The reviews are in, and Peter Jackson’s “The Lovely Bones” did not go over well tonight in London. Or anywhere else.

THR’s Kirk Honeycutt is not the only reviewer who’s panned the much-anticipated film translation of Alice Sebold’s best-selling novel. A spy in London called it “dull, lame and disappointing.” Yikes.

This isn’t good news for Paramount on a boxoffice basis. Of course, the studio will hope to spin the movie to the book’s large fan base. But Oscar-wise, it would seem that these “Bones” are fractured beyond repair. Believe me, in Oscarland, bad news travels fast!

Paramount can console itself with Jason Reitman’s “Up in the Air.” That’s their ace in the hole, so OK, it’s all good, as we so often like to say. But having said that (I’m stealing from the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” finale), the 10 best picture nominees are looking more like this:

1. “Precious”

2. “Up in the Air”

3. “Nine”

4. “The Hurt Locker”

5. “Inglorious Basterds”

6. “An Education”

7. “A Single Man”

8. “Up”

9. “Invictus”

10. Choose one: “Avatar,” “A Serious Man,” “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” “The Last Station,” “The Road,” “Sherlock Holmes,” “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus”

Of course, it’s going to turn out that the change to 10 best picture nominations is the second-worst idea of the year, following, of course, the closing of Broadway to pedestrians and the installation of tables and chairs in Times Square. (Imagine that the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade is being rerouted to Sixth Avenue to accommodate the stupidest traffic plan in the history of New York!)

Next week, the New York press finally gets to see “The Lovely Bones,” and we’ll keep our fingers crossed that all these other people were wrong. But this is the problem when a studio insists on not showing a film to any press early to build momentum before a mass screening.

For what it’s worth, by the way, the completely unreliable Web site aintitcoolnews.com called the movie — about the rape and murder of a 14-year-old — “lovely.” Harry Knowles does note in his “review” that his wife was upset that all her favorite parts of the book were missing from the film. He doesn’t care since he never read the book but says now he’ll go out and buy it.

Do you remember the magnificently funny 1991 film, “Soapdish”? It’s being workshopped for Broadway as a musical, written by Brits George Stiles and Anthony Drewe, the guys behind “Mary Poppins.”

The tip comes from my U.K. colleague Baz Bamigboye of the Daily Mail, who also writes extensively today about the upcoming Oscar-buzzed movie musical, “Nine” in his Friday column.

“Soapdish” sent up the world of soap operas ‘ a world now, ironically, dying. But it was a hoot, with Sally Field as Celeste Talbert, who was meant to be a parody of Susan Lucci on “All My Children.” Celeste was the star of a soap opera, Elisabeth Shue was her long-lost daughter, and the film featured Kevin Kline as a long-lost love, Carrie Fisher, Robert Downey Jr, Garry Marshall, and Teri Hatcher had hilarious roles.

My two favorite “Soapdish” moments will be included in the musical, Stiles assured me the other day. In one of them, head writer Rose Schwartz, played by Whoopi Goldberg, reacts to having to reactivate Kevin Kline’s long-gone character. She laments:

“The guy was killed in an auto accident! I looked it up! He was driving in the Yukon, in a pink convertible, to visit his brother who’s an ex-con named Frances, when a tractor trailer comes along and decapitates him. You know what that means?, it means he doesn’t have a head. How am I suppose to write for a guy who doesn’t have a head? He’s got no lips, no vocal cords. What do you want me to do?”

The other great “Soapdish” scene is known as “Mall Therapy,” when Rose and Celeste ride a mall escalator simply so Rose can drum up autograph seekers to assuage Celeste’s bruised ego. It’s beautiful.

The movie, by the way, was written by Robert Harling (”Steel Magnolias”) and’ directed by Michael Hoffman, whose new film, “The Last Station,” is about to be released to much acclaim and a possible Oscar nomination for Helen Mirren.

Here’s an idea for the actual production: why not hire some of the real soap stars who are in and out of work these days? As the networks botch soaps completely, there are plenty of talented people out there up for consideration.

The St. Petersburg Times in Florida has been running lots of hard-hitting stories about Scientology lately.

So guess what? They are in the midst of selling a magazine they own in Washington, D.C., called Governing, to e. Republic, a Scientology publisher located in Folsom, Calif. E.Republic has four publications including one called Government Technology.

And there’s more: On the website page for the story about the sale in today’s St. Petersburg Times there’s a video ad for… Scientology! A source familiar with the paper and its workings says Scientology paid $1 million for the ads on the paper’s website.

A 2001 Sacramento News & Review story from 2001 about e.Republic explains more about its history.

The story, by Jim Evans, recounts the history of e.Republic and its connections to Scientology. Evans writes: “All new hires at e.Republic, a publishing company based in Folsom, California, are required to not only read [a basic Scientology manual], but also take a course based on its contents, which — notwithstanding the grandiose description above — reads much like the same kind of hokey training materials that millions of workers try to avoid daily, except Hubbard’s methods have the higher goal of ‘improving conditions in your business, your life and on Earth in general.’”

What the heck is going on here? Are publishers so hard up for cash that they’ll take money from the subjects of their exposes? Calls to Andrew Corty of the St. Petersburg Times and Christopher Swope of Governing were not returned. But the strangeness of the situation cannot be overlooked. The Times has run several exposes about abuses in Scientology just this year.’ They can be found here.

More to come…