
• The Dish Rag: Elizabeth Snead catches up with “Country Strong” director Shana Feste, who believes that Gwyneth Paltrow’s performance in the film will bring the actress her first Academy recognition since she was nominated for and won the best actress Oscar for “Shakespeare in Love” (1998). Feste says, “This is a complete departure for her. She plays an alcoholic in desperate need of a comeback. She sings, plays guitar, and dances.” (Paltrow will be performing the film’s title song at the Country Music Awards on November 10.)
• Hitfix: Drew McWeeny mourns Pixar’s decision to replace Brenda Chapman as the director of “Brave” (formerly titled “The Bear and the Bow”), one of the studio’s next films. Chapman, who is being succeeded by Mark Andrews, was to have been the first female director of a Pixar film. McWeeny reports that many in the animation community have reacted to this news with great disappointment, “not because she’s a woman, but because that particular woman developed that story, and because she has proven with her work that she’s got a real voice as a storyteller.”
• Hollywood-Elsewhere: Jeff Wells, who has been salivating over “Love and Other Drugs” ever since he first heard good things about it back in February, has finally seen the film and is anything but disappointed. He believes “it is first and foremost a hit… sharp and polished and beautifully shot and acted and cut… with sass and wit and ultra-frank sexuality and generous nudity and undercurrents that are ‘Jerry Maguire’-ish at times… [director Edward] Zwick’s finest film yet… [and] could easily qualify as one of the ten best picture contenders.”

Photo: Michael Douglas. Credit: Star.