Well, in another tragic story in Hollywood, a rather troubled actor who hit it big as a young guy, Corey Haim, who was also known as the other half to his bff Corey Feldman, has died.

Details are pending, but I’m hoping it wasn’t related to drugs or alcohol, since he was so young this seems to be the most logical choice though. Details forthcoming. Our thoughts are with his family.

I actually got to watch the Oscars last night. I’m still shocked that my husband and I actually sat down with our little DVR’d show and watched it!  Of course, we flew through the boring sound awards and the stuff that you’ve never heard of or that you don’t really care about (at least for us), but nonetheless, for once I wasn’t waking up in the morning finding out who won all these awards with my morning cup of joe.

I have to say, I quite enjoyed this one! Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin did a great job hosting. They are both hilarious of course, but I am partial to Alec Baldwin, who I think is an understated comedic actor that cracks me up just by looking at him. The two of them really played off eachother well, and the writing was truly funny.

It was edgy without being schmultzy, so they really pulled it off.  The mood seemed to be light and fun as well, perhaps some of the blue mood from the economy and past events has warn off and people are ready to have some fun.

In a big shock for me, Sandra Bullock won for best actress for her role in the true life drama “The Blind Side”.  A nicer woman couldn’t have won, but she herself even said did I deserve this, or did I just wear you down?  I saw some clips of her performance. It seems solid, but I’m not sure about Oscar worthy. I’d like for her to win anything any time though, she’s just so likeable, I can’t help it.

Jeff Bridges won for Crazy Heart, which I’m dying to see now. I love Jeff Bridges. I think I’ve loved him since I had a mega crush on him as a young girl when he played in the remake of King Kong. He’s not only a great actor but seems like a really cool “dude” in real life. I mean, come on, how could you not love his “the dude” character in the Big Lebowski?

The biggest victory of the night went to best supporting actor Christoph Waltz. I couldn’t help but go “aw” when he accepted his award, clearly blown away and humbled.  I’m a big Tarantino fan, and we went to see this movie at the theater, but I must say it wasn’t my favorite Tarantino flick, however, Waltz made the scenes intriguing that he was in. In fact, he held me mesmerized in the opening scene to the movie and my husband and I were both like Who WAS THAT GUY?

Mo’Nique won for best supporting actress for the ruthless, cruel mother in Precious, which is based on the novel Push by Sapphire about an obese african american girl and her abusive family.

So last night’s episode of Lost had me riveted to the television, I must admit. Then again, I am a fan of Sayid, and any episode which uses him a lot in the story line usually has me glued to the TV set. It doesn’t hurt that he’s easy on the eyes, but his acting is really superb on the show, and he’s a consistent reason that I like to watch it.

Naveen Andrews plays soft and hard all at once so well, being a ruthless, deadly assassin and torturer that he was for the Iraqi Republican Guard, and alternating between his newfound “good guy” turn since he joined the island survivors. Sayid is one of the best examples of a bad guy put in purgatory, and I think he’s one of the compelling arguments that people have for this show being about heaven hell, evil and good, and limbo, or purgatory.

However, to my dismay, Sayid seemed to choose the evil side in last night’s episode, joining Locke’s entity (we’re still not really sure who this guy is, besides “evil incarnate”), along with Claire, and at the end of the episode a dazed and confused Kate whose played by the lovely and talented Evangeline Lilly (what did that mean anyway, is she still lost between the blurred lines of good and evil, after all, remember, this girl did kill someone in the real world, before the island).

Last night was all about Sayid, and his life back in the seeming alternate reality, the intermittent flashbacks to a different “real world” for some of the characters, including Kate, Jack, Claire, Locke, and now Jin and Sayid.  Sayid apparently works for an oil company in this alternative reality (is this the reality that would have happened had he not landed on the island, or the reality that is going to happen if Locke fulfills his promise of reuniting him with his long lost love?)

There is a tandem thing going on though, because Sayid ultimately chooses murder as the way out of his quandry back on earth, and he also chooses murder as the way out back on the island, which seemingly joins him back to the dark side with Locke and Claire.

Is the choice he made in the alternative reality the reason that he joined the dark side on the island?  It’s hard to say how the two are related.  My theory now is that the people on the island were approached by Jacob back on earth/reality and given options to make the wrongs in their life right – aka purgatory. They had the chance to prove themselves on the island, and if they fulfill their destinies on the island and make the right choices, then they ultimately will go to a good place or “heaven”.  The problem is, I’m still trying to fit these alternate flashbacks in with that theory, and it won’t quite work together.

I had never really heard comedian Louis C.K. do much standup before I heard him as a routine guest on radio show (well, now, only satellite radio) Opie and Anthony. On the show, I thought he was hilarious, clever, intelligent, and offered a bitter family man view to the mix, whereas Opie, Anthony and Jim Norton were single.  I especially loved that it was no holds barred when he talked about the trials of having a wife and two young kids.  Well, how funny he was on the show was no comparison to the nonstop gut busting comedy he offers on his Chewed Up DVD.

My husband and I watched the whole thing the other night, and I’ve never watched a standup DVD that long without seriously drifting off at some point after the first half hour. I mean, let’s face it, most comedians don’t that much good material to last as long as a full length DVD, but the talents Mr. C.K. does.

He rants on everything from how he hates when people say the phrase “the N word” to how much he hates deer now.  Every single bit of the mundane details, he makes into pure comedy.  He truly has a gift for being totally lewd and crude and yet maintaining his likability, which is rare.

I think to be truly funny, you have to be brutally honest, and he has this all down to a T. Don’t rent or buy this DVD if you like comedians that sugar coat and dumb down their comedy so as not to totally offend and go into the gross out realm, because you’ll probably be offended, and that’s how he likes it.

I give this a five star rating – definitely the best full length standup DVD I’ve seen in a looooong time.

I’m a fan of Vince Vaughn and of Jon Favreau. Ever since they did the indie buddy movie “Swingers”, these two have had a really good time together on sets, and that is apparent because usually their comic timing is pretty great together.

Heck, Favreau has even turned himself into quite the director, and I think he has some producer credits to his name also.  They’ve both come a long ways since Swingers, and many of their movies provide laugh after laugh at inappropriate behavior and bawdy bathroom humor, but it’s also got intelligence to it, which is why so many younger people, but not too young, enjoy it.

Along comes Couples Retreat though, which I can say I actually enjoyed for about the first half hour to forty minutes. And then – well, and then I don’ t really know what happens to this movie, but somewhere it veers off from funny and slightly edgy to totally losing it’s edge and going into the land of sapdome, all for the sake of making itself the latest crap romantic comedy dujour.

Not that I don’t understand.  I mean hey, at some point, you have to lose the audience that hates this stuff and appeal to a broader, more chick flickish type of crowd and be more, I don’t know – safe might be the word?

Malin Akerman, who made her big film debut in the movie Watchers, and was great in that, plays Vince Vaughn’s wife. The two of them are a totally committed couple that get talked into going on a couple’s retreat with their friends who are played by Kristin Bell and Jason Bateman, a couple about to split up under the pressure of trying and failing to conceive a child.  They are also joined by Jon Favreau and his wife, played by Kristin Davis, who have been married out of wedlock since high school and now can’t stand the sight of eachother.

I think they are the high point of the movie. Then we have Faizon Love and his new twenty year old girlfriend (he just got out of a long marriage and this is his rebound romance).  There are some funny scenes at the beginning of the movie, and some really funny situations, however I should have seen the writing on the wall when the kids who played Vaughn and Akerman’s little ones sappily told their parents that they wanted them to go away so that they “wouldn’t get a divorce”. Oy vey, really?

Let me just sum up the movie by saying this. There are about fifteen minutes of solid, funny content. The last 40 minutes is sappy drivel that’s just agonizing to watch. I felt like I went straight from a comedy to a movie of the week on Lifetime, the comedy was just sucked right out of it.  I felt like I wasted 40 minutes of my life and would have liked the movie a lot more had I switched it off when it was still funny.

The Bruce Willis movie Surrogates started off very promising. In fact, the sci fi premise was totally up my alley, as that is one of my favorite genres in film.  The beginning of the movie definitely seemed promising, with the news stories and jumps forward in time showing a progression toward the human race using what they call “surrogates” to go out and essentially live their lives for them.

With a surrogate, which most humans had instead of going out and living their lives themselves by the time in which the movie took place, you could basically enjoy your every fantasy, dangerous lifestyles if you wanted, and look any way you wanted, and never leave your home. Since surrogates were just a body, even murder was almost nonexistent,since if a surrogate was murdered, the person’s body would still be safe and sound in their own homes.

The problem with this of course was that the human race was not enjoying things with their own eyes. They had essentially become robot operators, which is the premise for the movie’s twist.  Bruce Willis plays a cop who uses a surrogate, like just about everyone else, when a series of murders takes place amongst the surrogate population. The only problem with this is that the weapon that is used essentially fries the brain of the surrogate and it’s host, so people who were operating the murdered surrogate were killed as well.

Tom, Bruce’s character, makes it his mission to find out what’s going on behind the murders, and also to deal with his own personal life, where he can’t even see his real wife any more, because she has become addicted to using her surrogate and is afraid to go out in the real world due to her grief over losing their child in a car accident, and we also see, her scarred face from the same car accident.

Ultimately, there is about a half hour lull in this movie where you just zone out. Things are happening, but some how, this movie just never gets the adrenaline going or makes you concerned for the characters of the outcome of the plot.  The twist is kind of hokey if you ask me, and the acting in this movie really needs to be amped up a bit.

Bruce Willis is ok, but he just seems like he’s going through the  motions, even when he’s not in his emotionless, robot surrogate body.  I don’t know, there is just something missing from this movie that needs to be added, perhaps the studio butchered it, because it is pretty short.

I don’t care how many bad reviews the Diablo Cody-written movie Jennifers Body got, I absolutely was 100% entertained when I was watching it last night.  My husband and I rented the movie on the outside chance that it might be somewhat campy and fun, which is a genre that we really like, and this was definitely both of those, heavily in the tradition of movies like Gingersnaps, an indie film about two sisters, one dowdy and doting on her sister, the other, the one that’s bitten by a werewolf, more shallow and of course more “hot”.

Jennifer’s Body stars Amanda Seyfried, a relative newcomer, but a very talented actress from what I can tell by her portrayal of the frumpy, somewhat nerdy “Needy” in Jennifers Body, and also stars Megan Fox as her hot cheerleader friend. Of course, the two are total opposites, and Jennifer, played by Megan Fox isn’t always sweet to Needy, but nonetheless, Needy is loyal to her “friend since the sandbox” and dotes on her, even has a small girl crush on her it seems.

The two go to see a band called Low Shoulder at the only bangin’ (dive) bar in Devil’s Kettle, so Jennifer can hit on the lead singer who she thinks is “extra salty” which I guess is some hip term for hot.  This movie is chock full of kitchy catch phrases.  I particularly love when Needy’s boyfriend says that the band is lame, with their brooding and their “manscara” poser look.  Sometimes it also reminds me of the campy dark comedy classic “Heathers” with Wynona Ryder that way.

Long story short, the bar ends up burning down and Jennifer ends up taking a ride in a creepy serial killer-like van with the band, while Needy tries to talk her out of it and gets left behind.  The band ends up being devil worshippers who are willing to sacrifice Jennifer, who they think is a virgin, so that they may become rich and famous.

Jennifer comes back from the ill fates van trip with an insatiable hunger for boy’s flesh.  She rips through the small town, eating boys and then barfing up blood.  Needy recognizes that something terrible has happened to Jennifer, and only gets murderous when her friend sets her sights on her boyfriend Chip, who is played by another great kid actor, Johnny Simmons.

All the actors do a great job in this, and for those that razzed Megan Fox’s acting capabilities in this, I’d challenge them to say that she didn’t act the narcissistic bimbo like she was supposed to, she was perfect in the role, so I don’t see why she got skewered for this role in some reviews that I read. Everyone played the role they were supposed to, and the lines were great, the scenery and the kid’s dialogue was pretty spot on for the angst feel they were going for, and goshdarnit, I was HIGHLY entertained!

Ok, so we watched the second episode of the much awaited spinoff to BSG, or Battle Star Galactica, for those of you unfortunate souls who have not become familiar with this awesome series yet. We actually had it recorded on our DVR for a while, maybe two weeks, and we finally got around to watching it, because the first one, the season premier, was just really boring and anticlimactic. I know that it’s supposed to be a drama more than a sci fi specatacle, but I guess I keep hoping for more of the intriguing characters and masterful acting and story lines of Galactica.

I keep reminding myself that it’s only the second episode, however, I remember when BSG first came on, I was addicted from the first episode, and it just got better and better from there, and that’s what I was hoping for with Caprica. We’ll give it a few more chances. Hopefully I won’t be watching the clock when we see the third episode!

The HBO showing of BBC original “Extras”, another Ricky Gervais original comedy that has he same flavor as his original “The Office” show, was a very smart idea.  Not because it gives us Americans another flavor of the smart, awkward situational, eccentric comedy that Ricky Gervais is known for, but because it also helps to diversify their shows into difference genres.

For those of you who are not familiar with Gervais, he is the British creator of the original hit series “The Office”. Yep, you’ll see his name in the credits for the American version, which I hate to say, is not quite as funny as the British original, but definitely hits some of the right comedic notes with leading man Steve Carell. You just can’t out do Ricky’s perfection as an awkward, yet always wanting to be loved character who tends to always say and do the wrong things.

Ok, so enough about my obvious admiration for Ricky’s comedic genius, let’s talk about the show “Extras” that aired a while ago on HBO.  It’s a show about Ricky, who is a forty something guy that has acting dreams, but can only seem to get the lowly work of being an extra, over and over again. He continuously rubs elbows with the famous, and there are some pretty hilarious cameos by several very big actors and actresses. To name a few, Kate Winslet, David Bowie, Orlando Bloom, Ben Stiller, Ian McKellan, Patrick Stewart, and more.

They are parody themselves, which is hilarious in itself. For instance, Orlando Bloom is obsessed with making Ricky’s bumbling female friend, Maggie, think he’s hot and desirable, because he’s an ego maniac. Patrick Stewart parodies himself as an actor who is obsessed with making awful, pointless films where women’s clothes are being ripped off the whole time.

Just the guest stars are hilarious, and they really show their acting chops by getting into poking fun at themselves a bit, you can just tell that the set must be fun and open, because everyone is at their best acting and showing their comedy chops.

Just as in The Office, Gervais plays a misunderstood, and yet constantly self loathing and self sabotaging awkward guy who can’t seem to get ahead in life or get the acceptance that he so craves. It’s funny, because as with his Office character David Brent, you feel awkward for him when he messes up, but you also feel like you wanna see the guy succeed, and you actually start to care for him.

I highly recommend checking out this witty, heady comedy, it’s a comedy with some intelligence and sarcasm to it, which is exactly my cup of tea.

I was a HUGE fan of the BSG, better known as the Battle Star Galactica, series on the Sy Fy channel. When the series ended, you’d have thought my best friend died. I actually went through a mourning period and didn’t think that any show could ever live up to it.  I was right, nothing has quite lived up to it yet to fill that genre for me, but I was hopeful when first the movie came out “The Plan” which was basically a huge disappointment and waste of time because it was all recapping stuff you already knew, and which was also why, when Caprica was coming on the airwaves, which is a spinoff of the the show, I got more excited than a nerd waiting in line for a Star Trek Convention.

And hey, I’m not knocking conventions, believe me, my hubbie is a huge comic book and sci fi fan, so I naturally have to be a bit nerdy myself.  I liked the idea behind Caprica, and I really liked the original tv movie that served as the pilot for the show also.

I thought the cast consisting of mainly Eric Stolz and Esai Morales, with relative newcomer as the young daughter of Eric Stolz (a scientist who has invented cylon technology) who died in a terrorist attack on a subway, making a positive splash as the outspoken rebel of a daughter whose belief in “one true god” defies the current conventional wisdom of several gods that rule the earth.  All a very interesting concept, no?

And the true, die hard BSG fans who miss the show no doubt will get some much pined for background about what caused and led up to the Cylon war and the ultimate invasion that destroyed all known inhabitable planets for man.

However, there is definitely something lacking in the show that needs to be addressed if they want to lure new viewers in and please the ones they already have, many of whom no doubt were avid fans of Battle Star.  First off, it bored me.  We were actually glad when the first episode was over, it was excruciating slow and boring, and didn’t seem to give us a lot of answers, or even any reason to believe we’d see any action in the next few episodes.

It didn’t leave me feeling like I couldn’t wait to see the next episode, and that is what I felt when I watched the pilot for BSG, so I was hoping they could duplicate that originality and sense of excitement with Caprica. Not yet. We can only hope it gets better, I really need a fix!