Four months ago we suggested that Viggo Mortensen had three chances in 2008 to repeat as an Oscar nominee. As the last of those chances expires today, all we can say is, "Maybe next year?"

Click to viewBoomp3.com The unusually warm fall weather must’ve gotten the best of Renee Zellweger at the Los Angeles premiere of Appaloosa. As the Jerry Maguire star sauntered down the red carpet, she tugged and pulled the shoulder portion of her designer gown further off her neck and shoulder region. “It’s a lovely piece," Zellweger said. "But those things were smothering me like a bad boyfriend. You know: The kind that apologizes for every thing and, you know, just smothers.” As Zellweger reached the end of the red carpet, the temperature dropped a bit and she began to hike the shoulder portion back over her exposed flesh. “Sometimes," Zellweger added, "we make mistakes and we need a bit of coverage, like when you take back that smothering boyfriend. All he was guilty of was caring.” [Photo Credit: Bauer-Griffin] *A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

In the spirit of reader participation, we'll leave it to you to determine the good and bad news among this year's crop of Viggo Mortensen films. For starters: Can the 2007 Oscar nominee climb his way back into Academy hearts with nary a nude, bloody bathhouse throwdown in three movies? Sure, suggests one observer, who points out that beyond roles in the Western Appaloosa and the Cormac McCarthy adaptation The Road, Viggo has a fail-safe ace in the hole to unveil this December. Sort of, anyway; assuming it can overcome its distributor's ongoing cash woes, Good is apparently just the kind of Holocaust film for which Oscar voters swoon. Still, disadvantages persist:

• Merrill Lynch has announced it will take another write-down of $5.7 billion and raise an additional $8.5 billion in new common stock. The bank has announced more than $45 billion in write-downs over the past year. [NYT]