Oh, you know the Oscar drill already: Marion Cotillard surprised everyone by winning Best Actress for La Vie en Rose, further proving the rule that if you go ugly for a movie role, you will win. Poor Julie Christie just looked too beautiful. Otherwise, Tilda Swinton delivered the best speech for winning Best Supporting Actress for Michael Clayton. The men's races were yawners. Of course, Javier Bardem won Best Supporting Actor for No Country for......

Nicolas Cage mopped up the competition this weekend with the National Treasure sequel, which looked a lot like a remake of the first one. It's basically expensive kids' movie stuff. However, a friend of ours who paid to see it pointed out that those who like the ladies will see a lot of Diane Kruger in skimpy, damp clothes. Julia Roberts is probably wishing she could beat a chipmunk with her Oscar right about now.......

As Bostonist did with books, we've tackled best of/worst of lists for movies. Not only are we including the latest best of/worst of lists, but we dug through each list to find which movies impressed every single critic and which ones were absolutely appalling. Here are links for recent "Best Of" lists: American Film Institute Top 10 National Board of Review The Onion AV Club Golden Globe Nominees Metacritic (FYI: The amazing Killer of Sheep......

A sad week for LAist as they lose their trusted and amazing editor Tony Pierce to the LA Times, but what a blast his last week was. He shared his 25 Favorite CDs of 2007 and wrote a great review of just a good movie, No Country For Old Men. At UCLA, thousands of students celebrated the end of their quarter by running around campus in their undies (lots of photos in a two-part......

The 2008 Golden Globe nominees were announced yesterday, and to nobody's surprise, they skewed heavily toward the period drama Atonement. Charlie Wilson's War, No Country for Old Men, American Gangster, and Sweeney Todd all emerged with at least 4 noms each. Local fave Casey Affleck was nominated for his (non-Jesse James) title role in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and though Gone Baby Gone didn't get a nod in the......

--King Downing, the ACLU coordinator for the Campaign Against Racial Profiling, won his case against the Massachusetts Port Authority and the State Police. He sued because he felt that he was illegally detained at Logan Airport in 2003, and a jury agreed with him. [Boston Herald, WCVB] --City officials in Everett plan to develop an emergency plan to improve response to disasters following last week's tanker explosion. [WBZ] --The Boston Society of Film Critics gathered......