* It might be a bit meta for a lead, but I can’t help my happiness that Roger Ebert has been named person of the year by the Webby Awards people. I’ve been a big fan of his writing for a very long time and always thought he was the best straight-up writer of any of the major critics, but recently he has really emerged as an inspirational figure. He’s also been one of the most generous supporters of film writing on the web in a million different ways. It’s not really bragging when I mention that he’s thrown some small nods my way as well as some occasionally very funny e-mail responses over the years. He’s done the same for countless others.

And, if that wasn’t cool enough, the great cinephile social networking and blog site, the Auteurs also won an award. Well, done, folks.

* In actual movie news, remember that item last week when I said that Matthew Vaughn, most recently of “Kick-Ass,” was not going to be directing the next X-Men movie? If not, you can just keep right on forgetting because, it turns out, he is directing the film they’ll call “X-Men: First Class” — a prequel. I’m a big fan of Vaughn, though not so much of the X-Men films so far, so I find this intriguing. Some of you may remember, Vaughn departed from “X-Men 3” and the film that was, as per Cinema Blend, Matthew Vaughn, and I, almost definitely the worse for it.

* More really good news from my point of view, one of my favorite actors currently working, Chewitel Ejiofor, has been cast as definitely my favorite Afro-pop musician — okay, the only African musician I can think of that I’ve ever actually bought an album or CD by. Ejiofor will be starring in a biopic of the legendary maestro Fela Anikulapo Kuti in a film to be directed by Steve McQueen of “Hunger.” This film is not related, except by topic, to the musical “Fela!” which just got eleven Tony nominations. The cool part is not only that the Ejiofor, a first-generation Brit born of Nigerian parents, is the actor to play the part, he’s also apparently learning to play piano and saxophone (Kuti’s instruments, I believe) and had, we’re told,  become quite good.

*  Budgeting problems are apparently doing to “Zoolander 2” what they’re doing to “Anchorman 2.” In his summary of the situation, Christopher Campbell suggests a Ron Burgundy-Zoolander team-up. I think a time travel story would be a necessity here.

* I thought this had already been confirmed, but Hugo Weaving really will be playing one of my favorite super-villains, the ultra-villainous ultra-Nazi, the Red Skull, in “Captain America: The First Avenger.” Good for Elrond/Agent Smith.

* RIP stuntman/stunt coordinator and second-unit director Danny Aiello III, the son of the actor, who died much too young of pancreatic cancer at age 53. He has 130 film and television credits on IMDb for stunt work alone.

* Joseph Gordon-Levitt has two possible projects going. He may be reteaming with director Rian Johnson on an offbeat time-travel/science fiction tale. While I personally found the “classic noir in a modern high school” idea of “Brick” a lot more engaging than the actual film despite some amazing acting and individually brilliant scenes, it just didn’t work for me as a story, I’ll be glad to see both of them working. Another possible project is an action-chase film from writer-director David Koepp in which Levitt would play a bike messenger.

* As someone who has been called “useless” by Nikki Finke (a term she seems to like to apply to a growing number of people), I’m hereby offering my consulting services to the producers of “Tilda.” I actually dig the casting of Diane Keaton in the part. Could be great. Read about via Anne Thompson.

* Note to Hollywood marketers — Twitter turns out to be nothing but a joke on us old people.

* Seen on Reddit: Yes, yes indeed — as portrayed in countless teen/college flicks, every party in the U.S. really does have those big red cups. Another enormous worldwide cultural gap bridged by the movies!

After his short but memorable role as undercover operative Lt. Archie Hicox in the WWII epic, “Inglourious Basterds,” Michael Fassbender shot to the top of my actors to watch list. Quentin Tarantino’s film may have put him on the map, but even before its release, Fassbender was earning strong reviews for his performance in artist-turned-filmmaker Steve McQueen’s directorial debut, “Hunger.” As Bobby Sands, the real-life IRA member who went on a hunger strike in protest of the British government’s refusal to recognize him and his fellow Maze inmates as political prisoners, Fassbender completely immerses himself in the role with Christian Bale-like dedication. It’s a pity he doesn’t actually show up until the second act, because it only makes those first 30 minutes seem that much less significant. While a lot of that time is spent setting the mood within the prison (from the poor living environment to the brutality handed down by the guards), “Hunger” doesn’t really get going until Fassbender makes his grand entrance – and even then not a whole lot really happens. In fact, with the exception of a 16-minute, single-shot conversation between Sands and an Irish priest (Liam Cunningham), the movie is pretty forgettable due to an overall lack of character development. It’s still worth checking out for Fassbender’s committed performance, but it’s not quite the modern masterpiece that Criterion would have you believe.

Click to buy “Hunger”

I’m excited enough about what appears to be a nicely movie-movie stylized general approach to the movie from director Joe Johnston, of the underrated “The Rocketeer” among other movies, to still be looking forward to seeing this, I think. Moreover, I am a fan of the fairly sanguinary (and, to me, truly freaking scary in more or less the best way possible) “An American Werewolf in London,” but I’m still a bit nonplussed. I realize I’m a bit of wuss about too much gore, certainly compared to the typical horror fan.

Nevertheless, I can’t help finding the attitude of AICN’s Quint a little Stephen Colbertesque in its equation of blood and gore to “nards” (Colbert would just come right out and call it “balls”). I also think making a tough, scary film really doesn’t have that much to do with how much colored corn syrup you throw around. But then who listens to a guy who likes musicals?

* The most disconcerting news about “The Wolf Man” is not the above, but the news last month about the decision to apparently drop a mostly completed score by Danny Elfman. Yesterday, Jon Burlingame of Variety wrote an even more disconcerting piece arguing that film composers are being devalued. Here’s the article ending quote from respected composer James Horner (not my personal favorite, as it happens, though he’s certainly worked on plenty of good movies and I’m perhaps not giving him enough credit):

“No one just says, ‘What do you think of my picture? I want you to write what’s in your heart.’ I haven’t heard that in years. That simple concept does not exist anymore.”

Apparently, though, it does for some composers, when they’re working with really good directors. Michael Stuhlberg’s interview with Anne Thompson a while back indicates the Carter Burwell’s music may have changed the tone of Coen Brothers’ “A Serious Man” considerably and that he was given considerable latitude. Real filmmakers apparently still realize that musical choices — when and how to use it, or not use it —  are absolutely crucial.

* “Paranormal Activity” writer-director-one-man-band Oren Peli is, no surprise, pretty smart. Evidence: his insistence on a theatrical release.

* Speaking of music, a biopic of the brave and eccentric Afropop great, Fela Kuti, who I was lucky enough to see perform in the Bay Area a long time ago, is in the works, writes The Guardian. Steve McQueen — not the guy from “The Great Escape,” but the director of the acclaimed “Hunger” — will be at the helm.

* A new editor at Variety is someone Nikki Finke has covered before at the L.A. Times. Guess what, she doesn’t think much of the guy.  Of greater note, yesterday she also covered a fairly major movie theater purchase by a company I’ve never heard of before, Rave Motion Pictures, from one of Sumner Redstone’s companies. Rave apparently specializes in all digital movie theaters, something I still have very mixed feelings about, traditionalist that I am.

Also, relating to my item on music above, the Finkester has a press release on Warner Brothers new president of film music, Paul Broucek. Let’s hope he gives it his due respect. He worked with Peter Jackson on the LOTR films, which was aided immensely by Howard Shore’s great music. Could be worse, I guess.

* Actor-director Charles Martin Smith — he’ll always be  “Terry the Toad” to me — will be writing and directing “A Dolphin’s Tale” writes Borys Kit of THR. It’s an inspirational fact based movie about a boy befriending an injured dolphin for Warners’ Alcon Entertainment, which is doing so well with the similarly feel-good “The Blind Side.” Dolphins are appealing animals so this should go over well with families if it’s well executed. And if it’s not, they can always work in “‘bloody horror, violence and gore” to get the AICN crowd.

Like all character actors, Karl Malden never got quite the same level of attention as costars like Marlon Brando, Vivien Leigh, Steve McQueen, Anthony Perkins, Montgomery Clift, Michael Caine, and George C. Scott. Even the seventies TV series he starred in, “The Streets of San Francisco” found him being overshadowed in the eyes of the teenybopper set by his young punk of a male ingenue costar, Michael Douglas. That was largely because Malden was the kind of performer who understood that acting is a team sport. His best scenes were like great duets with near perfect communication between him and his scene partners. The exception were American Express travelers’ checks; those, he wiped off the screen.

Karl Malden died today at age 97, having been more or less fully retired since appearing in a 2000 episode of “The West Wing.” While he was never precisely an A-lister, he was a go-to actor for secondary leads, president of the Motion Picture Academy, and as far as I can tell a universally respected figure among actors and everyone else associated with the movie industry. He was also married to the same woman for seventy years, a rare enough Holllywood achievement to merit it’s own special Oscar. Not a bad life.

Below the fold is a video tribute I found that, from the misspellings, I gather may come from Serbia. (Malden, whose real name was Mladen Sekulovich, was the son of a Serbian father and a Czechoslovak mother.) The image quality could be better and some of the clips are a little too brief, but it does give you an excellent overview of his truly diverse film career, which included work with some of the greatest Hollywood directors including Elia Kazan, John Frankenheimer, and Alfred Hitchcock. It also includes some interesting moments from two oddball spy films, “Murderer’s Row,” which I haven’t seen, and the underrated “Billion Dollar Brain,” which included some pretty amazing scenes between Malden and Michael Caine as his old spy buddy, Harry Palmer, as well as Françoise Dorléac as his treacherous spy girlfriend (though he’s pretty tricky himself).

This scene from “A Streetcar Named Desire” may be a bit much for the Tennessee Williams-unfriendly, but it’s a special favorite of mine. Every time I see “Streetcar,” I forget I’m watching Karl Malden and Vivien Leigh, too very familiar faces to this film geek, and wind up hoping that somehow poor Blanche and Mitch will find happiness. (In case you haven’t seen the movie or the play, let’s just say the odds are slim.) That’s acting.

And, finally, his best known role. <Sigh>

My good pal Zayne has more video at More a Legend Than a Blog. Check it out.

UPDATE: Christoper Campbell of SpoutBlog has a very good rundown of other blog postings on Karl Malden’s passing (which I’m happy to say includes us). He also mentions yet another celebrity death, the passing of actor and singer Harve Presnell, whose credits ranged from the Coen Brothers’ “Fargo” to such now semi- or completely forgotten sixties film musicals as “The Unsinkable Molly Brown,” “When the Boys Meet the Girls” and the legendary “Paint Your Wagon” (where, it’s safe to say, he easily out-sang costars Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin). He was also Daddy Warbucks — a part he was born to play in his later days — in touring productions of “Annie” and also did some really funny work as a gruff detective emeritus on the sadly canceled “Andy Barker, P.I.“