I wanna thank...

Well, it's Oscar Sunday.  I'm actually not that interested in the telecast.  In the DVR era, it's so much easier just to record the show and fast-forward through the good parts Monday morning.  Don't really care that Seth MacFarlane is hosting - I have never watched a single episode of Family Guy.  Doesn't look like they'll be too many surprises.  I have no desire to see Babs or the cast of Les Mis sing, though of course Adele's performance inspires curiosity.

The Razzies and Independent Spirit Awards were both held yesterday.  At the Spirit awards, Silver Linings and The Sessions (possessing Helen Hunt's Oscar-nominated turn) scored the jackpot, while at the increasingly pointless Razzies, Twilight's Breaking Dawn Part II  damn near swept everything.  The Razzies are so dumb.  Why hold this meaningless ceremony celebrating movies everyone knows are bad?  If the Razzies had any guts, they would stick to it to overhyped, overrated movies needing to be cut down to size... Les Mis, perhaps? 

My latest list of who I think are the top 8 college basketball teams (a.k.a. my pre-tourney elite 8):

- Indiana
- Gonzaga
- Florida
- Miami
- Kansas
- Georgetown
- Louisville
- Michigan St. 

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Brewer's Blackbird. 

Beautiful, huh?  This guy was seen in Bulloch County, Georgia this week. 

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Happy birthday, Charles LeBrun (1619-1690).  I just learned about him yesterday.  Called the greatest painter who ever lived by the long-reigning King Louis XIV, he was responsible for many of the decorations and statues at Versailles: 

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Finally, in celebration of Oscar day, let's honor one of my 500 Greatest Performances of All Time (which just happened to win an Oscar 19 years ago). 

Martin Landau
as Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood (1994)  

Landau's tragic, grandiloquent, sympathetic, funny portrayal of Bela Lugosi won nearly every award imaginable in 1994.  A longtime reliable character actor who had been nominated twice previously (for 1988's Tucker: The Man and His Dream and 1989's Crimes and Misdemeanors), Landau put his heart and soul into the part of a past-his-prime cinematic icon who is reduced to a Z-grade movie with a cast of spirited but utterly clueless filmmakers.  Burton's best film, it has a lot of tongue-in-cheek fun, spot-on set design, and a cheerfully underdog quality.  And Landau is just masterful.  





Images courtesy of:

http://files.myopera.com/RobinL/albums/718714/2009-06-09%20007%20Brewers%20Blackbird.jpg

http://aasid.parsons.edu/decorationascomposition/sites/default/files/peaceroom.jpg

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-H2Mav2LfDyI/TXjtB0dx0AI/AAAAAAAAB00/XOem9wERy7w/s1600/Martin+Landau+Ed+Wood.PNG