• The Dark Knight has been disqualified from the race for the Original Music Score Oscar. After four hours of discussing the matter, the executive committee of the Academy music branch non-unanimously deemed the score, which was technically only co-composed by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard yet which credited three others on sheet music for royalty purposes, ineligible on account of the inclusion of these partial collaborators.
• Michael Moore claims his Fahrenheit 9/11 follow-up (once titled Fahrenheit 9/11 and a 1/2) has become less like a sequel to that film and more like “a bookend to Roger & Me.” The new doc will focus more on the financial crisis than on foreign policy and will feature an “end-of-the-empire tone.”
• Meryl Streep may finally be upstaged. She’ll star opposite a cute little feline in a movie based on the non-fiction book Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World.
• The less feel-good true story of a 1987 prison riot will be the subject of an untitled film referred to as the “Delta Force prison project.” Unfortunately, that name isn’t necessarily a hint that Chuck Norris will star.
• It was only a matter of time: a high school-set retelling of The Scarlet Letter involving a teenage girl who thinks it’s beneficial to have the reputation for being a slut. It’s called Easy A.
• “Urkel” wrote a romantic comedy about a texting-based love affair.

• Blogs are buzzing, but the fact that Michael Moore is making a sequel to Fahrenheit 9/11 is old news –– the film is referenced in this NY Times story from April of last year. The new news in this story from Variety’s Cannes section is that the film will be distributed internationally by Overture and Paramount Vantage––NOT The Weinstein Company, which handled the relatively disappointing release of Sicko. The same companies will rep the doc for international sale at Cannes.
• The Playlist has details on Miranda July’s in-the-works second feature, Things We Don’t Understand and Definitely Are Not Going To Talk About.
• The title of this post at Tisch Film Review is worded a bit confusingly, but it’s basically a list of ten great films that are not available on DVD. The Last Movie, The Mother and the Whore, etc.

Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden is the latest autobiographical odyssey by Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock. The film has a wry, snarky tone, so while Spurlock actually does tour the Middle East poking around for the world’s most wanted terrorist, the mission is understood to be secondary to the wider political comments the film attempts to make. If the mission to find Bin Laden is tongue-in-cheek, then what is the point of the very real dangers Spurlock subjects himself to?

Comparisons to Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 are well deserved. Both rely heavily on darkly comic animated history lessons about the underbelly of American foreign policy. These segments are very entertaining, but also frustratingly simple. While it could be argued that Spurlock is intentionally over-simplifying complex histories in order to spoof the mainstream media’s penchant for cartoonish dichotomies, the animated segments instead prop up widely held beliefs with more humor than information. I can already hear undergrads at a party saying, “The CIA did some seriously messed up shit, didn’t you see that 90 second cartoon in that Morgan Spurlock movie?”

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