Best Actor Contenders Hit the NY Times

There is a great profile of Woody Harrelson by good friend David Carr:

He will likely be on the short list of the Oscars again, this time for playing a cop in“Rampart” who is a vending machine of his own brand of rough justice, assaulting and killing in a city he sees as beyond redemption.

Millennium Films bought “Rampart” at the Toronto International Film Festival. “We’re expending an enormous amount of energy in a hurry to get it out this year,” Mark Gill, the president of Millennium, said. “I think that after last year’s Oscar nomination for ‘The Messenger,’ Woody has a good shot at being in the middle of things, and we plan on using that to make sure people see this really great movie.”

And Leonardo profiled as well for J. Edgar:

Mr. DiCaprio did months of research to be able to inhabit Hoover fully. He flew to Washington with Mr. Black to tour the Justice Department and one of Hoover’s former homes. Mr. DiCaprio also met with Cartha D. DeLoach, one of the only people still alive who worked closely with Hoover, and taped their hours-long conversation. (Hoover would have been proud.) “I wanted him to tell me how he walked, how he talked, what his hands looked like, what his desk looked like, what was above his desk,” Mr. DiCaprio said.

“The research of these roles is half the fun and half the challenge — maybe more,” he added. “It’s what makes it exciting to me.”