• Governor Granholm would prefer you make your movie in Michigan. The state has a 42 percent tax credit to win your business -- but if you must shoot in Paris, France now has a rebate program of its own.
• A record snowfall didn't stop Vegas critics from applauding Frost/Nixon. The drama won six of the Las Vegas Film Critics Society's Sierra Awards including Best Picture.
• Scarlett Johansson's used tissue can be sold for charity; Mary Pickford's Oscars cannot. It looks like you won't see any Academy Awards on EBay. A jury recently upheld the Academy's contract with Oscar winners that gives it the right to buy back Oscars for up to $10 before any statuette can be sold.
• Good news if you like your biopics long and uninterrupted. The full four-hour-plus version of Soderbergh's Che is getting an extended run in New York and Los Angeles. For those with shorter attention spans it will be showing in January as two separate films, the Cuba-focused The Argentine and Bolivia-based The Guerrilla.
• It's time for Oscar campaign finance reform. Despite layoffs,
studios are sparing no expense when it comes to wooing a handful of
Academy voters. "So a $675,000 insert is falling out of newspapers sent to 1 in 10 homes in foreclosure," one insider complained to Nikki Finke. That's just for WALL-E.
• In case you can't get enough Tom Cruise: Valkyrie co-writer Christopher McQuarrie is working on three more projects designed as star vehicles for the UA co-owner: Flying Tigers, The Champions and The Tourist.
• Mark Felt, aka "Deep Throat," passed away this morning at age 95. The FBI associate director's truth-telling led to Hollywood's retelling in movies like All the King's Men and Frost/Nixon.
• UPDATE: As disappointed fans return their tickets (Speed-the-Plow producers have already had to issue $20,000 in refunds to disappointed theatergoers), Jeremy Piven fights back with 'The Sushi Defense'. Mamet regular William H. Macy will be taking over his role.
