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I've already dissed The People's Choice Awards . And I've ignored The Golden Globes (The self aggrandizement of the HFPA simply annoys me, so I don't generally bother.) But now we've got the Oscars ! Academy Award time is here. And I may no longer live in LA (and my Sunday paper no longer has the Calendar section on top) but damnit, I look forward to the Academy Awards! It's funny, but this year's list of nominees doesn't have anything that leaps out at me as particularly surprising. The closest you might get is seeing Sideways nominated up there with the big guns like The Aviator , Ray , Million Dollar Baby & Finding Neverland , but with all the press it's gotten (and yes, the Golden Globe for Best Comedy) it's hardly surprising. (It is, however, a well deserved nomination.) The Incredibles , sadly (but as expected), got relegated to the "Best Animated Feature" ghetto, but really, which of those five Best Picture nomin...

New U.S. Dietary Guidelines: Eat Less, Exercise More Honestly, can there be any other reaction than "well, duh!"? Here's what may be the best line form the article, however: Ann M . Veneman, secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA): "The new guidelines have additional science incorporated, but many of the recommendations are not significantly different than what's been recommended in the past. This was the first time we used an evidence-based approach to reviewing research." As opposed to the "throw the research at the wall and pick which one sticks" approach, I assume. Brilliant. No, I mean it. Positively brilliant.

Being acknowledged action movie junkies, all the bad reviews in the world apparently couldn't keep Dani & me away from Elektra this weekend. (NO, that's NOT why you should be mocking!) Yes, I read the New York Times review . And Entertainment Weekly's D+ review . AND saw the 7% rating at RottenTomatoes.com . In fact, the CNN review seems to be the only one that I've seen that didn't hate the film. But the funny thing is, lowered expectations aside, we came out of there having enjoyed the movie. (Yes, Q, THIS is where you're supposed to start mocking). Now, I'm not making any great claims about the movie. God knows, it's no Lord of the Rings or even Spiderman (keeping it all "within the genre" so to speak), but after a summer full of crap like Van Helsing or The Day After Tomorrow , this didn't seem all that bad. As so many critics pointed out, it didn't bring anything new to the comic book movie genre. But it was a hel...

Richard Hatch Fails To Report $1M 'Survivor' Jackpot I mean, really… did he think they wouldn't notice? Spectacular.

Back to blogging, and the first thing I do is complain about something? (Guess that shouldn't really come as a surprise, huh?) So I'm reading this month's Premiere magazine and it's their 2005 Movie Preview issue. There are, of course, several movies I'm looking forward to seeing… Batman Begins (DESPITE the boring batmobile and because it's about time they revisit the bat and rinse the taste of Batman & Robin from our mouths), Episode III ('cause I'm a sucker for punishment, I guess), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (hey, the last one was REALLY good!), Fantastic Four (I'm detecting a theme here), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (ok, so I'm a sucker for the fantastic!) and this week's Elektra . And, up until I read the preview, I was looking forward to The Legend of Zorro . After all, what's not to like? I thought The Mask of Zorro was great fun, it's got Antonio Banderas & Catherine Zeta-Jones and the ...

What a wonderful thing! And all my good intentions went straight out the window. I was going to catch up on email, do a little blogging, do a little writing… just be productive in general. And did I? Hell no! I've still got email accounts full of unread messages, I haven't blogged anything since before Christmas (despite the fact that I've got a half-dozen posts I started and never finished) and let's not even get STARTED on actually writing anything. Here it is, nearly the middle of January, I've been back to work for over a week, and this is the first time I've actually gotten around to posting anything. Vacations are great.