"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......

National Treasure: Book of Secrets ($20.2M/$171M) and I Am Legend ($16.3M/$228.6M) continued to rule the box office, but the weekend's big news belonged to Juno. In its first weekend of wide release, the sly comedy raked in $16.2M ($52M) and has now eclipsed the gross of last year's indie-ish* hit Little Miss Sunshine (*both films were produced by major studios). Alvin and the Chipmunks was a hair behind at $16M ($176.7M). Crappy newcomer One......

I walked into Feast of Love with high expectations. Despite his reputation in some corners as a lightweight (probably only because he hosted Talk Soup all those years ago), I think Greg Kinnear is a profoundly underrated actor. His recent work, especially in Auto Focus, The Matador and Little Miss Sunshine has been wonderfully understated. That he would be joined by a bevy of equally solid, unflashy actors--Morgan Freeman, Jane Alexander, Radha Mitchell, Selma......

The Swerve Festival is taking place at Barnsdall Park on Friday, Sept. 28th and goes till Sunday the 30th. There will be movies, music and art for all three days. ...

When Alan Arkin freaks out in the beginning of Little Miss Sunshine, shouting, “Again with the fucking chicken! It's always with the goddamn fucking chicken!” all I could do was stare at the instantly recognizable bucket and think, “How could anyone ever get sick of Dinah’s?” The fried coating is so highly seasoned and crispy. The meat is so juicy and tender. Alan Arkin should consider himself lucky. Dinah’s Fried Chicken has been a Glendale......

We saw how excited you were over concerts at Disney Hall last month; we're giving away another pair of tickets. This time to Russian Chanson, the Thursday, May 24 concert of the Shadow of Stalin festival: Join indie-gypsy-rock group DeVotchka and special guests as they explore the compelling and controversial underground musical movement known as the Russian Chanson. With roots in pre-revolutionary, anti-establishment Russia, chanson has evolved as "the soundtrack of contemporary Russia," reflecting......

Venerable French magazine Cahiers du cinema (yup, it's still in existence) today launched its first English language edition, which will be available both in print and online for an annual fee. For $45, English-language readers will now be able to subscribe to a year's worth of the magazine (11 regular issues + 1 special issue). Cahiers will also offer free online supplements. Currently featured on the publication's Web site is a diary about the making......

Last night, about 15 miles west of the Kodak Theatre -- a veritable light year -- Taylor Dayne and Doogie Howser starred in film awards gala skits of their own. Little Miss Sunshine took Best Picture, Director, and Supporting Male honors at Film Independent's Spirit Awards. Half Nelson took consolation for losing Best Picture by capturing Best Male (Ryan Gosling) and Best Female Lead (Shareeka Epps) awards. And America Ferrera set the bar for Oscar......

A Word Or approx. 60: Goodbye O.C., a shame that the show is better now than it has been for the last couple seasons. Hey, who is the amazing Thai girl that was in Lost last night? Lots of new shows tonight, am going to have to order that second Tivo. Tonight - Thursday - February 22nd, 2007 Ben Hur (TCM, 5:00 p.m.) Saddle up for the long haul with this epic classic, cast......

The shooting script for Little Miss Sunshine has been bound into a book. Go figure. We've never really understood the need to make a book of a script and then have that book of the script signed as if it's, you know, a book. However. We do feel that in this case there are some particularly LA-esque reasons to attend the Book Soup signing today at 5pm: A) If the delicious dysfunction of Little Miss......

A Word or 36: Hopefully the jerkoff session over the Aqua Teen Hunger Force is winding down and we can get back to real topics like: is Paula Abdul getting replaced by Courtney Love on Idol? And other such ilk. Tonight - Thursday - February 1st, 2007 College Basketball: Oregon @ UCLA (PRIME, 7:30 p.m.) Ugly Betty (ABC, 8:00 p.m.) With cameos from Tim Gunn and Katharine McPhee My Name Is Earl/The Office/Scrubs (NBC,......

Little Miss Sunshine - It's no surprise that this movie was a hit. It's one of the funniest movies of the year, and one of the sweetest comedies I've seen in a long time. All this and it has a brain too. Altered - Whatever happened to those Blair Witch kids? One of them, Eduardo Sanchez, directed this horror film about "alien abduction and a quartet of returnees who vow revenge against the creature......

Leah (pronounced Lay-uh) is a great blogger. Born in Canada, she's been blogging since she was 14. We wont hold it against her that she lives in Austin. With her husband. Here's Leah top ten best movies of 2006: 10. Monster House Even though this is a kids movie, I'd be lying if I said it didn't give me the heebie jeebies. 9. Hard Candy I wouldn't watch it again but it was intense......

It's time. As much as we hated seeing silver stars and winter white wonderland at the Beverly Center as early as October (did they completely gloss over Halloween or did we just miss it when they were promoting it back in, say, July?), we must accept that Holiday shopping is indeed upon us now that it's December. To make it easier on us all, LAist has toiled, worn out our mouse clicking fingers, scoured......

Dear Tony, Why does LAist use the royal "we"? I think it's obnoxious. Why don't you? And why doesn't all of your writers use it. I see only some of them do. LAist uses "we" instead of "I" because we are published by Gothamist and they say "we". Jake and Jen said I can run LAist any way I want and out of respect to that freedom I don't think that I've not used......

The dad sings, the cute little daughter plays drums, and the mom clicks the slide show. Perfectly sweet novelty band way too good for our times. They wear thriftstore costumes, they make songs to the slides that they find or receive, they support dad who used to be in a band, they put theatre back into rock. They sound like the Violent Femmes minus the violence. This has been the summer of the little......

While it's true that we've reviewed "Little Miss Sunshine" here on LAist earlier this summer, to be honest, we didn't really trust our writer. She was new, she was impressionable, she's young... when she raved about how great the film was we just thought she was jumping on the 93% bandwagon. So we went to the Arclight this afternoon to see if the low-budget independent could live up to the hype. Ladies and gentlemen,......

Any movie where Steve Carell plays a gay, suicidal professor who has proclaimed himself the world's #1 Proust scholar is okay by me. Actually, it's better than okay. Throw in Alan Arkin as a heroin-snorting grandfather (isn't it cool when old people do hard drugs?), Greg Kinnear as a would-be motivational speaker and Abigail Breslin as a little girl with dreams of child beauty pageant stardom, stuff them into a dilapidated Volkswagen bus along......

The Conan Countdown goes on and the world's longest lame duck continues to be lame. Our question about next week's "Tonight Show" line-up is how much did the producers of "Pulse" pay to get on Leno Wednesday and Thursday nights, did no one want to follow Will Ferrell on Thurs? The downside for the Kristen Bell, pictured, horror flick written by Wes Craven is it doesn't come out until August 11, the upside is......