82nd ANNUAL ACADEMY AWARDS... Congrats to Kathryn Bigelow and the rest of the crew behind The Hurt Locker for tonight’s 6 Oscar wins, including one for Best Picture (duh)! Pretty much the only Academy Award that Avatar truly deserved was for Best Visual FX...which it received. And props to Christoph Waltz on winning the Best Supporting Actor award for Inglourious Basterds, and Sandra Bullock on winning an Oscar for The Blind Side. She won a Razzie Award (for All About Steve) AND an Academy Award on the same weekend. Good for her.



Did District 9 win anything tonight? No? Oh well. It’s still kewl in my book.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND... I watched Tim Burton’s latest flick today, and with the exception of some moments (most of them towards the end) in the movie, I was disappointed. After being immersed in the awesome world of Pandora that was created by James Cameron in Avatar, I was underwhelmed by Burton’s depiction of Wonderland...possibly because the visual FX in Alice in Wonderland was pretty poor. I read an article late last year about how Burton was in a rush to complete this latest reincarnation of Lewis Carroll’s classic tale in time for opening weekend... I didn’t know he was in that much of a bind. Just watching this movie made me realize that Avatar should at least win the Oscar for Best Visual FX tomorrow.



Acting-wise, there was nothing special to note in the film. Johnny Depp’s portrayal as the Mad Hatter pales in comparison to his funny portrayal of Captain Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies...despite the bizarre look Burton gave to the Hatter in this flick. Speaking of Pirates of the Caribbean, there were lots of moments in Alice in Wonderland where I (and most likely a couple of other people in the theater audience) couldn’t hear or understand a damn thing some of the characters were saying (some of this due to Danny Elfman’s music score playing essentially nonstop throughout the movie). This problem was also prevalent when I saw Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest in 2006 and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in 2005. These two flicks were also let-downs.



Helen Bonham Carter’s portrayal of the Red Queen was the one positive thing that stood out from Burton’s movie (FYI, Carter and Burton are domestic partners in real life. Just thought I’d share). It might be attributed to her huge honkin' head in this film. Mia Wasikowska, who plays Alice, is very attractive...but performance-wise? Think Jake Lloyd as Anakin Skywalker in The Phantom Menace to know what I’m about to say.




One last note... What’s up with that song that played during the end credits of the movie? It totally didn’t suit the film. To give props to James Cameron again: At least he was shrewd enough to have Celine Dion incorporate James Horner’s main love theme from Titanic into her song "My Heart Will Go On", and again have Leona Lewis incorporate Horner’s love theme from Avatar into her song "I See You" (which, admittedly, still seemed out of place at the end of the sci-fi epic, haha). And Linkin Park and Steve Jablonsky collaborated on the score for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen...with the song "New Divide" being the main music theme for the Michael Bay sequel. Anyways. That is all.

IMAGE OF THE DAY... The Mariana Trench (the deepest part of all of Earth's oceans): to scale, that is. Courtesy of the I Am Bored website. 'Cause you know, I was bored when I posted this. Click to enlarge.


I-Am-Bored.com

MEGAN FOX Speedpainting... The Transformers Live Action Movie Blog posted this cool video of Megan Fox’s famous car-hood scene from the first Transformers film being re-created digitally by artist Nico Di Mattia. I thought that the video capture below was a screenshot from the 2007 flick... Nope, that’s the final product by Mr. Di Mattia. Awesome work.



As for Transformers 3 news, the third movie is still in the middle of pre-production as work continues to gear up for the start of principal photography...which was rumored to start next month but should most likely begin in May or June (just like Revenge of the Fallen). In terms of rumors, the TF Movie Blog also mentions that TF3 will film in Moscow and Chicago, and that Bay might release the movie in 3-D. I’m just hoping that TF3 will be good as the first flick. Is that asking too much? Later.

SHUTTER ISLAND... I saw the flick last Saturday, and despite some editing issues that were also present in Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning movie, The Departed, Shutter Island is one awesome mindf**k of a film. That’s definitely a compliment. It really is pretty odd that Paramount Pictures would release this flick during the s**t month of February (it was originally suppose to have been released last November). For karmic purposes (haha), they should’ve waited till like, May to roll out Shutter Island...since Gladiator and Crash came out in May of 2000 and 2005, respectively, and went on to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards the following years. Oh well. Hopefully the Academy will have a good memory and remember this movie come Oscar season this Fall. Later.

PHOTOS OF THE DAY... Last night, STS-130 astronauts finally unveiled the long-awaited observation deck known as the "Cupola" onboard the International Space Station (ISS). The seven-windowed Cupola will be used to take high-resolution photography of the Earth as well as view incoming spacecraft as they approach and dock with the ISS. Just thought I’d share some exterior and interior pics of the Cupola below.



Oh, and you can probably guess why I included an image of a TIE Fighter (Technically, it's a TIE Advanced if you’re a die-hard Star Wars geek) at the top of this post. The Millennium Falcon would also apply. George Lucas must be proud right now...













Images courtesy of Lucasfilm Ltd. & NASA

DEAL OR NO DEAL... Today, I watched yet another 2007 rerun of the NBC game show (this episode was titled "Summer in December"), and was absolutely not surprised at the end result. The contestant, Demetres B., had a chance at winning $110,000 but ended up only getting $1,000 because she wanted to "go all the way". Way to go, Demetres...you definitely are your own "individual". I hope your frat sisters didn’t kick you out of the sorority ‘cause you f**ked up BIG TIME.

However, that’s the beauty of this show: Watching stupid people, who think they're "gutsy", get extremely greedy and lose it all. But you would already know that if you watch Deal or No Deal. And read my previous Blog...

HOWARD STERN to replace Simon Cowell as host on American Idol? Hmm... Click here for more details. I might actually start watching this show (that is, when it’s not the season finale and one of the finalists isn’t a gorgeous babe like Carrie Underwood or Katharine McPhee) if the shock jock does indeed replace Idol’s lead host. Have Artie Lange replace Randy Jackson, and Stuttering John replace Ryan Seacrest, and I’m sold.



Oh, and feature an audition segment where female contestants (and *cough-Kara-DioGuardi-cough*) have to take a ride on the Sybian. I kid.

NASA / Troy Cryder

ONE YEAR AGO TODAY, I flew down to central Florida to visit Kennedy Space Center (KSC) for the first time. What would’ve made today even sweeter would’ve been the launch of Endeavour on the first flight of this final year in the space shuttle program. Endeavour’s first launch attempt was scrubbed early this morning due to bad weather...and is making a second liftoff attempt a couple of hours from now (though the weather may be problematic yet again tonight). Will I visit KSC again, you ask? Well, I was planning to just so I could see in person an Ares I rocket on its launch pad, but Obama ruined everything last Monday. Oh well.



UPDATE (7:30 PM, PST): As for Super Bowl XLIV, I was rooting for the Indianapolis Colts...so y’all excuse me if I don’t say anything about the New Orleans Saints here. Who dat? SCREW dat.

82nd ANNUAL ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATIONS... Avatar, The Hurt Locker (both unsurprisingly) and District 9 all received Oscar nominations for Best Picture this morning. Nice. Good to see that the Academy didn't drop the ball this time around. Actually, I take that back. Star Trek should've gotten a nom as well. Sorry Trekkies.

And glad to see that Hans Zimmer got a Best Original Score nomination for Sherlock Holmes. I was surprised to see that it was Zimmer who did the fantastic music (since the score sounded very un-Zimmerish) for the Robert Downey Jr. film when I watched the end credits. Word.