Exclusive! Oscar Picks based on links to Cloud 9!

With the 78th Academy Awards only hours away, it's time for Tabloid Baby to announce the Major Oscar Picks Based on Their Connections to Cloud 9.

Only weeks ago, all Hollywood was buzzing over their lattes about the uncanny, eerie similarities between Cloud 9, the hilarious beach volleyball comedy starring Burt Reynolds and written and produced by Burt Kearns and Brett Hudson of Frozen Pictures and last year’s Best Picture Oscar winner (Million Dollar Baby), Albert S. Ruddy, and this year's Best Picture nominee, Crash.

This da Vinci Code-like revelation was followed by the amazing two or less degrees of separation between Cloud 9 and every single one of this year’s major Oscar nominees (and a nostalgic look back at the two-or-less degree links between the Fox DVD and every Academy Award Best Picture of the past ten years).

Well, time for the Big Night. The Tabloid Baby staff has taken its Two Degrees or Less of Separation chart and used it to forecast the winners of this year’s Oscars.

These predictions are based on their proximity to Cloud 9 (which missed out on Academy Award consideration only by a matter of days and format— it was released January 4th on DVD).

They're not necessarily the Tabloid Baby staff picks. Some go far afield of conventional wisdom. But that's what happen when you stir up an incomprehensible blend of science and Hollywood magic. Here goes:

PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote) worked with Burt Reynolds in Boogie Nights; Heath Ledger (Brokeback Mountain) co-starred in Four Feathers with Brett Hudson’s niece, Kate; Joaquin Phoenix (Walk The Line) showed up at the West Coast party for Burt Kearns' book, Tabloid Baby; and David Strathairn (Good Night, and Good Luck) worked with Cloud 9 movie-stealer Gary Busey in The Firm. BUT…

Terrence Howard (Hustle & Flow) appears in Crash with Cloud 9’s Ken Garito and Tony Danza!

CLOUD 9 BEST ACTOR PICK: TERRENCE HOWARD, HUSTLE & FLOW

PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
Judi Dench (Mrs. Henderson Presents) starred with Anthony Hopkins, who plays a key plot role in Cloud 9, in 84 Charing Cross Road; Felicity Huffman (Transamerica) is married to William H. Macy from Boogie Nights; Keira Knightley (Pride & Prejudice) played an ex-stripper and performs a lap dance—a la Cloud 9’s Angie Everhart-- in Domino; Charlize Theron (North Country) appears with Mel Gibson (whose ficus tree is a plot point in Cloud 9) and Anthony Hopkins in Cinema Mil, and was nominated for a Razzie the same year Burt Reynolds and Sylvester Stallone were nominated as Worst Screen Couple. BUT…

Reese Witherspoon (Walk The Line) starred in Legally Blonde with the dog named Moonie, who appears as Gary Busey’s dog in Cloud 9!

CLOUD 9 BEST ACTRESS PICK: REESE WITHERSPOON, WALK THE LINE

PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
George Clooney (Syriana) appeared with Cloud 9 costar Paul Rodriguez on the TV special, Playboy’s 50th Anniversary Celebration and with Tony Danza in the TV series Baby Talk; Paul Giamatti (Cinderella Man) played Pig Vomit in Private Parts, starring Howard Stern, who dated Cloud 9 star Angie Everhart; Jake Gyllenhaal (Brokeback Mountain) starred in Day After Tomorrow, which featured KTLA show biz correspondent Ross King, who was in the running for the Tommy Z role in Cloud 9; and William Hurt (A History of Violence) and Burt Reynolds were in the documentary, Sex at 24 Frames Per Second. BUT…

Matt Dillon (Crash) appeared in Crash with Tony Danza and Ken Garito from Cloud 9!

CLOUD 9 BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR PICK: MATT DILLON, CRASH

PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Catherine Keener (Capote) starred in Death to Smoochy with Vincent Schiavelli, star of The 4th Tenor, directed by Cloud ‘s Hary Basil; Frances McDormand (North Country) appeared with Barbra Streisand (whose “home” and chair are featured in Cloud 9) and Mel Gibson at the 69th Academy Awards; Rachel Weisz (The Constant Gardener) appeared with Cloud 9 star Tom Arnold on Late Night with Conan O’Brien on February 22, 2005; and Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain) and Cloud 9 actor Jeff Altman appeared on Baywatch. BUT…

Amy Adams (Junebug) has wrapped a new movie, Standing Still, which also stars Cloud 9 starlet Marne Patterson.

CLOUD 9 BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS PICK: AMY ADAMS, JUNEBUG

ACHIEVEMENT IN DIRECTING
Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain) co-wrote the screenplay for Tortilla Soup, which starred Paul Rodriguez ; Bennett Miller (Capote) attended NYU Film School, where Albert S. Ruddy thought “beach volleyball” upon seeing a Gabrielle Reece poster on his son’s dorm room wall; George Clooney (Good Night, and Good Luck) appeared with Gary Busey in the TV special, Inside The Playboy Mansion; and Steven Spielberg (Munich) directed Minority Report, which featured Cloud 9’s Paul Wesley, and 1941, featuring Cloud 9's executive producer Gray Frederickson as Lt. Bressler. BUT…

Paul Haggis (Crash) wrote the screenplay for Million Dollar Baby, the film that won a second Best Picture Oscar for Albert S. Ruddy, and worked with Ruddy on the TV series, Walker, Texas Ranger.

CLOUD 9 BEST DIRECTOR PICK: PAUL HAGGIS, CRASH

And click here for the uncanny similarities between Crash and Cloud 9.

CLOUD 9 BEST PICTURE PICK: CRASH

There you have it.

Direct from Cloud 9’s Magic 9 Ball:

ACTOR: Terrence Howard, Hustle & Flow
ACTRESS: Reese Witherspoon, Walk The Line
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Matt Dillon, Crash
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Amy Adams, Junebug
DIRECTOR: Paul Haggis, Crash
PICTURE: Crash

(And let's throw in:
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Crash
ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Munich (cowriter Eric Roth is Brett Hudson's pal-- he also wrote Ali, which starred Cloud 9's Paul Rodriguez.)

Yes, Cloud 9 is linked to Oscar®'s Best Picture!

Hey, we almost let the Oscars® slip away without mentioning the incredible connection between this year's Best Picture, Slumdog Millionaire, and Cloud 9, the hilarious 2006 sports comedy written and produced by our pals at Frozen Pictures. For a couple of years now, we've had an annual list of the eerie one-degree-of-separation between the beach volleyball sex comedy and social satire starring Burt Reynolds and the nominees and eventual holders of the golden statuette ("Michael Clayton star ((and Best Actor nominee)) George Clooney appeared with Cloud 9 costar Paul Rodriguez on the 2003 TV special, Playboy’s 50th Anniversary Celebration. He also appeared as “Joe” in the 1991 TV series Baby Talk, in which Tony Danza, who appears in Cloud 9, supplied the voice of a baby...").

And with our Tabloid Baby research staff has been let loose on other subjects this season, it's been left to our readers to point out the the link between Cloud 9 and Slumdog Millionaire: mainly that Cloud 9 remains a big hit in India! Bollywood giants Shemaroo Entertainment released deluxe DVD and VCD versions of the movie in 2007. Its popularity spread because of favorable comparisons to a Bollywood hit starring Indian superstar Shahrukh Khan (also known as “King Khan”), as a disgraced captain of the Indian hockey team who decides to coach a female hockey team. Wrote Shemaroo:


"The story is much akin to our Bollywood ‘Chak De’. A washed out former star, who is in need of money and an ambition to be fulfilled works towards a get rich plan and starts a volleyball team whose players consist of a group of beautiful athletic strippers. Burt Reynolds efforts in forming the world’s sexiest beach volleyball team with the strippers, is seen as a rib tickling comedy. Eventually though as the girls’ popularity swells, they want to win the crowds with their abilities, and not their bodies where these girls team up and play a match against actual volley ball players."

Cloud 9, of course, was written and produced by Frozen Pictures' Brett Hudson and Burt Kearns, along with Albert S. Ruddy, Oscar®-winning producer of The Godfather and Million Dollar Baby.

And get this: Shahrukh Khan introduced Slumdog at the Golden Globe Awards (where Burt Reynolds took home a Best Actor trophy in 1998) and starred with Amil Kapoor, the Bollywood star who played the TV host in Slumdog, in the 1995 Bollywood classic Trimurti.

We don't make this stuff up...

The Winnick Ticket: Vanity Fair's starlet of the month is Olga from Cloud 9!

The latest issue of Vanity Fair is notable and collectable because of the dual Farrah/Jacko cover and the sad article on Ryan O'Neal, but there's an even more noteworthy feature on page 257. The Vanities section opens, as it does, with a glam portrait of the Hollywood starlet of the moment, and this moment belongs to Katheryn Winnick.

Katheryn in Cold Souls:
Katheryn in Cloud 9:

Canadian Katheryn's feature is billed as The Winnick Ticket because of her breakthrough role in the new Paul Giamatti movie, Cold Souls, in which she plays a Russian actress.

A Russian actress?

We know where she got her practice! You might recognize Katheryn from her role as Ivana Trump in the TV movie or her outstanding roles on the Law & Order franchises, but her real breakthrough Russian-accent role was in Cloud 9, the classic 2006 sports comedy written and produced by Brett Hudson and Burt Kearns, our Golden Ace Award-winning (The Seventh Python) pals at Frozen Pictures, along with their, pal two-time Academy Award®-winning producer (The Godfather, Million Dollar Baby) Albert S. Ruddy, and starring Burt Reynolds.


In Cloud 9, Katheryn played a Russian stripper turned beach volleyball star named Olga. Here's a Hollywood fun fact: The role was originally written as Inga, a Swede, but Katheryn's take was so strong she beat out the Amazonian stunner Victoria Silvstedt and made the role her own (she even inspired a drinking game). After the filming, the producers predicted she'd be the new Sharon Stone. Who'd expect she'd turn out to be the next Meryl Streep? But it's evident that Emmys® and Oscars® await Katheryn Winnick!


This is just another amazing one-degree of separation for Cloud 9, which has proven to be one of the most influential and memorable sexy comedies in years!

Exclusive! Owen almost got in bed with Kate's uncle

Owen Wilson, who’s being implicated in Kate Hudson’s divorce by US Weekly magazine, has another Hudson family movie connection that could have seen him crashing in two years before he and married mother Kate supposedly hooked up on the set of You, Me & Dupree.

The connection is another side-splitting comedy.

You guessed it-- it's the hilarious Burt Reynolds movie, Cloud 9, written and produced by Kate’s uncle, Brett Hudson-- along with his partner in Frozen Pictures (and Tabloid Baby author) Burt Kearns and Oscar-winner Albert S. Ruddy.

Early on, when Burt Reynolds’ very busy schedule was precluding him from appearing in the flick written with him in mind, the script was offered to Owen Wilson!

Wilson was forced to pass, due to other commitments-- to a little movie called Wedding Crashers (in which even his character wouldn’t have an affair with a married mom)!

But if US Weekly’s on the money, it looks like the wedding crasher couldn’t pass on crashing and breaking up Kate’s maybe-happy home in Malibu--- the same town where, coincidentally, Cloud 9 was filmed!

And it looks like Cloud 9, which had an incredible, bizarre influence on the winners of this year’s Oscars… has gone and done it again!

(Not to mention that Owen's known as one of the "Wilson Brothers," while Kate's dad and uncles formed the legendary Hudson Brothers. Another sad coincidence: This quote from our interview with Kate's dad, Bill Hudson, about his divorce from Kate's mom, Goldie Hawn: "Goldie talks about the marriage ending because of her power and fame as a star. That wasn’t it at all. What happened was is that when she was doing Private Benjamin, she hooked up with this guy named Yves who was an extra. Goldie started carrying on and having an affair with him during our marriage. And I found out about it.")