This year's uncommonly entertaining Oscars telecast was full of surprises. At long last, Martin Scorsese finally took home the Best Director Oscar for The Departed. It was a fantastic moment, as the babbling Scorsese thanked all of the people who had rooted for him up to this point, most of whom he has never even met. His movie proved to be quite ( Read more... )

I'm hardly a sports buff, but since I know a lot of UConn fans sometimes I find myself watching those games around this time of year. Over time I've noticed that the announcers have a habit of unintentionally making hilarious double-entendres while describing the events in front of them. I think someone vaguely detached like I am is best suited to ( Read more... )

Trying to predict the outcome of the Academy Awards is not the same these days as it once was. The new schedule for the entire season makes it very difficult to predict what will ultimately take the prizes. There are always contenders that come out of the gate strong, but who can say which ones will maintain their momentum until the ceremony? I ( Read more... )

When people look back on 2006 in years to come, it may come to be defined by three enormously talented Mexican filmmakers who stunned world audiences with breathtaking cinema and hardly went unnoticed. Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu (Babel), Alfonso Cuaron (Children of Men) and Guillermo Del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth) now have sixteen Oscar nominations ( Read more... )

4 out of 5 again. The Oscar nominations have been announced and they are not without surprises.

Best Picture
Babel
The Departed
Letters from Iwo Jima
Little Miss Sunshine
The Queen

Holy shit! Not only did Little Miss Sunshine defy my expectations and make it into the final five, it knocked off Dreamgirls! I guess you have to follow these things ( Read more... )

Oscar nominations will be announced on Tuesday, January 23. This is the part where I see if I can guess all five of the selected films ahead of time. After some consideration, here's what I've come up with.

Babel
The Departed
Dreamgirls
Letters from Iwo Jima
The QueenWhat I like about that list (assuming it works out that way, at least) is that it ( Read more... )

To say the least, it was a year full of surprises. A year in which after a sadly weak summer, fall and winter came alive with such an astonishing collection of fascinating films that I still haven't seen a handful of them because there were just too many. Expectations were defied all over the place. Two movies about 9/11 were released, and both ( Read more... )

It's been a while since I posted any news relating to Master of the Wind here, but I have a feeling this post will be of particular interest to my regular readers.

Master of the WindWhat's so different about this version? Well, nothing I guess....other than the fact that it is completely independent of the RPG Maker program itself and will work on ( Read more... )

The following is a piece I'm doing for work on family movies this Christmas. It's basically a combination of reviews of Charlotte's Web and Night at the Museum. Those aren't the only movies I've been seeing though, far from it. There's so many that I've decided unless I'm writing something for the paper, I'm not going to be posting any reviews for ( Read more... )

Seriously, what's going on? Now that the National Board of Review has selected Letters from Iwo Jima (the other Clint Eastwood World War II film of the year which opens in a few weeks) as Best Picture, the Oscar race is officially on. There's one element missing so far, however. Some of these movies I've been seeing should have been exposed as ( Read more... )