Photograph of Kathy Bates and AMPAS President Sid Ganis announcing the nominations by Chris Pizzello/AP While the writers' strike continues and prospects of an awards ceremony are unclear, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences went ahead and announced the contenders for their 80th annual back-slapping ceremony. Oscar-winning friend of the academy Kathy Bates was on hand to announce this year's golden picks. From Bob Dylan to Michael Clayton, many of the nominations......

THEATER: Wolf Lane Productions presents Victims of the Zeitgeist (The Tragedy of Martin Luther King, Jr.), written & directed by Ellwoodson Williams. The production "offers an exciting and telling insight into just who Martin Luther King, Jr., was as leader and simply as a sensitive and intelligent human being who loved life and who had a sense of humor, a deep understanding of the human condition - its strengths and weaknesses - and a profound......

After Letterman announced his show's comeback with new episodes, writers' strike or no writers' strike, the leaders of late night all followed suit. Conan O'Brien, who has been growing a "strike beard" and paying his non-writer employees out of pocket, will return on January 2nd -- and his West Coast network-mate, Jay Leno, will do the same. Yesterday the WGA released the following statement regarding this move.“The AMPTP walked away from the bargaining table on......

It's the itch we can't scratch - the Academy Awards. We make sure we see the announcements at 8:30AM and then rush to work, thinking about the nominations while on the train. This morning, Academy President Sid Ganis and Mira Sorvino (who isn't doing anything else, anyway) announced the nominations. As expected, Brokeback Mountain, Good Night and Good Luck, and Capote earned many nominations, and Crash made a surprising showing with Best Picture, Best Director......

It's official: Jon Stewart will host this year's Oscars telecast. Which means the Academy of the Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decided to go for crowd-pleasing ('specially in liberal Hollywood) political commentary, versus another year of cruel but insightful wisecracks from Chris Rock. Hmm, Gothamist likes Jon Stewart, though we downgraded him after the frat-party audience atmosphere of the Daily Show started to detract from the show, but he is better than Whoopi Goldberg again.......

Media boo-boos: 1) The New York Times got the Motion Picture Association of America (the people who bring you stupid ratings for movies, headed by scary Jack Valenti) mixed up with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the people who bring you the Oscars). The story about how studios are trying to curb piracy by not distributing "for your consideration" Oscar screener DVDS mistakenly called Jack Valenti the head of the "Motion Picture......

Oscar Commentary
Oscar is celebrating its 75th anniversary, I'm celebrating my 25th anniversary of watching Oscar....

If the Oscars do go on tonight, I'll be glad because then everyone can shut up about it. It may seem strange for me to say this, given my love for movies and the Oscars and how I generally live for movies and love the day the Oscar nominations come out...but there's no Best Picture film I'm really behind this year...the only category I'm interested in Original Screenplay, and it's highly doubtful Almodovar or......

Another year, another Golden Globes ceremony. People are mainly yammering about how the Oscar race is between The Hours and Chicago, but let's face it, the 87-93 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press can't really be predictive of the thousands of members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which has different branches like Editing and Writing which nominate the categories. What the Golden Globe winners can enjoy is more press, attention, and......