the force is with her

Apparently, I missed some big Oscar news. George Lucas had a date. Yes, unbelievable! I know! But true.

The lovely lady is Mellody Hobson and based on her bio, I don't think those Star Wars geeks can hold a candle to her. She's the founder of an investment management firm in Chicago with assets of $21 billion. She's on the board for the Chicago Public Library and the Field Museum as well as corporations such as Starbucks, Estee Lauder, and Dreamworks [hmm...so Spielberg is now a matchmaker perhaps?]. In 2004, she was named one of the 50 Women to Watch by The Wall Street Journal.

So yeah, she's smart, she's hot, and I don't think she will be asking George any geektastic questions about Star Wars anytime soon.

the oscars aren't dead

They're merely departed. Ok, who else was so freaking excited that The Departed won best picture? I was so geeking out when they announced that. Yeah yeah yeah!!!!!

Other highlights:

-- Martin Scorsese winning best director. Not only was it cool, but you knew it was going to happen as soon as Coppola, Spielberg, and Lucas came out to present the Oscar. It was so awesome! You could tell he really is loved by the movie people and it's not some showy kiss ass thing.

-- Alan Arkin winning best supporting actor. If you haven't seen Little Miss Sunshine, get your ass out there and find a way to watch it. Such a great movie and Alan did a great job.

-- Helen Mirren is hot. I mean, hot. I hope I look that good when I'm her age.

-- Loved the musical number about not getting nominated as a comedic actor. Will Farrell, Jack Black, and John C. O'Reilly were all great in that!

-- Speaking of singing numbers, who else loved the Dreamgirls performance? I'm sure one of those songs would have won an Oscar, but with three in the same category, they split the vote. That being said, Melissa Ethridge's song was great.

-- I saw Al Gore on The Daily Show when I went to a taping of the show years ago. He was hilarious and I remember Jon Stewart asked him "Why weren't you this funny during the campaign?" He brought the funny again last night and I loved his little thing when he was about to announce something and then the orchestra played him off.

-- Ellen's fangirl schtick where she gave Martin Scorsese a script and had her picture taken with Clint Eastwood.

Disappointments:

-- I was really pulling for Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Wahlberg to win. Mark's performance was awesome in the movie. As for Leo, that guy deserves an Oscar win sooner or later. He may be a cute guy that all the 14-year-old girls love, but don't let that fool you. He really is an amazing talent.

-- My Tivo cut the show short because I only programmed it to add an hour. What the hell was up with that? Long show.

So go see The Departed, Little Miss Sunshine, and The Queen. You're welcome.

growing pains make you fat

Remember Jeremy Miller? He was Ben on Growing Pains. He's also the "celebrity endorser" in this new crappy McDonald's ads about The Dollar Menuaires or something who buy stuff from the dollar menu at McDonad's because they're that rich. Ok, I'm currently unemployed and even I'm not desperate enough to buy stuff from the McDonald's dollar menu. Maybe a Burger King chicken sandwich every once in awhile, but I frankly don't remember the last time I was at McDonald's.

Ah, Growing Pains. Remember when Matthew Perry died on that show? And Leonardo DiCaprio was on that show for a season or something! Now, he's an Oscar nominee. Again.

Oh, and for those of you who are business school students lurking around, here's the six-month stock chart for MCD. I don't give a rat's ass if that stock gained $10 in the past six months -- I'm still not buying it.

all hail the queen

In my bid to see as many Best Picture Oscar nominees as possible, I went and saw "The Queen" last night, which was actually pretty good. The story revolves around the death of Princess Diana and the way the monarchy reacted to it. That being said, I was quite surprised to realized that by the end, they had never used an actress for Diana, just news footage.

As for Helen Mirren, who plays the queen, her nomination for Best Actress is well deserved and I'm calling it now -- she's going to win it. So suck on that, Dame Judi Densh!

The rest of the cast was pretty good as well. They didn't look exactly like their real-life counterparts, but close enough. And as for Will and Harry, I think I maybe saw those two actors in a scene here or there. It was much more about the queen, which I thought was pretty cool.

So yeah, go see it before they take it out of the movie theaters again. And yeah! The Departed is back in Bloomington! I so need to see that movie.

oscar the grouch

The Oscar nominations came out today with a few big surprises.

First, "Dreamgirls" was nominated for eight Oscars, making it the highest nominated. That being said, it is NOT up for Best Picture. Yeah, that's right. Best picture is not one of its potential wins. Quite a shocker.

So what happened? The Academy this year decided to nominate a few dark horses. First among them was "Little Miss Sunshine," which I can't say enough good things about. The movie was nominated for best picture as well as supporting nods for Alan Arkin and adorable Abigail Breslin. I'm sure she's not going to win this year -- she's up against Cate Blanchett and shoe-in Jennifer Hudson -- but she's still so good in that movie.

The Best Picture nominees are "The Departed," "Babel," "Letters From Iwo Jima," "Little Miss Sunshine" and "The Queen." I've only seen one of these so far so I have to get on the train and start checking all of them out, starting with "The Queen" this week. I just hope they bring "The Departed" back and have some of the smaller films make their way to the middle of Indiana. And is anyone else surprised that "Letters From Iwo Jima" was nominated, but not its English companion "Flags of Our Fathers"?

I'm getting all kinds of excited for this year and will be pulling my tiara out for whatever local party I'm going to. YEAH!

Edited to add: Did anyone see the list for Original Song? Prince won the Golden Globe for that and didn't even get nominated for the Oscar. Meanwhile, there are three songs from Dreamgirls nominated, one from Cars, and apparently a song written specifically for Al Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." Really? We'll see how this category shapes up. All five nominated songs are performed at the Oscars [it's the music portion of the movie awards show] so this should be quite interesting. At least there's no 3 6 Mafia this year.

And in the documentary category, Al Gore could win an Oscar and what's better: Being President of the United States or an Oscar winner? That being said, he's up against a movie called "Jesus Camp" so this could be quite the interesting category.

Full list of nominees is here.