How grand Gran Torino?

By Steven Zeitchik

A day without fall-scheduling news is a day without sunshine. As Carl DiOrio reports, Warner Bros. has finally set a date for "Gran Torino." The movie will follow the limited-December, wide-January pattern of many late-season awards movies, opening in limited on December 17 and widening after New Year's. That's not just a tactic that recent kudo successes like "Pan's Labyrinth" and "There Will be Blood" followed -- it's a pattern that has served Eastwood himself well with movies like "Million Dollar Baby" and "Letters from Iwo Jima."

In fact, this year for Clint is looking a lot like 2006, when he also had a movie from a non-Warners studio earlier in the season ("Flags of Our Fathers") and a Warners one later in it ("Letters from Iwo Jima"). Then, perhaps like now, the first one was the hotter awards candidate coming in, but it was the latter film that ended up drawing the Best Picture nomination. Given the mixed reviews of "Changeling" -- and readers who remember our Cannes wriite-up recall our own deep ambivalence -- could we be in for a 2006 repeat?

(There's also this bit of handy bit of potentially instructive trivia, given that Eastwood stars in "Torino" but not in "Changeling." Eastwood has  been nominated for best director and picture four times. The two occasions he won those awards he starred in the film; the two times he didn't, he wasn't on screen. The already Eastwood-partial Oscar voters for some reason seem to be more sympathetic to him when they get specific reminders.)

As for how much Warners is still thinking of "Torino" -- which has been shrouded in secrecy; what little is known is that it's about a Million Dollar Baby-esque premise about a hardened older man who befriends a younger person from a troubled background -- the studio's Dan Fellman tells THR all you need to know. "It's a film that's sure to have great appeal both with moviegoers and critics," he said.

Not to mention those voters with a soft heart for Clint.