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.

Resurrect Me

Sometimes, when I step out of a movie theater, I feel the reality slapping me in the face... but in a good way, because movies start to look like lousy computer games and there's nothing good about that.
The only reason I went to see Gamer was because I was late for District 9 screening, and frustration made me do it - I bought the ticket. The regrets kicked in 5 minutes into the movie. I like Jerard Butler, but he chooses his movies terribly - 300, P.S. I love you, and the latest romcom trash, The Ugly Truth, didn't score much credit with me.
Another computer-game-like excuse for a movie is Surrogates. It's as fake as Ving Rames' beard was, but not as deep Somebody should tell Jonathan Mostow that one bad movie about robots is enough for a director's entire career, no need to make another one.
I can't believe that I have to seize talking about sci-fi action movies in favor of a chick flick, but Julie and Julia is actually good. In fact, it made me go back to writing this blog. Yes, the blog is back. Woo hoo! Also, it made me go to my kitchen and try to master some wildly creative cooking. It didn't work out. Still, I enjoyed the movie and Meryl Streep, who was magnificent... again and will get an Oscar nomination... again. So far she has no competition this year. I feel like I should write a sentence about Amy Adams, who is also in the movie, so here it is.

After 8 years of suffering, the American people finally elected the president they wanted, someone who they can be proud of and show him off to the rest of the world.
Now that the hard times are behind them, they can go back doing what they do best - judging celebrities. The latest victim is the singer/actress/underage tease Miley Cyrus, who came out jogging one morning with her boyfriend and, oh dear God!, wore a low-cut top that exposed the bikini she was wearing underneath. Apparently, a 16-year old dating a 20-year old is OK, but showing a 16-year old cleavage while jogging is absolutely out of line. Like that is the reason for the world economy crisis.
I can go on and on for hours talking about teenage breasts and their contribution to the world without risking jail time because the Internet is a free net, but my words of joy will never make a difference. People will always talk and express their disgust at people more successful than them. Maybe this is the reason celebrities exist. But enough with being philosophical. When looking at the multiple teenage starlets that the industry has to offer, Miley Cyrus is the only one with enough reasonable talent and potential. There's a lot of work to be done, but she's on the right way. Though releasing an autobiography at the age of 16 is a little bit too much.

Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown are an infamous couple known for their long term marriage full of drug usage, breakups and reconciliations. They are also known for family violence, as Bobby would hit Whitney and she would forgive him every time.
Modern celebrities are not that different from the ones who used to be popular just for theit talent alone. History has a tendency to repeat itself and now there's a new couple in town, a knew generation of Bobby-on-Whitney. Reportedly, the singer Chris Brown attacked his girlfriend Rihanna and inflicted multiple bruises on her. Rihanna, as much as she would want to be, is very far from being as talented as Whitney Houston, but she seems to enjoy the same amount of fame as Whitney had back in the 80's and she has a boyfriend whose last name is Brown and who hits her and whom she is willing to forgive. In about 30 years from now, when they are married and have kids, she will tell the world how horrible it was for her to deal with a violent and drug-using husband and maybe will leave him for good. That in case someone still remembers who Rihanna is in 30 years.

Not So Serious

Once a year there comes a time when the Academy of Motion Pictures ignores the best movies of the year and gives awards to average movies. That time is tomorrow night.
It was a bad year for movies, especially after a great year like 2007, nobody expected another flood of masterpieces like the one a year ago. The year 2008 will be remembered for being average and for Slumdog Millionaire. The Academy of 2008 will be remembered as the stupid bunch of idiots who overlooked the truly best movie of the year and one of the best movies ever, The Dark Knight that is.

Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Score:

The score for The Dark Knight isn't even nominated because of the stupid reason that too many people participated in its writing. With that being absent from the list, the Oscar will probably go to A.H.Rahman who is not Rahmaninov but managed to compose a nice soundtrack for Slumdog Millionaire.

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role:

This is probably the most unpredicted category this year, but i dare to narrow the competition to Amy Adams for Doubt and Penelope Cruz for Vicky Christina Barcelona. I would go with Amy Adams. Missing from the list is the true best supporting actress of the year: Cate Blanchett for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role:

Heath Ledger. Enough said.

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role:

It's Kate Winslett's sixth nomination and it's about time for her to win one, but I was unimpressed by her performance in The Reader and would give the Oscar to the awesome Meryl Streep for Doubt. Melissa Leo and Anne Hathaway are not strong enough opponents and Angelina Jolie is not even worth mentioning for her artificial display in Changeling.

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role:

It's pretty obvious now that Mikkey Rourke will win for The Wrestler, but I strongly disagree and think that Sean Penn was much better in Milk. But through the eyes of the average Academy voter, Sean Penn already has one Oscar and Mikkey Rourke is making a comeback, so he should get the vote.

Best Animated Feature Film of the Year:

In my opinion, Dreamworks should stop making animated films, because nothing good comes out of it. Kung Fu Panda is the best they can do? Come on! Pixar will take the award again with WALL-E, no doubt about it.

Best Foreign Language Film of the Year:

Waltz With Bashir will win this and I will be ashamed for being Israeli for a few moments.

Best Achievement in Directing:

David Fincher is making good, thinking-out-of-the-box movies and gets overlooked by the Academy all the time. Fight Club, Seven, Zodiac - nothing. But when he makes a Hollywood movie, he gets nominated for an Oscar. But the winner will be Danny Boyle who, unlike Fincher, remained true to his special style and made the third-world wonder Slumdog Millionaire, that everybody is falling in love with.

Best Motion Picture of the Year

Academy's mistakes often amaze me and make me angry, but this time they're beyond any criticism. The Dark Knight should be there and should win it! It's like not nominating Godfather for Best Picture. Out of the nominated movies, The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button is the better one, but the winner will be Slumdog Millionaire.

The Wheel Turns

Britney is back. The new album is out soon, the new song is No. 1 in the US and it looks like the bad days are forgotten. Who could have thought just a year ago that this would happen? Britney tried to make a comeback at 2007 VMAs, but her performance there only made things worse and the album flopped. But at this year's VMAs she unexpectedly won 3 awards for a so-so video and suddenly everybody loves Britney again.
The new video for "Womanizer" is sizzling hot and Britney is obviously naked in it, having fun as if she never was bald. Forget the rehab, the emotional breakdown, loser ex-husband, lost kids, horny sister and wearing short skirts in cars. Just keep those catchy addictive tunes coming and spice them up with steamy videos. The machine is back on track and life is good for Britney.
While we are all so happy for Britney getting her fame back, things don't look so good for the Queen. Madonna, the grandma of pop, is in trouble going through an ugly divorce with the British director Guy Ritchie who failed to make a single good movie while being married to her. It is still unknown who will get the kids and especially the African baby. Maybe Angelina will adopt him.

Part Time

Last night I went to see the new Indiana Jones movie for the second time, in order to stabilize my opinion about it without any pressure, excitement, nervousness, anticipation and huge expectations as they were on the first viewing.
The final conclusion is as following: it's good, but not Indiana Jones good and very close to being a disappointment. The movie is still pure fun and shows all the wannabes (National Treasure, Tomb Raider, The Mummy) how adventure movies should be made. If this is what came out after 15 years of preparations, I don't want another Indie movie to be made ever again.
Obviously, George Lucas is the man to blame for all the flaws of the movie. Nobody can ruin movie franchises like this guy. Ridiculous features like a refrigerator that survives a nuclear explosion, CGI hamsters, monkeys that attack the bad guys and Tarzan greaser make the movie look like a joke. Good thing there's Steven Spielberg to patch things up with witty one-liners and great actions scenes.
Since the last Indiana Jones movie 15 years ago, Harrison Ford became a very gloomy and grumpy actor and made some very bad role choices. Here he is young and happy once again and his Indy still kicks ass. He is joined by the rising meteor Shia LaBeouf as his perfect sidekick that might take over the series in the future (George, don't do it!!!). But the biggest star of the movie (and the best working actress in Hollywood right now) is Cate Blanchett as the devilish Russian Colonel Dr. Irina Spalko that wants all the treasures for herself and never blinks with those big beautiful blue eyes.

While Hollywood recovers from the writers strike and there's nothing on TV but the new and terrible Lost season, the Academy was able to give out the Oscars as planned. Surprisingly, the ceremony itself was really good and not boring. Too many good movies came out this year, so it was really hard for the Academy to screw this up and choose winners that aren't good. And still, they managed to rob Cate Blanchett of the Oscar she deserved.

Everyone's been giving out awards lately, and I thought - why not me?
So here's the list of best and worst of 2007, my version:

Worst Movie: Rush Hour 3
Worst Actor: Johnny Depp - Pirates Of The Carribean 3 & Sweeney Todd
Worst Actress: Megan Fox - Transformers
Worst Supporting Actor: Jerry Stiller - The Heartbreak Kid
Worst Supporting Actress: Angelina Jolie - Beowulf
Worst Director: Michael Bay - Transformers
Worst Animated Movie: Shrek 3

Best Movies:
1. Atonement
2. The Diving Bell And The Butterfly
3. There Will Be Blood
4. No Country For Old Men

Best Actors:
1. Daniel Day Lewis – There Will Be Blood
2. Viggo Mortensen - Eastern Promises
3. Gordon Pinsent - Away From Her

Best Actresses:
1. Marion Cotillard – La Vie En Rose
2. Julie Christie - Away From Her

Best Supporting Actors:
1. Javier Bardem – No Country For Old Men
2. Casey Affleck - Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford
3. Paul Dano - There Will Be Blood
4. Jason Bateman - Juno

Best Supporting Actresses:
1. Cate Blanchett – I'm Not There
2. Romola Garai - Atonement
3. Amy Ryan - Gone Baby Gone
4. Jennifer Garner - Juno
5. Emily Mortimer - Lars And The Real Girl

Best Soundtrack: Dario Marianelli - Atonement

Best Song: Falling Slowly - Once

Best Original Screenplay: Juno

Best Adapted Screenplay: Atonement

Best Cinematography: Atonement

Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson – There Will Be Blood

Best Animated Movie: Ratatouille

Best Foreign Language Movie: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

Why Wait?

Jamie Lynn Spears have always wanted to be like her older sister. But it took Britney over 8 years to become the huge, huge success that she is right now. She became famous for her music and anti-premarital sex propaganda, but soon gave up on that, dated Justin Timberlake, married Kevin Federline, had two kids, divorced, and now she is a single mom (if she ever gets her kids back) at the age of 25.
Jamie Lynn didn't want to do all that, so she had unprotected sex with her boyfriend, broke up with him and now she is famous, single, pregnant and only 16. Mission accomplished.
According to new rumors, the father might not be the ex-boyfriend, but a producer of Jamie Lynn's TV show "Zoey 101". Or the whole crew. Or a grizzly bear.
The executives on Disney channel are now planning a sex-education program for teenager.
It will go something like this: pregnant Jamie Lynn Spears will come out and say "Hi kids, always use protection", then Mel Gibson will come out and say "Hi kids, don't drink and drive and don't hate people for their nationality" and then Michael Jackson will come out and say "Hi, kids...". (That wasn't very nice of me. I love him).
Meanwhile, Britney is going out with a paparazzi photographer. He sure is going to get a piece of her. I think this the first time a paparazzi is dating a celebrity in order to get make some photos of her. It's like going swimming with a shark and then punching it in the face.

More Is Not Enough

Britney Spears was supposed to take the first place on the Billboard Albums chart, like she'd always done before. A week ago all the predictions said that Britney's new album, "Blackout", would be at No. 1 this week. But the legendary Eagles with their comeback album, "Long Road Out Of Eden", swooped out of nowhere and snatched the top of the chart out of Britney's hands, just like K-Fed did with her kids.
At No. 7, a new album by the Backstreet Boys, who apparently still exist and still make unnecessary music for no visible reason.

August Rush is by far the best movie of the year. It's about time for a musical family drama to get into my favorites list. The amazing soundtrack includes some classical pieces, one of them performed by the leading actress Keri Russel on cello, and new songs performed by the leading actor Jonathan Rhys Myers. Robin Williams also gives another memorable performance as an evil Bono.
The movie has a huge heart and a potential to become a box office hit and critics favorite. Check it out!

Save a Whale, Save the World

Hayden Panettiere seems to be everywhere these days with her big head and unproportionally small body, being nice and helpful. That's not like Hollywood behavior at all! She should stop. Meanwhile, she attended some dolphins and whales event in Japan, which basically involved her running around in a bikini. I don't think that's fair. Dolphins and whales probably don't care whether she's wearing a bikini or not. They don't even know there's an event being thrown just for them and their survival. Speaking about whales, Britney Spears is in trouble and needs help. Hayden is a big fan of Britney's, why not save her instead of dolphins?

Celebrities love pretending to be somebody else. Since they don't get to do that on their daily jobs, Halloween is just the perfect holiday for them. Teri Hatcher here, God bless her, dressed up as the queen from Alice in Wonderland, but rather looks like a drag queen.

Paris Hilton shocked everyone again when she got dressed like a slut, two times, or was she just going out? Her dress says "Alice", so I guess it IS a costume.

On a totally unrelated note, this is not a Pamela Anderson costume Halle Berry wearing. I know it looks like she got dressed up as boobs, but she didn't. Pregnancy really makes her look... smart.

Life Is A Porn Soap For Pamela

"Many people say that Pamela Anderson would be nothing without her boobs. That's just not true. She'd be Paris Hilton".
The above pearl of wisdom from over two years ago belongs to Sarah Silverman. Last Saturday Pamela Anderson actually became Paris Hilton a little more when she married Rick Salomon, the director and the male lead of "One Night in Paris". Unfortunately for Rick, Pamela already has a sex tape on her own. More bad news for Rick: After closely watching both of the movies, I can honestly conclude that Tommy Lee is a better director, cinematographer, performer and he also casted a better looking actress (which is what really matters in porn) than Rick. Some good news for Rick: he is married to Pamela Anderson, which is a big improvement, to be more precise, D-Cup improvement despite his last actress.. More bad news for Rick: she's getting old and will probably divorce him soon for someone even more talentless, maybe Kevin Federline. Good news for Pamela: her second home video will hit the stores very soon.