If, like me, you were such a huge fan of Muppets and costumed creatures growing up that you're practically anti-CGI, you should head over to the Silent Movie Theater on March 18th for "Jim Henson's Commercials & Experiments"! The screening starts at 8pm and will feature rare clips, shorts and commercials from Jim Henson's studio archives, including experimental animation and "a 35mm print of Time Piece, an Academy Award nominated 8-minute masterpiece that showcases Henson’s......

Through the presidential election in November, MTV has “Choose or Lose” citizen journalists in twenty-three states to cover the campaign. Here is the Colorado street team member interviewing Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker on the campaign trail for Barack Obama in Boulder, CO on Monday.......

"No Country For Old Men," "There Will Be Blood," "Juno," "Michael Clayton," and "Atonement" all received nominations for Best Picture this morning, as the Academy Award nominations were announced in Beverly Hills. "No Country" and "There Will Be Blood" are the front runners with eight noms apiece, including a Best Actor nod for perennial Oscar fav Daniel Day-Lewis, and directing nominations for the Coen Bros. and Paul Thomas Anderson. While Javier Bardem was recognized......

Roger Avary, the Academy Award-winning writer of the 1994 cult classic Pulp Fiction, was arrested this weekend on charges of manslaughter. The arrest stems from his involvement in a car accident Sunday night in Ojai that left his wife injured, and one other person dead. Avary, who was at the wheel, was booked on suspicion of DUI, and his passenger, 34-year-old Andreas Zini, a guest of the Avary's from Italy, was taken to the hospital,......

Despite being thoroughly outed by Vikram Jayanti in his superb documentary, The Golden Globes: Hollywood's Dirty Little Secret, the Globes do retain some credibility in certain quarters. I don't buy that they are any sort of barometer for Academy Award nominations, but they do give nominees the extra media attention that may tip an Oscar nod their way. That said, here's what I thought about tonight's results and what they may portend. BEST MOTION......

Stage and screen choreographer Michael Kidd died this past Sunday in Los Angeles at the age of 92, according to the New York Times. From his beginnings in Brooklyn, Kidd moved over to Manhattan to dance and create dances for dance companies including Lincoln Kirstein's Ballet Caravan (1937), Eugene Loring's Dance Players (1941) and Ballet Theater, the predecessor to the American Ballet Theater (1942-47). Soon after dance critic Edwin Denby opined that Kidd’s talents “leaned......

Atonement hits theaters this weekend as one of the few, definite contenders for an Academy Award. It bears all the traditional hallmarks of an Oscar-caliber film: lavish period piece (check), excellent source novel (check), epic scope (check), high-powered English cast (check), nude scene from Keira Knightley (double check). Those critics who've already seen it have been generous with praise, so I'm expecting nothing less than a winner. It's virtually certain that The Golden Compass......

On Thursday (10/11) at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, LAist checked out a screening/cineconcert of the documentary The Orchestra - A True Story from Piazza Vittorio, which is scheduled for release on Oct. 23 through Netflix’s Red Envelope Entertainment division for Academy Award consideration. Directed by Agostino Ferrente, the film chronicles the formation of an Italian orchestra to help save the old Apollo Cinema in Rome from its fate as a future bingo parlor.......

The 80th Academy Awards (host: Jon Stewart) aren't until February 24 but starting today you can register for a chance at a bleacher seat overlooking the red carpet. Thousands applied for 300 spots last year along the 500-foot-long red carpet, but you're feeling lucky, right? The chosen voyeurs will be randomly selected next Monday at noon, and notified in March. Submit for up to four tickets per person. http://www.oscars.org/bleachers/ Dangerous Liaisons devotees look for......

You may think he’s a brilliant director, with Twin Peaks, The Elephant Man, and Mulholland Drive among his long list of film and TV projects, not to mention four Academy Award nominations. Or you may think he’s got a few screws loose with his strict adherence to transcendental meditation and the generally bizarre nature of his work. Whatever the case, you can’t deny that he’s interesting. Now you get the chance to decide for yourself......

LOGO, the nation's first (and only) openly gay television network, is set to host the next Democratic presidential debate in Los Angeles on August 9. The moderators will include Joe Solmonese, the president of Human Rights Campaign, and Melissa Etheridge, the Academy Award (for her rendition of An Inconvenient Truth's "I Need to Wake Up") and two-time Grammy Award-winning rock musician and prominent gay rights activist. So what specific topics will be on the......

The biggest international benefit concert since Live8 Live Aid of all time is ON. The 24-hour affair began around 10 p.m. PDT Friday and concludes late Saturday in Jersey. And we must rock because... why? Whelp... Al Gore said so. Yes, the former Veep who let some derelicts pickpocket his presidency before performing an Academy Award-winning PowerPoint presentation in An Inconvenient Truth is taking green global. Why not turn "can rock 'n' roll save......

Academy Award winning filmmaker Jessica Yu best known for her documentaries Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O'Brien, In the Realms of the Unreal and Protagonist, is directing her first narrative feature, Ping Pong Playa described simply as "an Asian-American comedy," and she needs extras for a few crucial scenes. Wanna see yourself on the big screen? Wanna learn what being on a movie set is all about? Wanna watch a talented director......

Just when you think we'd be done with our Oscar coverage, we get this in our email box, an open letter from a documentary film nominee who is upset at how Jerry Seinfeld introduced the category. Which we thought was odd since after Jerry was done with his bit we were thinking, "why the heck hasn't Seinfeld been the host of the Oscars?" Our pals Seattlest are also pro-Jerry. Although we're not in the......

As you continue to nurse your week-long Academy Award champagne hangover and try desperately to block all memory of the "sound effects choir" & Celine Dion's massacre of Ennio Morricone's work (just as Elina predicted!), it should come as a relief to you that while there are yet more awards on the horizon, these are of the bookish kind. The LA Times has announced their Book Awards Finalists. While it may take more work......

What if... Jennifer Hudson doesn't win? Sometimes the one sure thing turns out not to be the one sure thing. Then who wins? The ten year-old. None of the others are in the running, and I say that thinking that Rinko Kikuchi should win, even though I had tons of problems with Babel. Everyone likes the ten year-old. Don't count out the ten year-old. What if... Eddie Murphy doesn't win? Then the theory that......

Oscar Shorts at the Academy To kick off Oscar Week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will present "Shorts!" a program featuring the 10 Academy Award-nominated films in the Animated and Live Action Short Film categories. The program, hosted by director Taylor Hackford, will feature onstage discussions with the nominated filmmakers. Short Film (Animated) The Danish Poet, Torill Kove, director Lifted, Gary Rydstrom, director The Little Matchgirl, Roger Allers, director; Don Hahn, producer......

Academy Award Nominated Short Films - A compendium of this year's live action and animation shorts. Breach - Based on the true story of Robert Hanssen who spent 15 years spying for the Soviet Union, a breach that is one of the worst intelligence disasters in US history. Chris Cooper plays Hanssen and Ryan Philippe plays the newbie agent sent to keep on an eye on him in this cat-and-mouse drama. The Boy Who Cried......

Drawing Restraint Why woo your sweetheart with such tediously traditional notions as flowers, teddy bears and edible panties when you could watch Matthew Barney and his inamorata Bjork going at each other with flensing knives on the deck of a Japanese whaling vessel in Drawing Restraint 9? And if that's not enough Barney for you, there's the making-of documentary Matthew Barney: No Restraint. His work has sometimes been described as a "hauntingly dreamlike fantasy......

Monday, February 5 Creative Screenwriting Magazine is sponsoring a free screening of Children of Men followed by a Q&A with writer/director Alfonso Cuaron and co-writer Tim Sexton. WHEN: Mon., Feb. 5 at 7:30 PM. WHERE: DGA Theater, 7920 Sunset Blvd. (betw. Crescent Heights & Fairfax) RSVP: Go to the Creative Screenwriting website and sign up to receive information about future events. You should then receive an email with further instructions about how to sign up......

As we’ve pointed out, it is awards season in Los Angeles in more ways than one. While the Academy Award debating will rage on for weeks, bookish types can ante up their betting losses or collect their winnings now – some awards have already been given. Los Angeles resident Susan Patron has won the 2007 John Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature for her young adult novel The Higher Power......

One of the most talented, controversial and often brilliant directors of all time (and one of my favorites), Robert Altman, has died. He was 81. In his career, Altman directed some of the best and most popular movies, across many different genres, including M*A*S*H which took place in Korea but was a thinly disguised attack on U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, one of the best "revisionist" Westerns of all......

Do you love short films? Or, do you have a short attention span that prevents you from attending films of more traditional length? Are you the kind of person that likes their entertainment in short, managible bits no matter what the form? Whatever your reasons or tastes, you can certaily fullfil your short film quota starting tonight at the Arclight as the 10th Annual Los Angeles Short Film Festival kicks off. According to Festival......

LAist's "20 Under 30" series about interesting Angelenos under 30 continues with Neil Kohan. Unlike most moviegoers, Neil assesses a film's qualities more with his ears than his eyes. Neil works for Greenspan Artist Management, an agency for film composers. Neil works with agency principal, Anita Greenspan, to guide the careers of busy film composers like Mark Mothersbaugh (Devo, The Royal Tenenbaums) and Marco Beltrami (I, Robot, T3, The Omen). Neil describes himself as......

Federal prosecutors begin their case against the scary-as-shit Aryan Brotherhood prison gang this week in Santa Ana. The lawyers declined to be interviewed by NBC-TV, probably because the gang is known for taking vengeance outside prison walls. Have we mentioned LAist is run from plush offices in the Flynt Building? The ugh, ugh, ugh story of the day: 10 people in OC were arrested for gang raping a 23-year-old woman because they disliked her......

Still making up your mind about what to do with yourself this weekend? There may still be tickets left to hear "Incredibles" director, Brad Bird. speak at "The Animated Performance: Art Meets Technology" lecture tonight Friday, July 29, at 7:30 p.m. in the Samuel Goldwyn Theater. $5. Bird joins the director of "Ice Age" (2002) “Aladdin” Genie animator and animation branch member Eric Goldberg, Academy Award winner Jan Pinkava (“Geri's Game”) and “Lord of......

Today's Los Angeles Times reports that famed ventriloquist and kid TV vet, Paul Winchell, died at his home in Moorpark on Friday. The Times obit says: Although he was a legendary ventriloquist and built a career attracting legions of followers of that dwindling art, Winchell's most durable legacy may be his rich voice as Tigger and other animated characters on television and in motion pictures. He became the lovable Tigger in 1968 for Disney's......

There are so many mysteries in life to ponder....like how come the Three Musketeers always fought with swords... But our current question concerns the mysterious death (and subsequent local media blackout) of Republican politico R. Gregory Stevens on or about February 26th. News of his untimely demise didn't really get into the LA newstream until March 4th in LA Observed. The kicker is that Stevens died in Carrie Fisher's guestroom. He'd been staying with......

The Academy Award Nominations were announced this morning and with it brought a special gift: a free peek into Calendar Live for the article. It's been so long since we've actually seen the news website, we'd forgotten what it looked like. Apparently they have a section called The Envelope which covers all the entertainment industry awards ceremonies. Free Calendar Live! Free Calendar Live! The Times seems to have the LAPD on the brain this......

Is it us or is Variety.com becoming more accessible? Well, it's Oscar Nom eve and those Hollywood-types still left in town are counting down the hours til actor Adrien Brody joins Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences president Frank Pierson in announcing the 77th Academy Award nominations on Jan. 25th at 5:38 AM out at the Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater on Wilshire in Beverly Hills. Scott Robson quizzed Industry vets about surviving the......