7:33 - Chaplin and Shrek on the same screen? Blasphemy! Props for showing clips from The Birth of a Nation (1915) and (sure, why not) Edison Kinetoscopic Record Of A Sneeze (1894).

7:36 - Okay, so Chris Rock is going to disparage everybody. He’s talking about the only acting at the Oscars happens when people have to pretend they’re not sad they lost. But the audience will be acting all night that they think Chris Rock is funny and that they’re not offended.

7:55 - Robin Williams falls flat with jokes, recovers with his old stand-by: impressions.

8:04 - Look at her smile: Drew barrymore is so happy she finished her lines without a major screwup.

8:24 - “We’ll be back with Orlando Bloom, Kirsten Dunst, and Mike Meyers.” Yeah, sure, like I’m sticking around for that.

8:29 - I’m not sure that showing Johnny Carson clips was a good idea; it just reveals how unfunny Chris Rock is.

8:59 - Megadeth’s System Has Failed will inject some life into this dead Pacino monologue!

9:05 - Woah, Luke Jr. just jumped to life. Who’s that presenter from Phantom of the Opera and where has she been all my life?

9:06 - System Has Failed will also inject some life into this boring song.

9:37 - I just got another prediction right. Right before the winner for best short doc. was announced, I blurted, “The one with ‘children’ in the title!” Fail-safe.

9:57 - Suggestions for next year: Get somebody funny to host (I’m thinking Conan O’Brien). No song performances. No godawful category introductions, and get people who care about those categories to introduce them.

10:02 - Best acceptance song of the night.

10:19 - Hell is still warm, thank God - Charlie Kaufman wins.

10:30 - So, the clock must’ve counted down from 3:00 for Foxx and :30 for Kaufman.

10:37 - I jumped out of my seat when Clint won Best Director because I was sure I had predicted him a month ago. Then, I looked up my list and was shocked to find that I had picked Scorcese to win director, even though I predicted MDB to win Best Picture. Stupid… Son of a… Damn!

No, not me. Damn, that would be boring. No, I just wanted to tell you that of the dozens of people liveblogging the Oscars, I’m tracking Mr. Sun. You can view my Oscar predictions, made before the nominees were even announced and unchanged since then, here.

Keep in mind, folks, it’s just a popularity contest and, as far as I can tell (and according to my own estimations of well-reviewed films), the actual best picture of any given year has never won the Best Picture Oscar. You heard me. Citizen Kane didn’t even win in 1941.

‘Diary of a Mad Black Woman’ opened to $22 million this weekend and I had never heard of the film before I stumbled across the box office results for the weekend. ‘Man of the House’ of the house also opened to $9 million and I’d never heard of it either. But can you blame me for disinterest in a year that in 2 months has produced 9 wide releases with an RT score of less than 20%? (2004 had less than 3x that many in the whole year.)

Every Calvin & Hobbes cartoon ever written.

The Homeworld 2 soundtrack is not distributed by Sierra, but I wanted the music, so I asked someone to teach me how to extract the soundtrack from the game files. Here’s how I did it:

When you install Homeworld 2, there is a file called “Music.big” in the “Data” folder. I used Finalbig to extract all the files. Every “.fda” file is an audio file. I renamed the “.fda” files to “.aifr” and opened them in Winamp with the Relic AIF plugin. Then I used the Filewriter output plugin, set it to output to mp3 with the LAME mp3 encoder, and played through all the “.aifr” files (which caused Filewriter to make MP3 files from everything that was played). Then I just renamed my MP3s how I wanted and presto! - I have the Homeworld 2 Soundtrack!

It’s pretty awesome.

Written by Jim Uhls (Fight Club). Directed by Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream). I’m so there.

That is totally real and totally awesome. So is this. And this.

The only article on Chris Rock’s Oscar comments worth reading

This guy has threatened to kill and eat a bunny named Toby if people don’t give him $60,000. So far, he’s raised $35,000! And this isn’t even the first time somebody has pulled this off.

I’ve got a turtle… I can find a turtle… I can buy a turtle at a pet store…

and I’m going to kill and eat him… well, kill him anyway…

if you don’t give me $35,000… $10,000… $2,000… $100…

Wouldn’t want to be this plump, juicy tomato.