It’s somewhat old news, I realize, but the cast keeps growing for Nip/Tuck creator and Running with Scissors director Ryan Murphy’s Dirty Tricks, an adaptation of John Jeter’s stageplay about the women of Watergate, which I realize sounds like a special Playboy spread. Brad Pitt and Sharon Stone have joined the cast, which already includes Meryl Streep as the whistle-blowing Martha Mitchell, Annette Bening as frumpy reporter Helen Thomas, Gwyneth Paltrow as Maureen Dean and (naturally) Murphy good-luck charm Jill Clayburgh as Pat Nixon. (Jim Broadbent is reportedly set to play Tricky Dick himself.)

Mitchell’s various revelations to journalists, of course, — including Bob Woodward, who
broke news of the Watergate story, as well as veteran White House
correspondent Thomas, still walking the beat — firmly implicated her husband in the
scandal, but also corroborated Nixon’s involvement. Great. So there’s a story there, maybe. But while I don’t know if it’s the hermetically sealed colorfulness of Running with Scissors or what, why can’t I shake the feeling that this is a bad idea? Or at least an interesting idea that will be done badly?

With pre-anointed contender after contender falling by the wayside and support registering as less than firm for some of the other ostensible heavy hitters, chances are looking better and better for Little Miss Sunshine to sneak up and grab a couple of top-shelf Oscar nominations. An Academy campaign veteran tells me to expect a “late and classy” but overwhelming push on the film’s behalf from distributor Fox Searchlight.

The company previously and most famously pulled an Oscar rabbit out of its hat with The Full Monty, and they have a deft touch with putting little movies in a place to succeed, both critically and financially. They’ll be a bit busy pushing Forest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland, but that’s a one-horse show. Little Miss Sunshine will get the nostalgic underdog selling, touting its little-indie-that-could box office ($58 million and counting) and reminding those folks in theory how much better it was than the rest of the summer’s fare.

Of course, on one level it’s hard to really classify this as a dark horse positioning when it’s been in the works for so long. But in a down year like this, there is a pre-seasonal Best Picture slot open, and Little Miss Sunshine will be gunning for it.