The Academy of Motion Picture once again created a monster. In fact, these guys are the Dr. Frankenstein of our time and they don't seem to slow down any soon. the monsters they create are of different kinds: on the one hand there are the legendary actors like Peter O'Toole who never got any Oscar out of 8 nominations (the Honorary Award is his only consolation) and Meryl Streep who gets nominated every year and only has 2 Oscars. Martin Scorsese had also been a monster for many years until he eventually won his award for The Departed. Another kind of monsters are mediocre actors that give a performance slightly better that usual and get awarded for that. That is the case with Charlize Theron in Monster (how ironic), Halle Berry in Monster Ball (how ironic again) and Reese Witherspoon in Walk The Line.
The latest addition to the monster family is Sandra Bullock for her part in The Blind Side. Sandra is a great cult actress and her movies are almost always fun to watch, but I would never consider even as much as nominating her for an Academy Award. The case becomes even more grotesque when considering the fact that 24 hours before winning the Oscar she won a Razzie. This can't be good.
Sandra didn't have much time to celebrate as she discovered together with the whole world that her husband was pulling a Tiger-Woods on her. Now, if there's a bigger idiot than a bunch of guys who decide to give Sandra Bullock an Oscar, it must be the guy who's cheating on her.

I know I haven't been most fertile with posts lately, but it's only because celebrity news are as boring now as the latest Lost episodes. I am sure nobody wants to hear about the new bookshelf that I bought and assembled all by myself. But the Oscars are coming up and I promise to keep up with the news. Even though the most exciting thing about the Oscars are not the mediocre movies that came out this year, but the two hosts of the evening - Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin, and not just for every one of them being a supreme comedic being but also because this means Tina Fey will take an active part in the show. That's why this year's Oscars will be a real treat.
As to the winners, not much surprises are expected. The only tension is between Meryl Streep and Sandra Bullock for the Best Actress award, and between James Cameron and his ex-wife, Kathryn Bigelow, who just might become the first woman ever to snatch the Oscar for Best Director. But no harm can be done to the family, they're already divorced.

I'm Team Conan!

If I were considerably older, I would get a serious case of deja vu out of the recent events at NBC's primetime. Luckily, the history is all documented, or else I would have been surprised at how low this network's executives can get in order to attain some ratings. But I'm not surprised, and David Letterman is not surprised - this is all a part of the history repeating itself.
This time NBC's victim is it's brightest star, a funny guy who devoted 16 years of his life working and flourishing for the network at an unreasonable time slot, waiting for his big break at the Tonight Show. When the wait finally pays off, he leaves his old life behind and moves from New York to Los Angeles for the show. Now, he is getting treated like trash just because Jay Leno couldn't get his new show to perform in the ratings.
Conan is acting like a real gentleman, but showing that he is not a pushover despite his reputation as a nice and soft guy. Staying at The Tonight Show is his biggest wish at the moment, but there are much more important things than that, something that the NBC executives will never understand. What Conan cares for more than his own career is the show itself and the show of Jimmy Fallon, which used to be his own. That's why he won't do with the planned shiftings.
Conan will have no problem finding another job, probably another show of his own, on another network. Jay Leno can learn a lot from him, but he will probably stay and take all the spotlights on himself.

A New Hope?

While bad movies keep pouring like rain on our heads and pockets, there is one man who has been sitting at home for 12 years and developing his new project. This man needs no introduction, for he made the highest grossing movie of all time and can forever rest on his laurels. But he didn't. Purely out of his imagination he created a movie that will go down in history as the movie that started a new era in cinema. Like the transition from silent film to sound and from black&white to color, so is shooting movies in 3-D becoming the new thing in James Cameron's Avatar. Maybe one day a movie about this new transition will be made, Singing In The Rain style.
While not so strong in the script area, Avatar features some political/territorial exclamations and most importantly, a whole new world created entirely by Cameron and a whole new viewing experience in 3-D. Something like 90 percent of the movie is made with visual effects, but looks absolutely real as if a real camera is pointing back and forth between the characters and the mind-blowing views of the planet's nature. Just like with Terminator many years ago, Cameron is ahead of his time and pushing it forward.

So it happened that I had the misfortune of seeing Roland Emmerich's 2012 shortly after Avatar, and the difference between the two is as bold as a casino sign in Las Vegas. While James Cameron is creating new things, Emmerich has built his career on destruction of the world. At first it was Independence Day and it was good, but then followed The Day After Tomorrow and now 2012 which is an eye-rape of the worst kind. The characters and the actors are extremely easy to unlike and a line should be drawn as to the number of times I can see the national symbols of USA being consistently destroyed. The disaster movie has really become a disaster, a total waste of 200 million dollars, while Avatar is some 300 millions wisely spent.

The pictures say it all

As far as financial crises go, creators of cult movies for little girls and geeks can sleep quietly. They don't care, of course, about lowering the intellectual level of youngsters worldwide. For that they will burn in hell, but for now they are rich and successful.
The Twilight books were written by one of those little girls, who just wanted to express her feelings and aching heart. She chose an interesting metaphor for impossible relationship/friendship in creating a love triangle between a human, a vampire and a werewolf. The writing is quite boring and amateur on a teenage level, but it should have its honors for parallels such as growing up and feeling different to transforming into a werewolf.
The Twilight movies neglect all those little sparkles of potential and focus entirely on the competition of hotness between Edward and Jacob. The girls love it and the two male stars of the movie are getting a huge bath of attention and enjoy it without maybe even noticing that their little project has gone out of control and now symbolizes a new low in the era of cash-sucking pop culture.
Twilight has put us all in the dark. As of this moment I see no hope, no future where viewers would be interested in the artistic side of a movie, instead of something as superficial as the actor's abs.

THIS IS IT!

It's amazing how an artist's death shoots him back up to world stardom and eternal glory. Especially when this someone is Michael Jackson. Being the most successful artist of all times, he also became the most hunted by the press and public eye. His image and reputation were burnt to ashes and his name became synonymous to ludicrous behavior and terrible accusations. But it all disappeared with his sudden death and the King flew once again to the tops of the charts worldwide.
Michael Jackson's movie needs no introduction or promotion. The tickets will sell themselves, since this is the last opportunity and the next best thing to seeing him live on stage during the sold-out concert tour that never happened.
The documentary shows the preparations and rehearsals for the tour, where MJ is doing his thing surrounded by a small group of ecstatic dancers, guitar players and background singers. Everyone's excited, waiting for their time to shine on stage with The King Of Pop during his return. It would have been awesome.
Michael is running the show. There are no signs of sickness, weakness or aging, only pure love, endless talent and gravity-defying dancing , as if his difficult life never happened to him. He is involved in every aspect, telling everyone what to do and how to do it, how to play every single tune, how to act on stage and how to rock. The director, Kenny Ortega, is just squirming around, licking Michael's ass and approving by him every original idea that he might have. He directs the movie in the same way: Michael is in the center, almost in every shot. His death is not mentioned even once during the whole 2 hours. He continues to live on stage, where he belongs.
The movie would probably be released anyway, after the tour would have ended. The materials in it are priceless and there would always be a demand for them (Thinking about hours and hours of footage that didn't make the cut makes me drool.). But being the only remnants from the unrealized comeback, they are our only insight into the last months of the greatest artist who ever lived.

I am absolutely confident that every American's sleepless concern is the identity of Quentin Tarantino's new girlfriend. Lucky for all of you, I am willing to share this information for free. Her name is Daniela Pik and being an Israeli citizen, I am ashamed of knowing her.
Daniela is 25 years old. Her father is a very famous Israeli singer/composer, who had a career peak during the 80s and has been celebrating it ever since. Daniela and her sister tried to ride the wave of daddy's past success and launched a singing career of their own, which plummeted down like a box of books.
Quentin Tarantino's affection with trash is known to everyone and has made him one of the most distinguished moviemakers of our time, but even for him this level of trash is too trashy. I honestly can not imagine these two conducting a civilized and/or intelligent conversation. It's true that Quentin isn't exactly the good looking or charming type, but I think being a movie genious covers up for it. His mate, however, has nothing to compensate with.
If the benefits of making a movie about Jews bashing nazis during WWII include coming to Israel and romanticizing a local hillbilly, then Inglorious Basterds was a terrible, terrible mistake for Tarantino.