Leonardo DiCaprio as Martin Luther King Jr.? Hey, as long as the Telegraph is reporting that Jamie Foxx is “in the running” to portray Frank Sinatra in the upcoming Scorsese-directed biopic about the singer/actor, why not also suggest Leo for the just-announced MLK bio from producer Steven Spielberg? Surely the actor is anxious to work again with his Catch Me if You Can director. And seeing as this is pure Oscar-fodder, and seeing as blackface can get people nominated these days, playing the civil rights leader may just be what the three-time Oscar nominee (and loser) needs to pull off in order to win the Academy Award.

Okay, we’re done with the jokes. Obviously this MLK biopic is super serious and needs to be cast as such. So, who will actually follow in the footsteps of former MLK portrayers Paul Winfield, LeVar Burton, James Earl Jones, Robert Guillaume and Jaleel “Urkel” White? Actually, Foxx might be a legitimate candidate for this one. But we’re going with an actor who has already played the civil rights leader. To find out who we pick for the lead role and the rest of the likely supporting characters, check out our completely serious casting suggestions after the jump.

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• Threat of a SAG strike is now nearly eliminated following the guild’s National Board of Directors’ firing of national executive director and chief negotiator Doug Allen. Also, the board disbanded the TV/Theatrical Negotiating Committee. While we can now rest assured there will be no work stoppage, though, SAG’s lack of unity will unfortunately continue.
• Brendan Fraser may have bombed at the box office this past weekend, but his career will always be safe as long as he’s willing to do movies like Furry Vengeance, in which he’ll play a real estate developer battling against “a band of angry critters.”
• While film writers are being axed everywhere, at least two are finding other gigs in filmmaking: Latino Review’s Kellvin Chavez and IESB.net’s Robert Sanchez are two of the producers working on the comic adaptation El Zombo Fantasma, which is described as a “Latino Hellboy.”
• Anyone who has ever wished to see Hilary Duff gunned down by machine guns rejoice! The former Disney Channel starlet will play Bonnie Parker in a new telling of the story of Bonnie and Clyde, ingeniously titled The Story of Bonnie and Clyde. Transamerica’s Kevin Zegers will play Clyde Barrow.
• Fans of Defiance rejoice! Jamie Bell and Daniel Craig will be reunited for Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, in which they’ll play Tintin and Red Rackham, respectively.
• Fans of Carl Franklin’s Devil With a Blue Dress rejoice! Denzel Washington will be reunited with Jennifer Beals in the Hughes brothers’ The Book of Eli. She’ll play a blind woman who is both daughter to Mila Kunis and sexual prize of Gary Oldman.
• Sundance attendees who loved Sin Nombre rejoice! Director Cary Joji Fukunaga has lined up his next two projects at Universal/Focus Features.

I’ll never forget the first time I heard the Sinatra standard “My Way”, while sitting in the balcony of an art house in Denver, chain-smoking Benson & Hedges ultra-light menthols, staring nearly hypnotized by the sight of sexy Gary Oldman transforming himself into the swaggering embodiment of punk rock, tearing through both cover song and screen. Sid and Nancy (along with Howard Deutch’s Pretty In Pink which also came out in 1986, and Martha Coolidge’s 1983 Valley Girl) was nothing less than a revelation to this teenager with Aqua-netted hair, Doc Martins and ripped fishnets, because it actually portrayed “my people,” spoke to me in my own musical language.

And my feeling of identification probably was not unlike that experienced by a certain segment of the movie-going public 31 years before Alex Cox paid tribute to the junkie romance of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, who witnessed another tale of fucked-up love, possible homicide, and enduring heroin chic. Heartthrob Frank Sinatra would not sing “My Way” in Otto Preminger’s groundbreaking 1955 The Man With The Golden Arm, but he would play the fictional Frankie Machine, another lean and hungry musician of dubious talent weighed down by both a needy blonde and a monkey on his back.

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Last week, Entertainment Weekly confirmed with Warner Bros. that the studio would be campaigning for a nomination for Heath Ledger specifically in the supporting actor category, putting to rest all the speculation and suggestions that he could contend for the Best Actor Oscar. Now all the awards pundits seem to agree that Ledger is a definite lock for a posthumous nomination. As for The Dark Knight’s hopes for other categories, though, it’s still up in the air as to how many nominations the comic book movie might garner.

While its predecessor, Batman Begins, only received one Oscar nomination, for Wally Pfister’s cinematography, there’s at least some likelihood that The Dark Knight could be recognized in as many as a dozen categories. That’s about as many as it’s legitimately eligible for, anyway, and in a year that keeps looking slimmer and slimmer in terms of Oscar-worthy pictures, there’s no reason to completely deny The Dark Knight’s full capability. Unfortunately, it’s a popular genre picture, so regardless of how critically acclaimed it is, and regardless of how the Academy has historically lauded similar titles, there will be a lot of doubt and debate concerning this movie’s prospects all the way up until January 22, when the nominations are announced.

Yesterday, John Foote of In Contention, commented on the increasing chances of The Dark Knight in such a lackluster Oscar season. In some ways, though, it’s not just about onetime Oscar hopefuls turning out to be hopeless; it’s also the constant problem of so much Oscar bait being held away from viewers and voters until the last possible second. Even those films that end up being fairly good can be disappointments after so much premature awards season hype. Sure, audiences have short attention spans and typically a film released midyear is easily forgotten by voting time, but a movie as memorable, as successful and as well-made as The Dark Knight can come out in the summer and easily be in the forefront of voters’ minds as an easy and deserving fallback. Therefore so many Oscar bloggers shouldn’t suddenly be surprised to see that The Dark Knight’s hopes for multiple Oscar nominations is “brightening” or “shaping up.” It’s always been a contender. Let’s break down its chances, category by category, after the jump:

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