The show must go on! So say Academy officials. Should the WGA strike continue and dampen the annual star-studded Oscars show scheduled for February 24, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences will likely roll out some historical footage and announce the winners anyway.

The Associated Press reports that if the red-carpet affair must be canceled, viewers should expect "history, film clips, and out-of-the-ordinary concepts."

Should be interesting to see how "out-of-the-ordinary concepts" are realized in a show without writer involvement. Best motion picture nominees reimagined through interpretive dance? More at Yahoo! News

Those of you who had “Shia LaBeouf walking around a post-plague landscape with a monkey” on the list of things you wanted to see before you died may soon have your dreams come true.

This week, Jessica Alba stars in The Eye, a spooky tale of a blind woman who gets surgery to restore her sight — and ends up seeing lots of creepy stuff. Thus, we at Rotten Tomatoes thought it would be a great time to peep some classic movies and scenes…

Denise Richards and Pamela Anderson are setting themselves up to conquer the bombshell genre with Blonde and Blonder; RT has three exclusive clips.

Editor’s note: Welcome to the third of a multi-part series dissecting the 2008 Academy Awards, brought to you by the Large Association of Movie Blogs and its assorted members. Every weekday leading up to the Oscars, a new post written by a different LAMB will be published, each covering a different category (or more) of the Oscars (there are 24 in all). To read any other posts regarding this event, please just click on the tag following the post. Thank you, and enjoy!

By Pat from Doodad Kind of Town

If you’re anything like me, you probably haven’t paid too much attention to the Oscar categories Best Achievement in Sound Editing and Best Achievement in Sound Mixing. Truth be told, when I’m watching the awards at my friend’s annual party, I’m more likely to be filling my plate at the buffet table when the sound awards are announced than to be glued to the TV screen in rapt anticipation.

This year will be different, though. This year, I’ve actually done some reading and research about the work of the nominated film sound designers and technicians. Plus, I’ve discovered there is a little drama behind one of this year’s nominations.

Kevin O’Connell, a nominee for Achievement in Sound Mixing, holds the all-time record for most Oscar nominations without a win (19, to be exact.) He’s the Susan Lucci of film sound mixers, you might say. This year, O’Connell got his 20th nomination for “Transformers.” Will he win - or will he continue his distinguished but winless run in the category? I’ll be watching intently to find out.

The complete lists of nominees are as follows:

For Sound Editing -

“The Bourne Ultimatum” (Universal) Karen Baker Landers and Per Hallberg

“Transformers” (DreamWorks and Paramount in association with Hasbro) Ethan Van der Ryn and Mike Hopkins

For Sound Mixing -

“The Bourne Ultimatum” (Universal) Scott Millan, David Parker and Kirk Francis

“Transformers” (DreamWorks and Paramount in association with Hasbro) Kevin O’Connell, Greg P. Russell and Peter J. Devlin

You might be wondering (I was): What’s the difference between the two awards?

The Sound Editing award is given for achievement in executing the sound design of a film - it has a lot to do with the creation of sound effects. (In fact, for many years, the award was called Best Sound Effects , then Best Sound Effects Editing.) The Sound Mixing award, by contrast, is based on the excellence of the finished soundtrack of the film, including the entire mix of sound effects, music and dialogue.

(Why did “There Will Be Blood” got the nomination for Editing, but not Mixing? Was it Jonny Greenwood’s score - which tended to sound more like a swarm of crazed cicadas than music - that alienated voters? I’m only guessing. Personally I found the score both disturbing and effective, but not everyone shares that view.)

This New York Times article is not only a great introduction to the craft of film sound, but also gives you a whole new appreciation for the importance of sound design in double-nominee “No Country for Old Men.” With only 16 minutes of music in the film’s entire 122-minute running time, the sound effects have even greater impact. As “No Country” sound editor, Skip Lievsay explains, “The idea here was to remove the safety net that lets the audience feel like they know what’s going to happen. I think it makes the movie much more suspenseful. You’re not guided by the score and so you lose that comfort zone.”

Oh, and the sound made by that air-powered cattle stun gun wielded by Javier Bardem? It’s actually a pneumatic nail gun. According to sound mixer Craig Berkey “I wasn’t looking for authenticity, so I didn’t even research cattle guns. I just knew it had to be impactful, with that two-part sound, like a ch-chung.”

Reading this article made me want to go back and see “No Country” again just to focus on the sounds. Ditto for “There Will Be Blood,” after reading this interview with Sound Designer Chris Scarabosiso and Re-recording Mixer Mike Semanick (both P. T. Anderson regulars). Here they talk about how the sound of the oil derricks underscores the tensions in the story:

Semanick: (The derricks have) a constant grinding - they’re going and going, you know. And I mean a constant (he makes a “Chug! Chug!” sound). It’s like poking at the town’s folk and poking at the preacher kid because they got shorted out of the money. And the derricks are still pumping away, so it’s this ongoing character in the background, a constant track audible every day in these people’ lives.

Scarabosio: (Paul) was pretty adamant about it sounding dangerous. But Paul doesn’t like things to sound too over produced So, it’s the challenge of trying to create that without it sounding too over done. Give it that sense of darkness, danger, but also convey it’s this big piece of wood with these big metal wheels and stuff and they always have to have some kind of imperfection to them as well.

I love the idea of the oil derricks being a sort of additional character in the film. Those are the kinds of subtle details I rarely pick up on a first viewing, but knowing about them makes me want to go back to “There Will Be Blood” all that much more.

Randy Thom - a double nominee this year, and a two-time Oscar winner for “The Right Stuff” and “The Incredibles” - gives a little insight into his sound design for “Ratatouille” in a video interview at filmsound.org. Here he talks about the special challenges of creating sound for an animated film, and gives some background on how his team was able to create an authentic feeling of being in Paris. (Hint: listen closely and you’ll hear actual Parisians speaking French in the background of some scenes.) Thom is a distinguished sound veteran who got his start working on “Apocalypse Now.”

While I appreciate the fine sound work of “3:10 to Yuma” and “The Bourne Ultimatum,” (I didn’t - and won’t - see “Transformers”), I believe the award winners will come from one of the three aforementioned films. In fact, my money is on either “No Country for Old Men” or “Ratatouille.” Why should you believe me? Well, I’m no expert, but I have won my friend’s Oscar-predicting contest in three of the last four years. And I usually choose the technical awards correctly.

Just when you weren’t missing him, the razor-fingered bogeyman is being hauled out of movie deep-freeze and defrosted for a new bout of teen-slashing bedlam. Never one to let a sleeping serial killer lie, Michael Bay, who also spearheaded The Texas Chainsaw Massacre overhaul and a new relaunch for Friday The 13th, is behind the Krueger reboot with his producing partners Brad Fuller and Andrew Form. More at Variety

Romanek Quits Wolf Man
They’ve assembled a dream cast (Benicio Del Toro as the hairy fiend, Anthony Hopkins as his father, Emily Blunt as the female lead) but, confirming yesterday’s report, director Mark Romanek has quit Universal’s hirsute horror flick, reputedly because he felt the $100 million budget just wasn’t enough to allow him to realise his artistic vision. Meanwhile, every idle director in town is haranguing their agent to speed-dial the studio, which says it should have a replacement helmer in place before the week’s out. More at Variety

Young Heckles Schnabel
Did you hear about actress Sean Young getting chucked out of the DGA Awards for telling The Diving Bell And The Butterfly director Julian Schnabel to “get on with it”? Here’s a replay of Young’s heckle. More at The Hollywood Reporter

…and the 48-year-old actress has entered rehab for alcohol abuse following her DGA outburst. More at Yahoo News

Heigl & Butler Tell The Ugly Truth
Fresh off her box-office smackdown with 27 Dresses, Katherine Heigl will next play another romantically challenged character in The Ugly Truth. Pitched as a “battle of the sexes comedy”, Truth will pit Heigl’s morning show producer against the neanderthal chauvinism of the show’s host, played by six-pack-king Gerard Butler. Legally Blonde’s Robert Luketic is calling the shots. More at Variety

First Shot of Clooney in Burn After Reading
The Coen brothers are basking in the praise for No Country For Old Men (or are they? The siblings have a notoriously laissez-faire attitude about adoration of their films), but already eyes are turning to their next project, the CIA-themed comedy-drama Burn After Reading. Here’s the first snap of Clooney (sitting next to Frances McDormand) from the film. More at FilmoFilia

Editor’s note: Welcome to the second of a multi-part series dissecting the 2008 Academy Awards, brought to you by the Large Association of Movie Blogs and its assorted members. Every weekday leading up to the Oscars, a new post written by a different LAMB will be published, each covering a different category (or more) of the Oscars (there are 24 in all). To read any other posts regarding this event, please just click on the tag following the post. Thank you, and enjoy!

By Jason from Invasion of the B Movies

For my little Oscar write-up thingy, I have to talk about the nominees for Best Visual Effects, which I’m sure is every blind person’s most hated category. HA! Cause you see…visual….

Sorry, I just suffered through a Michael Bay movie. My brain is leaking. Let’s do this.

So the nominees are The Golden Compass, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, and last but certainly not least Transformers. Fletch told me that I didn’t have to watch any of the movies to do this post but not knowing what else to talk about, I felt I should watch at least one. Since Compass isn’t out on DVD yet, and Pirates 3 is part of a series I haven’t seen yet, I was forced to watch Michael Bay wet his panties with explosions and people sliding all over the place. AKA: Transformers.

I’m gonna try not to spend too much time on the plot, since I’m only suppose to focus on the visual aspect of this movie. But in case you are wondering, I will give a quick run-down on what the movie is about.

Based on some toys I never played with, which turned into a cartoon I never watched (I was into He-Man. I HAVE THE POWER!) the movie deals with these alien robots crashing to Earth to look for a cube. Then we focus on the zany adventures of Shia Labauf or Buff or whatever his name is, as Sam, a teenager who wants a car. Within the first ten minutes, we’re slammed with a bunch of “remember this” moments, like Sam’s great-grandfather was some explorer and he wore glasses. Seriously, he wore glasses. We need to remember this. He wore glasses.

Anyway, Sam’s Dad goes to buy him a car and a yellow car (I’m not a car expert so I dunno what kind it was suppose to be) suddenly appears and after blowing up all the other windows nearby, Sam is stuck with this one. It turns out that this car is actually one of the GOOD alien robots named Bumblebee. Yeah, that’s a tough name. Soon, Sam and his hot as fuck girlfriend played by Megan Fox (Cause she’s a Fox! ARRROO!!! Sorry…) meet the other Good Transformers.

What about the bad ones? Well, their leader crashed to Earth and was found by Sam’s great-great grandfather and, I kid you not, some map of some sort was embedded into his glasses, which now lay in possession of Sam. So all the robots, good and bad, need these glasses.

There are literally dozens, if not millions of stupid things in this movie, but that has nothing to do with visual effects. Just know that Michael Bay needs to stop making movies. Soon.

Anyway, good robots find the glasses, bad robots show up and blow shit up, John Turtorro shows up and is a crazy asshole, there’s a big battle, the leader of the bad robots is awake but he dies, and now the good robots are stuck on Earth so Shia and Hot Chick can boff on top of them. The end.

Visually, this movie is pretty good. The effects are great and even though I’m against CGI in movies, I thought it was pretty good. I dunno if it should be nominated for an Oscar, let alone win. Cause the entire movie, when stuff was blowing up, looked just like a music video. And would you nominate a music video for Best Visual Effects?

And of course this is Michael Bay we’re talking about here. He must invest in some company that makes explosives or something cause literally anytime something touches something, it explodes. There’s no just denting a thing, or just having nothing happen. It explodes. A robot looks at another robot, they explode. So a lot is going to happen visually.

To sum up, Michael Bay is evil and we shouldn’t be awarding him for making dumb movies where stuff explodes for no damn reason. As for the other two movies nominated, well they gotta be much better then this. Amirite?

(Note: usually my reviews are much more detailed but if I wrote a detail report, this thing would be like 20 pages long, and full of things like “ARRGH” and “WHY GOD WHY?”)

Editor’s note: Welcome to the first of a multi-part series dissecting the 2008 Academy Awards, brought to you by the Large Association of Movie Blogs and its assorted members. Every weekday for the next couple weeks, a new post written by a different LAMB will be published, each covering a different category (or more) of the Oscars (there are 24 in all). To read any other posts regarding this event, please just click on the tag following the post. Thank you, and enjoy!

By Nick from Boomstick Reviews

What in the heck is Art Direction, and what does an Art Director do? Those are the questions I had to ask myself when I was assigned Best Art Direction for the LAMB Oscar Nomination Massive Writing Project Thing. The Oscar homepage obviously doesn’t have descriptions of what each category looks into, so I went to my good friend Google, who directed me to our mutual friend Wikipedia, and I found an answer. Notice I said an answer, and not the answer. What I got basically said that an Art Director works below a Production Designer, but above a Set Designer and Set Decorator. They are responsible for keeping budget and scheduling, assigning tasks, and act as a liaison between other art-like departments. So how did all this help me in figuring out how to judge what movie had the best art direction? It didn’t, really.

So from what I figure, Best Art Direction looks at the overall package: The costumes, the sets, the props, the drawings of how things look before it goes to CGI, and everything that makes a movie pretty or gritty. In other words, it’s kind of like Best Picture, where a good movie is only as good as the actors, actresses, script, etc., and each of those get their individual awards; likewise, the costumes and sets and all that good stuff get their own awards, as well, but it all ends up falling under Art Direction. If you aren’t confused by now and still know what the heck I’m talking about, that’s awesome, and we can finally get into the good stuff.

This year, the following five movies have been nominated for Best Art Direction: American Gangster, Atonement, The Golden Compass, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and There Will Be Blood. Unfortunately, for those of you who regularly read my own blog, you’ll know how bad my small town is about getting Oscar-y movies here. In other words, the only movie on this list that I’ve actually seen is The Golden Compass. But this might be a good thing, because I can do just like the normal Oscar people and only watch a small clip (I’ll be watching each movie’s trailers) and base my entire opinion solely on that… with the exception of The Golden Compass, as I’ve actually seen it. So without further ado, here are the nominations for Best Art Direction:

First I’ll start with American Gangster. This movie’s pretty or gritty (as a noun), as I’ll call it, looks relatively boring. Sure, they’re wearing some… black/tan suits and collared shirts… and the diner looks like a diner… and that’s about it, really. From what I saw, I’m not exactly sure how this made it in Best Art Direction. Weren’t there any other more stylish movies out there? What about Juno with those hamburger phones and knee-high running socks? It really just looked like your everyday cop/detective movie or TV show, but with a bigger budget. I have to admit that this one did come to my town when it first came out, but I didn’t go see it because, frankly, it looked boring. And if it looks boring or unappealing, that’s probably a fault with the Art Director, wouldn’t you think? I can’t see American Gangster winning this one.

Next is Atonement. I really hadn’t heard much of anything about this movie until maybe about a month or two before it came out. And, of course, it didn’t come out here. From the trailers, I still have no idea what it’s about, but that’s not important for this category. What is important is how it looks, the pretty or gritty. And from what I saw, it had both. The costumes looked great for the time period, and the settings and locations and such look wonderful and appealing to the eye. Everything just seemed to work together nicely to make it look both pretty and gritty when the respective moments arose.

Now for The Golden Compass. This is the biggest contender, I think. And I’m not saying this because it’s the only movie on the list I’ve actually seen. I honestly think it has the most eye-candy and is the most appealing. From everything about Jordan College to the ice lands to the dresses and outfits to the alethiometer (Golden Compass) itself—and everything in between—this movie is by far the best to look at. It’s going to be a tough contender with the other four.

Fourth will be a movie I was really upset about not being able to see, Sweeney Todd. There’s really only one thing to say about this movie: Tim Burton. He has a style, and it’s a very beautiful and unique style. He uses color contrasts. There are the bleak blacks and whites and grays, and then there are the incredibly bright reds and yellows and such in contrast to really make them pop out. It’s like forced beauty, but it works. This is in a similar fashion, from what it seems, to Edward Scissorhands and Sleepy Hollow, both also starring Johnny Depp. The sets are dark and gloomy, and the outfits rightfully match the gloom. If any movie would give The Golden Compass a run for its money, it would be Sweeney Todd.

Finally, we are left with There Will Be Blood. This is another movie I hadn’t really heard of until right before it came out. From what I’ve seen, much like Sweeney Todd, it leans more toward the gritty than the pretty. But it works, too. There wasn’t much to see from the trailer, but the costumes looked good for the period, the barren location/set was nice to look at, empty though it may be. Even the houses looked good. However, this movie might get a load of Oscars in other areas, but I don’t think Art Direction will be one of them. It was good, but not as good as the previous two.

All that said, I believe it’ll be a close race between The Golden Compass and Sweeney Todd. I honestly don’t know which one might win over the other. The Golden Compass has the pretty, while Sweeney Todd has the gritty, so their Art Direction is good, but in different ways. If it were up to me, I would say The Golden Compass for a few different reasons. First would be that Sweeney Todd looks like a bunch of other Burton films, and those haven’t really won in the past, so why would one win now? Plus, The Golden Compass has a lot more to offer. It has numerous different locales and props and outfits and this and that, while Sweeney Todd mainly seems to stick with the really dank colors or the really bright colors. As such, my vote goes to The Golden Compass. But who will actually win? I’m not sure, but I feel it will be one of these two.