By Kathryn Ware

A review of this year’s Academy Award acceptance speeches, in order of acceptance.
Best Live Action Short Film
Winner Ari Sandel (West Bank Story) explains to America the plight of “little guy” filmmakers such as himself, struggling to realize their vision on a shoestring and a prayer. The camera cuts to Gwyneth Paltrow in the audience, whose dangly earrings alone could finance the production of 200 short films.
Best Sound Editing
In the course of announcing the win (Letters from Iwo Jima), Alan Robert Murray is dissed twice, first when Steve Carell reads only his partner Bub Asman’s name, and again when the off-camera announcer spouting trivia to kill time as the winners walk to the stage transposes his name, calling him Robert Alan Murray. Murray retaliates by giving the dullest acceptance speech of the evening, read in a monotone voice and leaving his colleague with no time to speak.
Best Sound Mixing
The theme of the evening’s speeches is set – pull out your prepared list of Thank You’s while uttering “I know you’re not supposed to read anything, but . . . ”

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Posted on February 26, 2007

By Marilyn Ferdinand

“Every science has its fans.” So said Walter Matthau’s blueblood character to botanist Elaine May in the 1971 comedy A New Leaf, and you know what – he was absolutely right. This evening, the world may be leering at the décolletage of this year’s crop of starlets jiggling down the red carpet or forced into watching multiple reaction shots of the aging lions of the screen getting their fawning due from the Academy. Me? I’ll be riveted to the two-minute montage that each year comprises the coverage of the Scientific and Technical Academy Awards.
I’ve always been fascinated with the technical aspects of moviemaking. I’ve long had The American Widescreen Museum bookmarked on my list of Internet favorites and believe wholeheartedly in that site’s tagline: “Where artistry and technology combined to form Showmanship.” I felt a shiver when I gazed at one of the actual two-strip Technicolor cameras used to shoot Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.’s great comic swashbuckler The Black Pirate (1926). (Bet you thought all silent movies were black & white, huh?)
These days, technology has come to dominate the production of the blockbuster films of summer that frequently make or break a studio’s financial year. So prevalent have special effects become that the 2002 satire S1m0ne, in which a digitally-created actress becomes an overnight sensation, actually became a cause for alarm among flesh-and-blood stars. While I don’t think our screen gods and goddesses will ever be replaced by computers, the casts of thousands that movies used to boast about are already a thing of the past, thanks to digital cloning.

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Posted on February 25, 2007

Who: Zola Levitt.
Where: Dallas.
Organization: Zola Levitt Ministries.
Brief History: Zola Levitt, a Messianic-Jewish convert, had a Ph.D. in music from Indiana University and had written more than 200 spiritual songs and two nationally televised musicals: Beloved Thief and Mine Eyes Have Seen.

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Posted on February 25, 2007

By Scott Buckner

It took me a week or two, but I finally caught up last night to Rules of Engagement on CBS because I was too busy doing something else to notice that the rerun of the always-funny Two And A Half Men ended. If I were the military or the cops, I’d sue CBS for sullying a perfectly good saying that tells all good jackbooters when, where, and how force should be used.
For anyone too uninterested in this show to read the entire account, here’s the condensed version of everything you need to know: David Spade, bad. Patrick Warburton (instantly recognizable to anyone with kids as the voice of Kronk, and as David Puddy from Seinfeld to everyone else), good. Writing, bad. Megyn Price (the hot mom from Grounded For Life), good.

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Posted on February 20, 2007

It’s a diet that masquerades as a non-diet.
What it Is: A diet and exercise plan. It includes anatomically engineered “blueprinting” cards, which you use to stack together a portrait of your body and arrive at a customized plan. For your workouts, Thurmond provides the body sculpting band – an elastic rope with handles at each end. For the dieting part, there’s a recipe and dining-out guide, and tapes on “living lean.”
Quote: “Eat more, exercise less, and make your entire body over exactly as you want it . . . if you do it, it’s impossible to fail!”

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Posted on February 20, 2007

By Scott Buckner

I’m not a major fan of auto racing but as televised sporting events go, when you need to kill a little time in the neighborhood gin mill, NASCAR isn’t too horribly bad. But when a dude goes sliding across the finish line on his roof and on fire like Clint Bowyer did during Fox TV’s coverage of Sunday’s Daytona 500, you can’t help but be either a fan or at least a momentary convert toward what’s otherwise a very boring televised sport. Hell, when dudes in the NBA start laying it up with their heads on fire, I’ll have a more charitable opinion about basketball, too.
Because NASCAR (which stands for “Nahs car, Bubba”) is an inescapable fact every Sunday afternoon between February and November in pretty much every tavern that’s worth a shit along the south suburbs/Indiana border, you pretty much have to figure out a system of dealing with it if you want some human contact to go along with your alcohol. Hence, I’ve discovered that the secret to non-fan NASCAR enjoyment is to show up sometime within the last 50 or so laps. That’s when all the good stuff really happens, because NASCAR’s roots lie in a past filled with moonshine runners and that alone means the closing laps involve some serious pedal to the metal balls to the walls racing you just don’t get anywhere else.

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Posted on February 19, 2007

They took a perfectly good potential comic-book title for this?
What It Is: A cordless electric knife that uses sound waves to separate food.
Description: It vibrates. The motor is inside a handle that looks rather unwieldy, but. It also comes with a handy, fork-like tool that holds the food in place and cubes it, but also looks like it belongs in a hairdresser’s drawer.
Quotes: “All the goodness stays inside!” “Say goodbye to the squishing and squashing!”
Price: $133.32

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Posted on February 18, 2007

By Scott Buckner

I leave the TV world for a few days to come back last night all Abominable Snowman-like to the Home Plate Pub only to end up next to a guy who looks like Kid Rock’s retarded cousin while the daily repeat of Oprah plays on the corner TV. Why am I even bothering to pay attention to it? Because there’s some weird Chinese doctor dude sticking acupuncture needles into Oprah’s hand and foot while she sits in some sort of dentist/tattoo parlor chair.
I intentionally miss the last 10 minutes of the show, so I’m left to wonder exactly what Oprah got cured of in about the time it takes to get a pair of glasses at Lenscrafters. I’m pretty confident that she didn’t get a tattoo in that chair, though.

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Posted on February 14, 2007

By The Beachwood Charactor Actor Affairs Desk

Fred Asparagus (actor)
Date of birth: 10 June 1947 (Los Angeles County, CA)
Date of death: 30 June 1998 (Panorama City, CA [heart attack])

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Posted on February 13, 2007

Barack Obama’s speech announcing his candidacy for president, as told by CNN’s real-time graphic summary.
JUST IN
Obama: Fired Up.
JUST IN
Obama: You Believe We Can Be One People.
JUST IN
Obama: I’m Fired Up.
JUST IN
Obama: In Face Of War, You Believe There Can Be Peace.
JUST IN
Obama: You Believe We Can Be One People.

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Posted on February 10, 2007