Stand, Men of the West! Stand and wait! This is the hour of doom.

The realm of New Line Cinema is ended!

(Perhaps not unrelatedly, in a story I neglected to mention earlier this month, the Tolkien Trust has sued New Line over Lord of the Rings profits, threatening to scuttle The Hobbit.)

Notre Dame Law School Class of 2007 graduate Lisa Velte won the 4th annual Irish Trojan Oscar Pool tonight, becoming the third consecutive NDLS student or alum to win the pool.

She follows on the heels of 2006 winner Chris McLemore, a fellow member of the Class of ‘07, and 2007 winner Kristin West, a current 3L. (The 2005 pool went to New Hampshire resident Jackie Domaingue.)

Velte got every major category right, and 16 of the 24 awards overall. Although she erred on eight of the 14 categories worth only one point apiece, her correct picks in the acting, directing, screenplay and musical categories, along with Best Picture, allowed her to rack up 72 out of a possible 80 points, tying McLemore for the highest score in Oscar Pool history.

In addition, Velte is the first contestant ever to clinch victory before the Best Picture winner was even announced. She was guaranteed first place as soon as Joel Coen and Ethan Coen won Best Director, largely because almost all of her competitors also correctly predicted No Country for Old Men’s Best Picture win, and thus none of them had any shot to catch her in the standings, no matter who own that award.

Roger Snyder, a.k.a. USC Roger, finished second with 68 points. West, the defending champion, came in third with 62 points. Victoria Wagner was fourth with 60 points, and I, Brendan Loy, tied with Kevin Curran, a.k.a. kcatnd, for fifth place with 58.

Brandin Hay, Joe Swiderski and Victoria Lopez — who, perhaps mercifully, didn’t almost win this year — tied for seventh place with 57. Rounding out the Top 10, in a three-way tie for tenth with 56 points apiece, were Barbara Cross, Nate Djordjevic and Steve Copenhaver.

Complete final standings are here.

ABC’s telecast of the Academy Awards is underway. This thread will remain on top of my homepage throughout the show.

After the jump are the latest standings in the 4th annual Irish Trojan Oscar Pool, as well as any liveblogging I may do about the show itself. Updates are in reverse chronological order, so the latest update will always be posted on top (immediately after the jump). You may want to simply go to the permalink and reload it throughout the evening.

You may also want to check out Nikki Finke’s liveblog.

(more…)

Just a reminder that the deadline to enter my Oscar Pool is 7:00 PM EST tonight! And of course, I’ll be posting live results during the show, beginning at 8:00 PM, so stay tuned for that.

(This post will remain on top of the homepage until the deadline has passed. New posts will appear below.)

This is just another reminder to get your Oscar picks in! The deadline to enter my 4th annual Oscar Pool is 7:00 PM EST tomorrow.

UPDATE: Nikki Finke on what to expect tomorrow night:

A chilly rain is forecast for Sunday so the Red Carpet has been tented.
Nerves are still frayed from the writers strike just ended. Panic is setting in about an actors strike that may be on the way. Few
in America or the world have seen the nominated pics and performances.
There’s no suspense because Hollywood has long ago guessed who and what
will probably win. The vast majority of the presenters aren’t big
names. And not only has the host done it before to really poor
ratings, but Jon Stewart couldn’t even find anything funny to say about
it while guesting on Larry King Live. So, all in all, I think everyone should expect the Worst Oscars Ever In The History Of Hollywood.

Heh.

The Oscars are Sunday, so now would be a good time to enter the 4th annual Irish Trojan Oscar Pool!

This post will stay on top of the homepage for a while; new posts will appear below.

It’s Badger Tuesday… or, as I prefer to call it, Cheesehead Tuesday!

The polls will close in Wisconsin at 9:00 PM EST — which, coincidentally, is when the Hawaii caucuses will begin. Hawaii caucuses begin at midnight EST and end at 12:30 AM. Oh, and let’s not forget Washington state’s utterly meaningless $10 million beauty contest… actually, on second thought, yeah, let’s forget it. :)

Anyway, in honor of Cheesehead Tuesday, I give you… nearly naked hotties for Ron Paul! (SFW.)

On a more serious note, Fly On The Wall offers an excellent critique and analysis of the the various arguments about legitimacy vis a vis delegates, superdelegates, the popular vote, etc.

And speaking of superdelegates, here is a brief history of how they came into being, and why. Though, on that point, I have a slightly different theory:

HILLARY: "Do you know how the Superdelegates first came into being? They were Pledged Delegates once, taken by the dark powers. Tortured and mutilated…"

[The Superdelegate growls.]

HILLARY: "…a ruined and terrible form of life. And now… perfected. My fighting Automatic Delegates."

HILLARY: "Whom do you serve?"

SUPERDELEGATE: "Hillary!!"

Yes, I suck at Photoshop. :)

Anyway… the other big story of the day is the Obama "plagiarism" scandal, which may — may — be hurting Obama in the polls. More importantly, will it hurt him at the polls, in Wisconsin tonight? We shall see.

Personally, I can’t believe the media isn’t making the obvious connection between this latest example of Obama plagiarism, and the far more blatant example that’s been hiding in plain sight:

Can we co-opt a cartoon show’s slogan as a presidential campaign rallying cry? Yes we can! :)

Toshiba, the leading manufacturer and proponent of the HD-DVD format, announced today that they will cease manufacturing HD-DVD players, officially ending the high-def format war.  The announcement was expected, as HD-DVD had suffered a huge series of setbacks in recent weeks.  Early last month, Warner Brothers, one of the three studios that were backing HD-DVD (Paramont and Universal being the other two), announced it was switching to Blu-Ray.  This was followed by announcements from Netflix and Blockbuster, two of the three leading video rental companies in the U.S., that they were going exclusively Blu-Ray.  Mega-retailer Wal*Mart had also announced the decision to switch exclusively to Blu-Ray.

HD-DVD looked like it had a good start; its players were cheaper and were selling better than Blu-Ray. However, cheaper did not win out in this generation, as it had during the VHS/Betamax battle a generation ago.  Sony, the major backer of Blu-Ray, ends a long string of failed media formats (including Betamax) with the success of Blu-Ray, but it now must face competition from the emerging digital download market.

In any case, if you haven’t chosen a high definition player yet, Blu-Ray is the way to go.  And if you, like me, bet on HD-DVD well, you can still upscale your regular DVD’s using that now deprecated Toshiba player.  Now to go watch Transformers on HD-DVD and cry into my popcorn.

The first Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull trailer is out. (Hat tip: Andrew Hiller.)

Yesterday’s technical difficulties have (apparently) been resolved, so you should now be able to enter my Oscar Pool without incident.

(Thus far, I’ve received picks from David K. and Victoria W. If there anyone else entered the pool yesterday, I suspect I may yet receive your picks; it often takes mail servers a while to distribute backlogged messages after a meltdown. But you might want to e-mail me or leave a comment letting me know that you entered, so I can be on the lookout for your picks.)

It looks like the Hollywood writer’s strike will end on Wednesday. As always, Nikki Finke is the indispensable source for any and all information about this.

In celebration of the end of the strike, and the fact that it now appears the Academy Awards will actually happen as planned on February 24, I figured now would be a good time to open the polls in my 4th annual Oscar Pool!

[UPDATE: Due to technical problems with the server that hosts the Oscar Pool, e-mails of contestants’ picks are being delayed. Supposedly, they’ll go out eventually. To be safe, however, you may want to wait to enter the pool until this problem is cleared up.]

I’ll put the link in the sidebar, too, so people can enter later, once the big day gets closer, if they prefer. Point values and tiebreakers are the same as they’ve been in prior years. (See, e.g., last year.)

As usual, I greatly prefer if you use your full name, or, failing that, a pseudonym that readily identifies you (e.g, a nickname you use regularly in comments). First-name-only contestants and other insufficiently identified entries may be disqualified. (Otherwise, we end up with four different, effectively anonymous "Andrews" competing against each other.)

Enter here.

Veteran actor Roy Scheider passed away today at the age of 75. A cause of death was not given, however he has been treated in recent years for multiple myelome, a type of cancer which affects cells in bone marrow.

Scheider is most famous for his role as Police Chief Martin Brody in the first two Jaws films, as well as Captain Nathan Bridger in the television series seaQuest DSV, both projects involving Steven Spielberg as prodcuer or director.

Later in his career, despite earlier success his roles were mostly in lower rated films, often playing military officers or the President (a role he played 3 times).

He is survived by his three children and his wife Brenda.

As Becky and I were driving back from a workshop about Loyette’s brain at the Fountain City library this evening, we drove past an establishment called Lambert’s Health Care. Becky asked: “You see that sign that says Lambert’s? When I was a kid…” — I already knew what she was going to say — “…there was a cartoon called…”

“Lambert the Sheepish Lion,” we finished the sentence simultaneously, then started singing the theme song aloud, in unison. Laaaambert, the sheepish lion / Laaaaambert, there’s no denyin’…

We’d never talked about that particular cartoon before in the eight years we’ve been together (eight years this month!), but we both remembered it very well from our respective youths, having watched it multiple times on the Disney Channel. I have no idea why it made such an impression, but practically whenever I see the name “Lambert,” it’s the first thing I think of. (Sorry, Terrail and Miranda.)

Naturally, when I got home, I Googled it — and was delighted to discover that the whole thing is on YouTube:

Considering how well Becky and I each independently remembered that cartoon — and considering it’s been around for 57 years — I figured a few of y’all might get a kick out of it. :)

Who’s your man crush? (Hat tip: BK.)

…every time somebody comes to visit you, you take them to a country/bluegrass concert.

When Adrienne came to visit us in August, we went to the Bluegrass in the Smokies festival in Sevierville. Aside from meeting the WDVX chicken, the big revelation of that concert was the wonderful Bradley Walker, a singer with a voice so rich that it seems like only a matter of time before Nashville picks him up (if he wants to go "mainstream," that is). We bought his album Highway of Dreams, which you can get on iTunes here; my favorite tracks are Should Have Took That Train and Price of Admission.

Then, when Andrew and Bea came to visit us in October, we went to the Foothills Fall Festival in Maryville (which, if you didn’t know, is pronounced “MUHR-vul”). No new musical revelations there, as the acts were big-name commercial artists (Trent Tomlinson, Big & Rich, etc.), but the concert was memorable — and not just for Andrew’s and my shock and awe as we constantly hit "refresh" on our cell phones to get the latest football scores on the evening that #1 LSU and #2 Cal both lost to unranked opponents. :) The most memorable moments of the concert were the thunderous ovation that the crowd gave to a group of soldiers in Iraq during a live satellite-phone conversation with their commander (nobody does patriotism like the South), and the moment when Tomlinson introduced his cover of Ring of Fire with the utterly unprovoked statement, "If you don’t like Johnny Cash, you can kiss my ass!!"

Well, the country/bluegrass trend continued this past weekend with my parents’ visit. I took them to Sunday afternoon’s special weekend edition of the WDVX Blue Plate Special, the wonderful daily event in downtown Knoxville that I often attend on my lunch breaks. This particular show featured Larry Cordle and Lonesome Standard Time, and man — they were good! Here’s a clip, though it doesn’t do them justice:

I knew in advance that they were at least decent, based on their current hit, ‘67 Chevy Malibu, which I’d heard several times on the radio. But I was definitely impressed by the consistent quality of their songs at the concert. Great performers, too! And if you’ve heard the song Murder on Music Row by George Strait and Alan Jackson, well, Cordle wrote it, and he and his band performed it Sunday. Great stuff. Anyway, I once again came away with a new album, Took Down And Put Up (again, iTunes link here). I haven’t had a chance to listen to it all the way through yet, but I think my favorite song from that album that they played at the concert was Hole In the Ground. Then again, I have a soft spot for mining songs, for whatever reason. (I blame the Barra MacNeils.)

In any event, tomorrow I’ll again take visitors to a bluegrass concert (well, half bluegrass, anyway), as I’m meeting up with Becky’s parents for the Blue Plate Special featuring a “twin bill” of the bluegrass band Balsam Range and the jazz band Silver Lining. I don’t know much about them, but I’m sure it’ll be worthwhile; the Blue Plate Specials are almost always good, and quite often great.

The biggest musical revelation of recent weeks for me, though, came not from a concert I attended, but from a song I heard on the radio — on WDVX, the same station that puts on these Blue Plate Specials (not to mention that chicken). The song is Wicked Twisted Road by the Texas alt-country band Reckless Kelly. It’s an absolutely haunting tune; when WDVX played it during my afternoon commute, I actually made a point of pulling out my cell phone at a stoplight and texting to their studio e-mail address, “GREAT song!” A few days later, I found it on iTunes, and I’ve had it stuck in my head ever since. You get it from iTunes here; it’s Track 1, the title track. I haven’t bought the whole album, but I may have to, if that song is any indication of its quality.