Cream of the Crop:

Some said it's too simple and boring. Well it's better to look like Kate Winslet rather than look like an ostrich that fell into a can of paint!

Anna Kendrick and her flesh tone dress. Delicious.

The perennially elegant Elizabeth Banks was absolutely stunning and she is funny to boot!

Unlike some, I thought Carey Mulligan looked fine. It helps that she is as cute as a pie.

Lovely Rachel McAdams was the stunner of the night in a really simple, classy and low key way as usual. That's how it's done people!

Penelope Cruz because Jose will hunt me down and axe me if I don't mention her. The blogosphere still can't grasp the fact that you didn't rank her #1 on your list, Jose!

Yes, Kristen Stewart is on both Best and Worst Looking lists. See here, she is forcing almost a ... smile. Why so constipated? Relax and enjoy the good time, who knows how long it will last!

So what do you guys, gals think? Who were the best looking actresses at the Oscars?

Movie News

• Don’t forget to read our Oscars’ Coverage: The Wrap-Up, Worst Looking Gals, Best Dressed later today!
• Fox picks up pulp comic The Shadow (Latino Review)
• Warner Brothers will release creature-feature Splice June 4th (Collider)
• Francis Lawrence to direct Marco Polo fantasy (Variety)
• Green Lantern going 3D (SlashFilm)
• HBO’s Rome adapted for the silver screen (First Showing)

Casting News:

• Robert DeNiro cast in Neil Burger’s The Dark Fields (Variety)
• Hugh Jackman cast in civil rights movie Selma (USA Today)
• Jonah Hill replaces Demetri Martin in Moneyball (The Playlist)

• Rachel McAdams joins Owen Wilson, Marion Cottilard in Woody Allen’s next film (THR): A few weeks ago, I wrote about Owen Wilson teaming up with Red’s beloved Marion Cottilard in this Woody Allen flick and look who is joining them! First Terrence Malick’s movie a few weeks ago, now Woody Allen’s, great to see Rachel get to work with some legendary directors.
• Benicio Del Toro cast in crime drama Making Jack Falcone (Deadline)
• Rachel Nichols cast in Marcus Nispel’s Conan (Latino Review): Rachel Nichols was the only reason to watch GI Joe and probably the only reason to see Conan and I’m not speaking in terms of acting chops here…
• Lenny Kravitz cast in Lee Daniels’ Selma (The Playlist)
• Liam Hemsworth cast in Arabian Nights (Heat Vision)
• Anna Faris cast in comedy What’s your Number? (Variety)
• Jessica Lucas cast in Big Momma’s House 3 (Variety)

• Liv Tyler, Patrick Wilson, Terrence Howard, Charlie Hunnam join suspense film The Ledge (THR): This sounds like a promising movie with a decent cast. Charlie Hunnam will play a suicidal man ready to jump off a building before noon while Terrence Howard will play the cop trying to convince him that life doesn’t suck!
• Ryan Gosling join Steve Carrell in new untitled comedy by John Requa and Glenn Ficarra (Variety)
• Viggo Mortensen joins David Cronenberg again in Talking Cure (Deadline)
• Mike Vogel and Garrett Hedlund top candidates for Captain America, not Krasinski as reported earlier (Deadline): Does anyone actually have any idea what the hell is going on?

Trailers:

• Zombie flick Survival of the Dead (First Showing)
• Legend of the Guardians teaser (Yahoo)
• The Runaways with Dakota Fanning, Kristen Stewart (Yahoo)
• Harry Brown with Michael Caine: This is like Taken, check out the trailer! (First Showing)
• New trailer for Iron Man 2: This almost seem too… full of excess? (Apple)
• MUST WATCH: Tron Legacy first teaser trailer (First Showing)

Links: Is this a slow week or what?

• Check out Heather’s Top 10 Childhood Performance (Movie Mobsters)
• Andrew Top 10 (of 25) Best Scenes of 2009 (Encore’s World of Film and TV)
• Darren writes about the lack of success comics have with adults (the m0vie blog)
• “I heart Zooey Deschanel”: ok she might have somewhat limited range as an actress but isn’t she adorable? (Cinematically Correct)
• Jose’s top 10 best dressed at the Oscars (Movies Kick Ass)
• Ruth’s Oscar detailed coverage! (Flix Chatter)

The Mad-Hatter, played by Johnny Depp, is one of the last characters introduced into the film. Having developed an affection for Alice the last time she visited and had tea, he knows in his heart that this is indeed the correct Alice. The Mad-Hatter has changed from last time, though, and so has much of Wonderland. It has been since taken over by the Red Queen, which much of the previous kingdom burned down by the Jabberwocky. And now, with the clock ticking down to the time of the Frabbulous Day, everybody is getting nervous and scared, afraid that they will not have their champion to take down the Jabberwocky. What follows is a series of events that leads up to a Narnia-like finale that seems very rushed and feels like they could have added 5-10 minutes to let things play out naturally.

As you are watching this, you know that it’s made by Tim Burton. Everything in the movie is so creative and just out of this world that only Burton would be able to come up with such a dreamy environment and creative costumes. And while the visuals are quite beautiful, you can’t help but think that “its pretty, but not quite as believable as Avatar”. People weren’t kidding when they said Cameron set ahead graphic-design by two years. This is not to say that Burton did a horrible job, but it just makes the wonderful job that Avatar did all that more apparent. The visuals are creative, but most of it was to push the family-orientated value of the film. The color schemes of both sides of the spectrum are well done though, with everything red being painted the a fiery red. On the other hand, everything around White Queen (Anne Hathaway) being very bright with the color purity and innocence.

The casting for the most part was well done. Helena Bonham Carter is a Burton usual (she is his wife, after all), and she is arguably the best part about this film as the Red Queen and delivers most of the laughs that you get from this film. Stephen Fry as the Cheshire Cat is amazing as well, absolutely stealing the movie whenever he is on the screen. Johnny Depp is so-so as the Mad-Hatter. If it wasn’t for Burton directing this, Depp’s involvement in this film would seem like typecasting at it’s finest. He overdoes it at time, but much like the visuals, the performance is used to entertain the younger audience. Alan Rickman is pitch-perfect for the wise Blue Caterpillar, but doesn’t receive much screen time. Mia Wasikowska was pretty decent as the title character. Surprisingly, the script really didn’t ask much of Wasikowska, so I’m not sure how one could really grade her on this film. She did well enough for what she was asked to do, but didn’t really deliver anything that would make you think twice about her performance. It’s rare that you see a titular character get such a bland and limited role. I think if the script would’ve called for a more meaty role, the film would’ve been much more effective.

While this movie is very creative and a visual spectacle, you can’t help but get over the fact that this is directed towards a much younger crowd. It’s entertaining, and should be a real treat in 3-D, but a rather shallow script prevents this movie from being the true enjoyment for all audiences that it should be.

B-

Notes: 108 minutes in length, Rated PG for fantasy action/violence involving scary images and situations, and for a smoking caterpillar.

Worst Looking:

Let’s take a look at the worst dressed first for a change: See a pattern here? Fancy usually results in looking like a clown, a bird or a combination of the two. I love Vera Farmiga as an actress but she did not look her best in that crazy “look at me” dress. She looked like she was devoured by a massive violet plant. Every year, someone fucks up and this year, it’s Charlize Theron. What the hell is on your cleavage? Seriously, are those cinnamon rolls??? Very tasteless. Sarah Jessica Parker in an unflattering dress. I never understood all the fascination with her to start off but she is not aging well, that’s all I will say. Will someone let Diane Kruger get a burger?? She looked so much better dressed in Inglourious Basterds than on the red carpet! Finally, Kristen Stewart! No, nothing wrong with her (really dark) dress, she actually looks pretty but she needs to lighten up. I have yet to ever see her have an unforced smile or laugh. Why so constipated? Jennifer Lopez is also worth mentioning  as she looks like she made her dress from some insulation foam panels she found laying around her house.

Check back later for the Best Looking Gals on Oscars’ Night. Now that one is fun! In the meanwhile, what are your thoughts? Who was the worst looking actress on the red carpet?

Red

Castor: I agree wholeheartedly that it’s good to see Kathryn Bigelow get the nod, simply because of the “trailblazing” factor as the first woman to win Best Director. In my opinion, neither Avatar or The Hurt Locker were worthy of Best Picture but I guess this is the lesser of two evils.

Red: Also as predicted, the acting categories were well predicted by pretty much everybody. Jeff Bridges finally gets his long awaited Oscar for his role in Crazy Heart, a film which I am hoping to finally catch tonight. The Dude truly abides. Christoph Waltz took home the Supporting Actor award, something that he had wrapped up since Inglourious Basterds debuted at Cannes early last summer. As always, his extremely humble acceptance speech (and believe me, he’s had quite a few this year) was one of the shining spots of the show.

Castor: Yes, anyone should have seen those two categories coming from 5 miles away. Good to see the dude finally win after 5 nominations.

Red: As for the ladies, Sandra Bullock was able to hold off Meryl Streep, even if the master still has a gazillion more nominations. While Bullock certainly wasn’t my first choice for Best Actress, it was a decent performance and was more of a career achievement award. And seeing how my favorite performance of the year from Tilda Swinton in Julia wasn’t nominated, I guess I was always going to have something to complain about. What makes this win even that more wonderful was that Bullock accepted a Razzie award for worst actress on Saturday night for her role in All About Steve. What a weekend! And then of course, Mo’Nique was another actor who was a virtual lock to win her award, took home Best Supporting Actress for her truly evil role in Precious. Her acceptance speech was great as well, knocking on everybody who criticized her for not trying to promote the award, saying that her win depended on the actual performance, and not showing up on late shows every other night.

Castor: I thought it would bug me more that she would win Best Actress but she was absolutely gracious the entire weekend, even going in person to pick up her Razzie Award and defending herself without knocking down anyone’s feathers. She even showed up 4 hours early on the red carpet to talk to every single news outlet. No wonder everyone in Hollywood loves her!

Red: Arguably the biggest surprise of the night was Geoffrey Fletcher’s win for Best Adapted Screenplay for his work on Precious, an award that was a heavy favorite to go to Up in the Air, which turned from an Oscar favorite in November to not winning a single award. Fletcher also became the first African American winner of such an award. Like I said, plenty of history was made on Sunday night. And while The Hurt Locker taking home the Best Original screenplay wasn’t too big of a surprise, it seemed like the majority of the people out there were hoping that Inglourious Basterds would steal this away, myself including.

Castor: It definitely was very disappointing that Inglourious Basterds did not get even Best Original Screenplay. I don’t know what you have to do to win that award, seriously. Precious‘ script was nothing fantastic while IB’s script was mind boggling in its detail and character development. Fletcher looked like he was going to have a cardiac arrest lol! One recurring theme last night was how they would show videos for the most random stuff such as Screenplay but they would not show videos for the most visual category of all, cinematography.

Red: The biggest disappointment for me was the Foreign Language category. While I have yet to watch The Secret in Their Eyes, it would be hard pressed to receive a better grade from myself than a movie like The White Ribbon, which I finally caught last week and graded a perfect A+. I ignored all the signs that Ribbon wasn’t going to win, and predicted it instead. First, there is the trend as of late of the Academy ignoring violent movies when it comes to the international movies. Second, there was the fact that Ribbon and The Prophet were going to split too many votes for either of them to win, despite both movies being in many critics top 5 movies of 2009.

Castor: Yes, The White Ribbon is a movie I need to catch. Good on you to post a prediction for the Oscars, I did not care enough to do so lol

Red: I ended up being 17 out of 24. I whiffed on both screenplays, as well as most of the shorts and a documentary. Add on “Avatar” losing out on Sound Editing, and there are all my misses. The night was mostly predictable for the awards that mattered most, but when it comes to those smaller awards for pieces that most people haven’t watched and more than likely won’t remember, it really is just a wild guessing game.

The telecast itself seemed to be too long. My DVR didn’t even record the entire thing. I loved the opening sequence by Neil Patrick Harris, especially the Dolly Parton joke towards the end. Baldwin and Martin were great as hosts, though the opening monologue seemed to drag on and on, seemingly pointing out every single person in the crowd. And then as the show dragged on, they seemed to be less and less involved, although their Paranormal Activity spoof was absolutely hilarious. Oh, and Ben Stiller as a blue alien? Fantastic.

Castor: I thought it was not better or worse than in previous years which means it was pretty damn bad. To me, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin weren’t all that funny. Their pseudo-conversations felt really flat and the jokes seemed like they were directed to the 60+ year-old crowd. The show really dragged on for way too long! Like you said, the intro of all the nominees at the beginning was really overkill. And then, they pretty much did the same thing again at the end. The only fun parts was when the purple woman ran up the stage and interrupted the winner and how they would cut off all those “technical” people who went over the 45-sec limit. Oh and could Kristen Stewart be any more constipated?

Red: Well, that officially puts an end to the 2009 year of cinema. And just like that, we are moving into next year. Already people are calling for Leo to receive a nomination for Shutter Island, although it would be pretty difficult for it to last the entire year. But with the Best Picture field expanded to 10, it could be just a matter of one or two months before the first couple nominees sneak up on us.

What did you think of the winners and/or television cast?