Reeling

Alexander Payne gets back behind the camera

 Alexander Payne is the only filmmaker who has a perfect batting average with me: All of his movies that I've reviewed earned a four-star rating. Granted, there have been only been three - Election, About Schmidt and Sideways (I didn't review Citizen Ruth) - but that's still pretty good.

I also thought Payne's segment in Paris Je T'Aime (the last one, about the American woman who learns French and goes on vacation to Paris) was the highlight of the entire movie. There's obviously something about Payne's style of storytelling that connects with me, so I was happy to receive a press release today announcing shooting has begun on Payne's new film - his first in seven years - The Descendants, based on the novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings.

From the press release: "Set in Hawaii, The Descendants is a sometimes humorous, sometimes poignant journey for Matt King (George Clooney) an indifferent husband and father of two girls, who is forced to re-examine his past and embrace his future when his wife suffers a boating accident off of Waikiki.  The event leads to a rapprochement with his young daughters while Matt wrestles with a decision to sell the family’s land handed down from Hawaiian royalty and missionaries."

Here's hoping The Descendants is finished in time to come out this December, the same month as True Grit and the Tron sequel. Before then, I'm going to try to track down a DVD of the Japanese remake of Sideways, which I wish I could watch right now. Made in 2009, Saidoweizsu appears to be a shot-for-shot replica of the original, except a lot more sentimental and with some wacky culture-clash humor mixed in.

2010 Miami Film Festival award winners

Here is the list of award winners from this year's Miami International Film Festival, announced earlier tonight at the Gusman. The festival gives out too many a lot of awards, so I'm just posting the entire press release below. Congrats to Lola and Ordinary People!

I wish the festival had allowed me to screen Sins of My Father. I was really interested in that one. Fortunately, the festival has added last-minute screenings of all the Audience Award winners. Go here for more info.

The complete list of winners in all categories follows: 

WORLD COMPETITION

Grand Jury Prize:

Lola by Brillante Mendoza (France/Philippines, 2009)

(A $25,000 USD cash prize awarded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation)

Audience Award:   

No One Knows About Persian Cats (Kasi az gorbehaye irani khabar nadareh) by Bahman Ghobadi (Iran, 2009)

 

IBERO-AMERICAN COMPETITION

Grand Jury Prize:

To the Sea (Alamar) by Pedro González-Rubio (Mexico, 2009)

(A $25,000 USD cash prize awarded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation)

Audience Award:   

Undertow (Contracorriente) by Javier Fuentes-León (Peru/Colombia/France/Germany, 2009)

 

THE JORDAN ALEXANDER RESSLER SCREENWRITING AWARD (Ibero-American Competition)

This special category and award recognizes and supports young people as they embark on their careers as professional screenwriters. It was created by the South Florida family of Jordan Alexander Ressler, an aspiring screenwriter who died at age 23, before he realized his dream.

Grand Jury Prize:

The Last Summer of La Boyita (El último verano de La Boyita) by Julia Solomonoff (Argentina/Spain/ France, 2009)

(A $5,000 USD cash prize awarded by the Jordan Alexander Ressler Charitable Fund)

 

DOX COMPETITION

Grand Jury Prize:

Sins of My Father (Pecados de mi padre) by Nicolás Entel (Argentina/Colombia, 2009)

(A $25,000 USD cash prize awarded by Miami Dade College)

Special Jury Mention:    

Kawase-san by Cristián Leighton (Chile, 2009)

Audience Award:   

Sins of My Father (Pecados de mi padre) by Nicolás Entel (Argentina/Colombia, 2009)

 

CUTTING THE EDGE & CUTTING THE EDGE VIDEO ART COMPETITION

Grand Jury Prize:  

Pepperminta by Pipilotti Rist (Switzerland/Austria, 2009) (a Cutting the Edge Feature Film)

Special Jury Mention:    

Nora by Alla Kovgan and David Hinton (USA, 2009) (a Cutting the Edge Video Art Film)

 

SHORTS COMPETITION

Grand Jury Prize:  

Believe by Paul Wright (Scotland/UK, 2009) (a nominee from Shorts Competition 2)

 

(New in 2010) DIESEL ONLINE SHORTS COMPETITION  

Grand Jury Prize:

Telegastrovision by Antanas Janauskas (Lithuania)

Audience Award:   

Zombies Vs. Vampires by Franz Palomares (USA)

 

THE FIPRESCI PRIZE

The Munich-based International Federation of Film Critics (Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique, or FIPRESCI), is the world’s largest collective of film critics, with members in 46 countries. The FIPRESCI Prize is awarded at film festivals around the world and celebrates a single film selected from the festival’s World Competition that promotes film as art and encourages new and young cinema. This is a symbolic prize only.

The FIPRESCI Prize:  

Judge (Tou Xi) by Liu Jie (China, 2009)

(New in 2010) THE CINEUROPA PRIZE FOR BEST EUROPEAN FILM  

The Cineuropa Prize:     

Ordinary People by Vladimir Perisic (France/Switzerland/Serbia/Netherlands, 2009)

Special Mention:    

Medal of Honor (Medalia de onoare) by Calin Peter Netzer (Germany/Romania, 2009)

 

FLORIDA FOCUS COMPETITION

FILM FLORIDA AWARD WINNERS:

Best Short Film by a High School Student:

Last Laugh by David Harrison (Design & Architecture High School)

(Received a $500 USD Sarah Fuller Student Scholarship)

Special Jury Mention for a Short Film by a High School Student:

Agyrophobia by Clara Diez (Design & Architecture High School)

Best Short Film by a College Student:

Blooming Hope by Marcela Moyana-Rosero and Fernando Rosero (St. Thomas University)

(Received a $500 USD Sarah Fuller Student Scholarship)

Best Miami Mini Film (no age restrictions):

Where It Stops by Kyle Shea

 

MIAMI COALITION FOR THE HOMELESS AWARD WINNERS:

Best Original Song:

Luis Martinez (Miami Senior High School)

Best Public Service Announcement:

Bailey Stasevich (Miami Beach Senior High School)

Best Short Film:

Last Laugh by David Harrison (Design & Architecture High School)

Review: ''The Secret in Their Eyes'' (El secreto de sus ojos)

The money shot in The Secret in Their Eyes (El secreto de sus ojos) arrives exactly at the middle of the film: From the sky above Buenos Aires, the camera vertiginously swoops down on a bustling soccer stadium during a match, settling on two investigators in the cheering throng as they chase down a murder suspect through the stands, across the field -- even into the bathroom -- without a single visible cut.

You can imagine Alfred Hitchcock, Brian De Palma and Martin Scorsese studying the five-minute sequence frame-by-frame, trying to figure out exactly how Argentine writer-director Juan Jose Campanella (Son of the Bride) pulled it off. The movie is never quite that showy again, but it doesn't need to be. The pyrotechnics in The Secret in Their Eyes, the surprise winner of last week's Best Foreign Language Film Oscar race, are of a more quiet, haunting nature.

Based on the novel by Eduardo Sacheri, The Secret in Their Eyes flits back and forth between the present and 1974. The recently retired criminal-court investigator Benjamin (Ricardo Darin), still haunted by the unsolved rape and murder of a young woman 25 years earlier, decides to invest his energy into writing a novel about the case.

When he visits his former supervisor Irene (Soledad Villamil), now a judge, to tell her about his plans, the unspoken mutual attraction is instantly obvious. Through the use of extended flashbacks, The Secret in Their Eyes alternates between the past, in which Benjamin and his alcoholic partner Sandoval (comedian Guillermo Francella) investigate the crime and battle a corrupt bureaucracy, and the present, in which the retiree decides he won't be able to rest until he solves the case.

 

Linking the stories is the romantic tango between Benjamin and Irene, played out mostly across their faces and eyes instead of through dialogue. They are kept apart by class and social status, but the heart does not understand such things, and the attraction lingers. Although it is structured like a thriller, and its plot dominated by Benjamin's detective work, The Secret in Their Eyes is really a cautionary tale about the consequences of a life of too much apprehension and propriety.

"How do you live an empty life?'' Benjamin asks near the movie's end. ``How do you live a life that is filled with nothing?'' The hopeful answer is you can't -- but it's never too late to fix things.

The Secret in Their Eyes (***1/2 out of ****) will be shown at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Gusman and 1 p.m. Sunday at Regal South Beach as part of the Miami International Film Festival. Director Juan Jose Campanella will attend. Go here for ticket information. The movie will open in South Florida theaters in late April.

Movies I wish I could watch right now

Undefeatable (1993) dir. Godfrey Ho

"You're crazy! My name's not Ana!"

Review: ''Eraserhead''

Oh Eraserhead, you weirdo, how do we love thee? We cannot count the ways. Shot over four years and finally released in 1977, Eraserhead was so strange that theaters rarely showed it before midnight -- a time slot it continued to haunt for years.

Eraserhead was the first movie I raced out to rent when I bought my first VHS player in the 1980s. I was 15 years old, and the movie left me utterly baffled, unnerved, creeped out and intrigued. Watching it today induced the identical effect: Most of David Lynch's movies have not diminished with time, but Eraserhead -- arguably the purest distillation of the director's signature dream-consciousness style -- has weathered the years better than most. This movie could have been made yesterday, or in 1950 -- or in the future.

Nominally the story of Henry (Jack Nance), a factory worker in a post-industrialist universe, who tries to raise his deformed, mutant baby with his wife Mary X (Charlotte Stewart), Eraserhead famously defies simple plot description. Lots of stuff happens (including my all-time favorite dinner scene in cinema, in which a tiny roasted chicken wiggles on the plate and oozes a strange liquid), but little of it makes traditional sense.

Eraserhead is less movie than head trip, something to be heard, seen and experienced -- especially heard. The complexity of Lynch's sound design, a hallmark of all his pictures, is particularly astonishing here, a cacophony of ominous clangs and hisses, portentous rumblings and warblings -- the word "dread'' transformed into noise.

Shot in glorious black and white, Eraserhead is also suffused with striking images, from the dream sequence that earns the movie its title to the puffy-cheeked woman who lives in Henry's radiator. Although lacking the beautiful sheen that big budgets would eventually bring to Lynch's movies, Eraserhead is a perfect (and, in a strange way, much more accessible) counterpart to his last film, the grainy Inland Empire, which the director has proclaimed will be his final effort.

The late film critic Robin Wood once said of Alfred Hitchcock's much-maligned Marnie "If you don't like Marnie, then you don't like Hitchcock.'' The same goes for Lynch and Eraserhead. Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet and Mulholland Dr. all sprang from here. And if you have seen Eraserhead, but never in a theater, then you really haven't seen it. Here's your chance. This is where the term "cult classic'' was born.

Eraserhead (**** out of ****) plays at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Cosford Cinema as part of the 27th Miami International Film Festival. For more info, including tickets, go here.

The Miami Film Festival toasts a native who made good big time

 Here's a little-known fact: The awesomely talented actress Catherine Keener was born and raised in Hialeah. Just knowing that immediately makes The 40 Year-Old Virgin and Being John Malkovich seem even cooler. 

Keener will be at the Gusman Theater at 7 p.m. tonight with her frequent director/collaborator Nicole Holofcener for a festival screening of their latest movie, Please Give, which Connie Ogle has seen and is raving about.

Before the film, Hialeah mayor Julio Robaina will join the stars onstage to present the actress with a proclamation making today "Catherine Keener Day" in Hialeah. Keeners represent!

For ticket info to the show tonight, go here.

Made-in-Miami documentary ''Monica and David'' makes the Tribeca cut

 Monica and David, a documentary about a married couple with Down syndrome shot and directed by Miami filmmaker Ali Codina (pictured at left), has earned a prestigious spot in the World Documentary Feature Competition at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York.

   "I'm very excited," said Codina, 32. "When you get into a festival, you want to engage audiences and get the word out on your film, but that requires a lot of work. I'm sure I'll be nervous just before the screening, but I can't think that far ahead right now."

 Codina, a former programmer at the Miami International Film Festival, has spent the past five years working on the movie, which also earned her a first-look deal with HBO. Monica and David made its world premiere in November at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, where it came in second for the audience award. The movie will premiere at Tribeca on April 24.

For more information on the film and the Tribeca showings, go here.

Review: ''She's Out of My League''

Kirk (Jay Baruchel) is a five at best - a skinny, geeky airport security officer with no career prospects and little ambition and still obsessing over ex-girlfriend Marnie Lindsay Sloane), even though they broke up two years ago. By comparison - by anyone's measure, really - Molly (Alice Eve) is a "hard 10," a blond knockout with a law degree, a thriving event-planning business, a fantastic personality and a body that would turn heads at a funeral.

One of the running jokes in the film is how Molly remains unaffected by the men who constantly stare and drool and lose their train of thought around her. She's learned to enjoy the discombobulating effect her beauty has on the opposite sex, but she hasn't let it go to her head. The central joke in She's Out of My League, which marks the debut of director Jim Field Smith and was written by the team of Sean Anders and John Morris (Sex Drive, the upcoming Hot Tub Time Machine), is that Molly doesn't take an interest in Kirk out of pity or curiosity: She actually falls for him, and that completely freaks him out.

Being in her presence brings out every neurosis and apprehension, and soon Kirk is leaning on his friends to help with grooming and an "early bird" sexual problem. Molly's just so hot, Kirk can't relax and savor his situation. She's Out of My League essentially plays its central premise straight, although the film does find time to veer into gross-out humor (such as the grooming business; some things a man should do without help). There is also the occasional extended setpiece, such as Molly's dinner at the home of Kirk's demented family, in which the movie kicks back and lets the ensemble cast play. As Molly proves she's more than a match for Kirk's boorish brother and relatives, the humor takes on vaguely surreal dimensions, and the jokes fly from all directions.

Baruchel and Eve make a likable (if unlikely) couple, and the movie doesn't resort to throwing cheap obstacles in their way, such as Eve's fighter-pilot ex-boyfriend, who never becomes Kirk's romantic rival in the way you expect. Instead, She's Out of My League tries to imagine what really would happen if a guy this dorky and a girl this beautiful fell in love. The picture has a vague assembly-line air,and Smith's attempt to build a Judd Apatow-ish stable of best buds and bros to serve as a Greek chorus for Kirk's dilemma is only somewhat successful. But the movie is convincing enough to give every Kirk in the world a semblance of hope. Every once in a while, love really is blind.

She's Out of My League (**1/2 out of ****) opens in South Florida on Friday, March 12. 

Review: ''Remember Me''

Aside from raking in billions in cash, the Twilight franchise has brought its three leads thriving acting careers. Taylor Lautner has become the highest-paid young actor in Hollywood seemingly overnight. Kristen Stewart will star as Joan Jett in a film due in April, and Robert Pattinson has earned enough clout to produce movies such as Remember Me for himself.

But Remember Me, which is more complex and ambitious than the formulaic romance its TV ads promise, is no mere star vehicle. Yes, there's an element of vanity in Pattinson's James Dean-ish turn as Tyler, an angst-filled New York City university student at odds with his powerful father (Pierce Brosnan). Tyler smokes cigarettes, quotes poetry, sits alone in diners scribbling in his notebook and runs his fingers through his hair.

Except that Allen Coulter, a recurring producer and director on HBO's The Sopranos, has surrounded Pattinson with a stable of actors strong enough to force him into his A-game. Remember Me, which follows what happens after the emotionally wounded Tyler falls in love with Ally (Lost's Emile de Ravin), a kindred spirit, allows him to display an emotional range he hadn't shown in Twilight, whether he's holding his own in a screaming match with Brosnan or being a doting older brother to his 11-year-old sister (Ruby Jerins).

Remember Me also features Lena Olin as Tyler's mother and Chris Cooper as Ally's widowed father, a cop desperately clinging to his daughter as if she were all he has left in the world. His character at times behaves in ways that seem conceived primarily to drive the story forward (the movie marks the debut of screenwriter Will Fetters). But there's a distinctly bittersweet undertow to the picture that draws you in and helps you overlook the film's weaknesses.

This is, at heart, a story about how people get on with their lives after overwhelming loss and learn to live with grief without succumbing to it. Tyler and Ally bond over family tragedy - his brother committed suicide; her mother was killed in a mugging. Pattinson and de Ravin don't make a memorable happy couple - they're better when they're brooding - but, although their relationship is supposed to be a haven from sadness, happiness is an emotion the film has little use for.

To call Remember Me a four-hankie weeper does not begin to describe it, and its climax almost pulls us out of the movie by incorporating a real-life event into a story that had been, until then, built purely on glossy fiction. But Coulter wants to explore the act of mourning as a theme, and how death sometimes reminds us that every minute of life should be savored. On that level, Remember Me certainly succeeds.

Remember Me (**1/2 out of ****) opens in South Florida theaters on Friday, March 12.

R.I.P. Corey Haim

The sad news about actor Corey Haim, who was found dead this morning of an apparent drug overdose, won't be much of a surprise to anyone who caught an episode of the reality TV series The Two Coreys, in which Haim's struggle with addiction was the focus of much of the drama.

Although Haim, like his co-star Corey Feldman, will never be remembered as a great actor, he appeared in enough movies in the 1980s (The Lost Boys, License to Drive, Dream a Little Dream) to make his passing particularly melancholy for anyone who grew up in that decade.

Coming just a few months after the deaths of Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, John Hughes and Patrick Swayze, the news about Haim feel like another reminder to Generation Xers, who once ruled popular culture, that our mortality has caught up with us - and is knocking at the door, loudly.

 

Variety sacks its chief film critic

I started reading weekly Variety around the age of 12, when I craved to read more film criticism and movie reporting than The Miami Herald and the late Bill Cosford could provide. The news stand brought some great discoveries: Pauline Kael, Film Comment, American Film, Cinefantastique and Fangoria.

There was also this magical, oversized, glorious newspaper called Variety, which was like an entire Herald devoted to Hollywood and the entertainment business. I could not believe this thing existed. A lot of the stories in it went over my little head, but there was lots of reporting about which movies directors were thinking about making, casting deals, a chart that let you see all the films that were currently in production (including who was going to be starring in them). Variety was also the first place in which I saw lists of weekly box office grosses, which today are inescapable, but back then were not really available anywhere else.

Today, of course, you can get all that stuff for free online with just a couple of clicks. The main reason why I've remained a faithful reader of Variety was Todd McCarthy, whose film reviews quickly became the thing I read first in the paper, and whose work I had continued to follow steadily all these years later.

 McCarthy's reviews - he's usually the first to weigh in on every major film - followed the Variety template of accentuating a movie's box office potential and discussing its marketability (this is, after all, a trade publication). But McCarthy also wrote with an educated voice that brought his vast film knowledge to bear on whichever movie he was writing about, which made reading him such a treat. Like all of my favorite film critics, McCarthy accentuated the emotional impact of a film and the way in which the movie tried to engage the viewer. His reviews were industry-savvy yet also spoke to film lovers. His reviews were unique.

McCarthy has also written several books (including an excellent biography of Howard Hawks) and directed some movies of his own, including 1992's Visions of Light, an ode to cinematographers that is like candy for film buffs. I interview famous people all the time but I tend to get shy and tongue-tied around other film critics whose work I admire, so I've never met McCarthy, even though I quietly sat next to him at a Toronto festival screening of The Notorious Bettie Page. 

Yesterday, Variety announced the staff positions of McCarthy and David Rooney, the paper's chief theater critic, were being terminated, because "it doesn't make economic sense to have full-time reviewers." If it doesn't make sense for Variety to have a full-time film reviewer on staff, especially one of McCarthy's status, then there really is no hope for the art of newspaper film criticism. Variety says they will continue to review movies with the same frequency they do know, using staff writers (including my pal Peter Debruge, who used to freelance for us until he got a full-time gig there) and freelancers. The paper also says they hope McCarthy will continue to write for them on a freelance basis.

I hope, for Variety's sake, that he does. Otherwise, they will have lost another longtime reader. The Hurt Locker made Oscar history last night partly due to efforts by film critics to remind Hollywood - and the world - about a box office flop nobody saw. Serious film criticism still matters, although maybe not at Variety.

Oscars postmortem

In no particular order, here are some random thoughts and observations on tonight's Oscar telecast (you can check out the list of winners here):

- I am really happy The Hurt Locker won - not only because I wasn't a huge fan of Avatar, but also because the war movie really was the most deserving nominee of the bunch by a wide margin. OK, mostly because I just wasn't a huge fan of Avatar.

- This was the first Oscar telecast I can remember seeing - like, ever - in which Jack Nicholson was not seated in the front row, leering at everybody.

- Without question, Precious star Gabourey Sidibe was the happiest and most excited celebrity to be there. She made me believe in the whole "It's an honor just to be nominated" thing.

- Sandra Bullock's acceptance speech for the Best Actress Oscar was the best of the night. Everyone expected her to win - even she probably did - and it still felt like a surprise.

 - The Paranomal Activity skit, which aired about two hours into the show, was the first time co-hosts Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin got a real laugh out of me. That was followed by a way-cool tribute to horror movies, which rarely get much Oscar love. Who'd ever think you'd see Leatherface, Friday the 13th and Night of the Living Dead on the Academy Awards? Too many clips from The Shining, though - and that's coming from me.

- You know how nice and modest and humble Kathryn Bigelow came off in her acceptance speech for the Best Director Oscar? She really is like that - the mirror opposite of her ex-husband, Avatar director James Cameron.Seriously, this could not have happened to a sweeter, more gracious person. And she makes such tough films! I wonder what movie she will direct next.

- I really dug the idea of having five presenters, each of them a former co-star, introduce each of the nominees in the Best Actor and Best Actress Oscars. By the time Michelle Pfeiffer was done giving props to Jeff Bridges, she had the actor in tears, and he hadn't even received the award yet.

- Wasn't it awesome watching The Dude get an Oscar, man?

- The oddball pairing of Pedro Almodovar and Quentin Tarantino to present the Foreign Language Film Oscar was inspired. Forget different countries: These two hail from different universes.

- The surprise win in that category by Argentina's The Secret in Their Eyes guarantees the closing night festivities at the Miami Film Festival next weekend will sell out.

- James Cameron may be a very, very rich man. But you know the lack of Oscar love for Avatar has to be eating away at him. Sorry, Jim. You'll have to settle for being the guy who directed the two highest-grossing films of all time, back to back. Also, Aliens.

- Every time the cameras cut away to The Hurt Locker team, they still seemed so grateful just to be there - even after the movie had started racking up Oscars.

- Meanwhile, George Clooney looked annoyed or impatient every time the cameras looked his way.

- That exuberant red-haired woman in the purple dress who interrupted Music By Prudence director Roger Ross Williams while he was accepting the Best Documentary Short Oscar (video clip here) was former Herald features writer Elinor Burkett. She was a producer on the movie and used to behave exactly the same way in the newsroom. Congrats, Elinor! (Update: The incident is already known as the Oscars' Kanye moment. Read Williams' and Burkett's accounts of the bizarre moment here.)

- Both of the screenwriting Oscar winners - Precious' Geoffrey Fletcher (Best Adapted) and The Hurt Locker's Mark Boal (Best Original) - appeared to have been caught off-guard by their wins. I interviewed each of them last year for stories about their respective films, and both seemed surprised by the attention their movies were getting at the time. Now they're Oscar winners.

- The Ben Stiller as a Na'Vi bit could have easily bombed, but the actor kept it alive much more than it deserved.

- The cynic in me knows the John Hughes tribute was a bit much and went on a bit long - a sop to the Generation Xers watching the show. But I, too, grew up in the 1980s watching Hughes' films, so I got a little lump in the throat anyway when that informal Breakfast Club reunion took place onstage (Emilio Estevez, where were you?) 

- This was the first year I can remember in which I actually enjoyed the presentation of the five nominees for Best Original Score - proof that everything in life goes better with a little interpretive dance.

- Robert Downey, Jr. continues to get weirdly cooler, even when he's just handing out the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. On actors and writers working together: "A collaboration between handsome, gifted people and sickly, little mole people.''

 - I know that Christoph Waltz has been winning awards for his portrayal of a cunning Nazi colonel in Inglourious Basterds since it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last May. But I wish Waltz had tried to be a tiny bit genuine when he won, or come up with a better acceptance speech other than just kissing up to Quentin Tarantino and Harvey Weinstein. Up director Pete Docter probably knew he was going to win too, but he seemed honestly excited when he got his hands on his statuette. Even Mo'Nique managed to seem a little overwhelmed, and she was the safest bet of the night.

- Opening the show by having the Best Actor and Actress nominees standing awkwardly onstage as they basked in the applause of the crowd got the night started on a way-too reverential note. Fortunately, Neil Patrick Harris showed up a few moments later to deflate some of the pretension out of the show. And then co-hosts Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin did their best to try to get everyone to shut off their TV sets.

- I went 16 for 21 in my predictions. Not my best showing, but not my worst.

Fearless Oscar predictions

Here is my rundown on the major Oscar races to be decided tonight, and below you'll find a ballot with my predictions in all the categories except short films. We'll find out in a few hours how I and The Hurt Locker fared. Click on the ballot to make it bigger and readable.

Best Picture Oscar nominees get new posters

In honor of the impending Academy Awards, the jokesters at collegehumor.com have photoshopped their versions of what the posters for several of this year's Best Pictures nominees should have looked like. I've posted a couple of my favorites below. Check out the rest here.

   

Random appearances by owls in movies

 

Clash of the Titans (1981) dir. Desmond Davis

There are more than 200 different species of owls on the planet, none rarer than the Ray Harryhausen owl. All of them share one characteristic, though: They are fearsome warriors.