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Oscar-winning actress Marion Cotillard graces the cover and more of the June/July 2009 issue of BlackBook. It’s a fantastic shoot for the generally staid actress, as she releases her inner vixen and dark Victorian eyes. And those cheekbones. Marion has rarely looked better or sexier.

<p>The documentary's Academy Award win puts it on the cable giant's radar.</p> <p>Sometimes winning an Oscar means more than bigger bucks for your next flick.</p> <p>Once in a while, it can even make the world a better place.</p> <p>That's the case with Megan Mylan, who won the Academy Award in February for her short documentary "Smile Pinki," which follows a young Indian girl and boy, Pinki Sonkar and Ghutaru Chauhan, as Pinki's cleft lip and Ghutaru's cleft palate are repaired. The film was commissioned and funded by the American charity Smile Train, a group that pays local doctors in 75 developing countries to perform the simple surgery that parents of such children rarely know is possible.</p>

It's time for the annual Fish tongue-in-cheek fashion critique of the Oscars 2009. We've got categories you've never heard of. With pics you'll find nowhere else on the Internet.

First, Sean Penn played outed gay politician Harvey Milk. Now it looks like he may play the husband of outed CIA hussy Valerie Plame. “Fair Game,” based on the memoirs by Plame and Wilson, is being made in to a big budget Hollywood fiasco. Tinsel town normally calls a biographic picture a “bio-pic,” but in this case it might be more appropriate to call it a “lie-o-pic.” Producers are negotiating with Sean Penn to play ...

[photo] Sean Penn won the Best Actor award Sunday night for his portrayal of Harvey Milk, America’s first openly gay elected politician. In accepting his award, Penn gleefully described the Academy voters as “commie, homo-loving sons of guns.” He also criticized California’s voters for their ban on gay marriage. But let’s not forget what else Sean Penn is. He’s also a Hugo Chavez-ACLU-Mahmoud Ahmadinejad-Cindy Sheehan-Dennis Kucinich-Ralph Nader-Fidel Castro lovin’ son of a gun. He’s supported every anti-American tin horn dictator, politician and policy that’s come down the left side of the road in the last twenty-five years....

One would think a novelist would understand the concept of “creative license.” But not Salman Rushdie. He’s offended that Slumdog Millionaire contains scenes that (gasp) aren’t realistic. The Indian-born author recently told an audience at Atlanta’s Emory University that the Academy Award-winning film “piles impossibility on impossibility.” Rushdie, who gained more fame for hiding than he ever did for writing, spent years cowering in a closet after Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwah against him in 1989. The author of “The Satanic Verses” was in a tizzy that the...

Sean Penn, friend of Latin American autocracy, made a political acceptance speech for his leading man Oscar last night that served to remind us why he’s made his living reading other people’s words: I think that it is a good time for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect, and anticipate their great shame, and the shame in their grandchildren’s eyes if they continue that way of support. We’ve got to have equal rights for everyone. And there are these last 2 things. I’m very, very proud to live in a country that is...

Here's a speech we would like to hear from an Academy Award winner:

Last night at the Oscars, they broke out white “knots” in support of gay marriage. We can only assume that’s because white ribbons had already been used by too many other causes — safe motherhood, awareness of violence against women, teen pregnancy, and a host of others. The fact is, there’s a colored ribbon crisis in Hollywood. Ever since this fad started with yellow ribbons for the Iran hostages, we’ve seen colored ribbon after colored ribbon supporting one cause after another. How are we supposed to know what cause they want us to support if each color supports multiple causes?...

Powered by strong showings in the country's biggest markets, the 81st annual Academy Awards telecast on ABC produced improved ratings Sunday night -- rising by about 6% in Nielsen's metered-market overnights vs. last year's record low. According to the Nielsen estimates, which measure roughly 50 of the biggest markets in the U.S., the Oscars averaged a 23.3 household rating/35 share from 8:30 to about 11:45 p.m. ET. Last year's telecast averaged a 21.9/33 in the overnights, translating to about 32 million viewers nationally. New York delivered the largest rating Sunday (34.1/49 share), followed by Chicago (31.2/46) and Los Angeles (28.1/44)....

HOLLYWOOD: Heath Ledger's posthumous Oscar underscored the tragedy of the actor's death, which in the words of director Christopher Nolan "ripped a hole in the future of cinema." By the time of his death in 2008 at the age of 28 after accidentally taking a lethal combination of prescription drugs, Ledger had already earned comparisons with Marlon Brando following his heart-wrenching Oscar-nominated performance in Ang Lee's gay cowboy romance "Brokeback Mountain." Yet it was as Batman's cackling arch-enemy the Joker in "The Dark Knight," his final film role, that Ledger received an Academy Award, becoming the first actor to win...

Comments on the Oscar show. So far pretty tame Steve Martin was good.

Tonight's Oscars will celebrate only-in-the-movies fantasy figures like Wall-E and the Joker . . . and Harvey Milk and Richard Nixon. Even when Hollywood is dealing with documented reality, it can't resist turning it into a cartoon.

We hate to watch the Academy Awards tonight. But we have to, it’s our job. We know many of you won’t be, but if you are following us our Twitter page we’ll let you know of all the idiotic things the self-absorbed actors and actresses have to say. Ah look, Barbara Walters just got Mickey Rourke all teary-eyed. Her first to fall victim to her tonight. http://www.twitter.com/ihatethemedia

Best Picture 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' 'Frost/Nixon' 'Milk' 'The Reader' 'Slumdog Millionaire' Best Director Danny Boyle 'Slumdog Millionaire' Stephen Daldry 'The Reader' David Fincher 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' Ron Howard 'Frost/Nixon' Gus Van Sant 'Milk' Best Actor Richard Jenkins 'The Visitor' Frank Langella 'Frost/Nixon' Sean Penn 'Milk' Brad Pitt 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' Mickey Rourke 'The Wrestler' Best Actress Anne Hathaway 'Rachel Getting Married' Angelina Jolie 'Changeling' Melissa Leo 'Frozen River' Meryl Streep 'Doubt' Kate Winslet 'The Reader' Best Supporting Actor Josh Brolin 'Milk' Robert Downey Jr. 'Tropic Thunder' Philip Seymour Hoffman 'Doubt' Heath...

[image of letter] A mysterious Hollywood blog announced this week that it was in possession of a leaked letter that prematurely announced the winners of tonight’s Oscars. To see the letter and the list of winners click the image above, or click here. The blog has suddenly been taken down, which makes some insiders believe the leak may be true. “The document,” Academy spokesperson Leslie Unger said, “is a complete fraud.” It’s only appropriate that an industry that blurs the line between reality and fantasy should have a controversy like this. We’ll all know in a few hours who’s telling...

ABC Television has slashed the cost of commercials during today’s Academy Awards broadcast. In 2008, 30-second commercials went for as much as $1.8 million. This year, they’re going for as little as $1.4 million. Once considered invulnerable to economic ups and downs, the Academy Awards has discovered that it can’t get away with jacking up the ad rates every year. Especially in a year when all five Best Film nominees have been ignored by movie-goers. Here’s a tip for the Oscars’ nominating committee:

A lot of ink -- and gigabytes -- have been devoted to Steven Daldry's film, The Reader, which is up for a number of Oscars, including Best Picture. Much of what has been written is full of praise, while some is seething in its criticism. Perhaps the most vehement example of the latter is the Slate article by Ron Rosenbaum, which accuses The Reader of Holocaust revisionism because, he alleges, it means to "exculpate Nazi-era Germans from knowing complicity in the Final Solution." Perhaps I saw a different film, but the one I saw had nothing in it to justify...

De-gayify. Oscar wants to rebuild its viewership and it hires as its producer … the guy who made Dreamgirls? If there’s anything Oscar desperately needs, it’s to get rid of its showstopping (i.e., funstopping) song-and-dance numbers. No disrespect to our gay brothers and sisters, but perhaps they can be persuaded to watch even without those excruciating Broadway interludes. And if there were as many gay folks in the country as Oscar seems to think, then gay-themed movies (Brokeback Mountain, Milk, Batman and Robin) would do a lot better at the box office....

There's a reputed leaked memo circulating online revealing the winners of tomorrow's Oscar ceremony. I found the document, though am not sure if I can post it here. Please let me know.

This year, Oscar is a little less golden. The ABC network, in a move that reverses years of escalating prices and underscores the worsening economy, has shaved the cost of a commercial for Sunday's annual Academy Awards show, one of TV's most-watched programs. Once considered invincible to downturns, big events such as the Academy Awards and the Super Bowl, which attract tens of millions of viewers, can no longer command automatic rate hikes. NBC in January found itself peddling unsold commercial inventory in the Super Bowl just days before the big game. It even had to slash rates to attract...

Kate Winslet's chances of Oscar glory are being hit by an orchestrated campaign to dismiss her film The Reader as an apologia for Nazi Germany.

There are few things more unappealing than the orgy of self-adulation one witnesses during a celebrity awards show. Yes, the Oscar nominations are here, and America simply can't afford to stand idly by anymore. Not after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had the audacity to misleadingly claim that Brad Pitt had not only engaged in acting this past year, but that he was among the finest to practice the craft. Absurdity of such scope is one of the reasons the Oscars continue to lose viewers and hemorrhage influence. Sometimes it seems the academy has a desire to...

1. Best Picture: "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "Frost/Nixon," "Milk," "The Reader," "Slumdog Millionaire."

Axe the political speeches and we'll watch Oscars, say viewers Respondents also more likely to watch ceremony if The Dark Knight is nominated for best picture, according to poll of US moviegoers Ben Child guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 20 January 2009 11.22 GMT The producers of this year's Oscars ceremony should cut out political speeches, make sure The Dark Knight is up for best picture and excise all trace of Jack Nicholson if they want to boost audience figures, according to a new poll. Viewer numbers for the annual TV broadcast have been haemorrhaging in recent years, leading online ticketing firm Fandango...

We can hope our favorite movie will come away with the big prize, but in the long run, some of the best pictures ever made did not receive Best Picture Oscars. A good example would be the AFI’s choice for number one movie of all time, Citizen Kane.

This is kind of odd, driven by a couple of movies I've seen and a book I've read in the last couple of weeks. No particular theme holding them together. Lions for Lambs. Ok, I knew this was an anti-war film (Robert Redford directed it, after all) and I didn't figure there would be much redeeming in it, but after being pleasantly surprised by "The Kingdom," I thought what the heck. Wow. Talk about pathetic. A two-hour sermon by Al Franken probably would have been less painful. The story is that Redford, as Prof. Steven Malley, is trying to talk...

Russian Oscars censored24/03/2008 13:13  - (SA)    Moscow - A series of jokes about President Vladimir Putin and president-elect Dmitry Medvedev were censored from the screening of Russia's equivalent of the Oscars film awards ceremony, newspapers reported on Monday. The jokes - mild by Western standards of satire - at Friday's "Nika" awards, were cut by private television station CTC in its broadcasting Saturday of the event, according to Moskovsky Komsomolets. "All the juicy stuff from the broadcast was edited out," the daily said. One of the comments axed, the newspaper said, was an allusion to uncertainty over whether Medvedev or his...

Actress Marion Cotillard sparked a political row yesterday after accusing America of fabricating the 9/11 attacks. The 32-year-old French actress, who received an Oscar last month for her performance as singer Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose, openly questioned the truth behind the terrorist atrocity in an interview broadcast on a French website. "I think we're lied to about a number of things," Cotillard said, singling out the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center as an example of the US making up horror stories for political ends. Referring to the two passenger jets being flown into the Twin...

US television ratings for this year's Oscars sunk to an all-time low, preliminary figures showed Monday, as viewers turned their back on a ceremony dominated by dark, bleak films. According to figures from Nielsen Media Research, Sunday's three-hour-long ceremony at the Kodak Theatre averaged an audience of only 32 million viewers, the worst since records began in 1974.

This season continues to be no country for network award shows. Following the lowest-rated Emmys since 1990, the strike-hindered ratings performance of a severely truncated version of the Golden Globes and a nonstruck airing of the Grammys that nonetheless disappointed, Sunday night's presentation of the 80th Annual Academy Awards on ABC hit an all-time ratings low. According to overnight fast national ratings, the awards averaged a 10.7 rating among adults 18 to 49 and was seen by 32 million viewers. In the demo, that's down a sharp 24% from last year and the lowest on record. Among viewers, that's a...

LOS ANGELES — The Oscars were a ratings dud. More so than usual, even. Preliminary ratings for the 80th annual Academy Awards telecast were 14 percent lower than the least-watched ceremony ever, according to Nielsen Media Research. Nielsen said Monday that overnight ratings were also 21 percent lower than last year, when "The Departed" was named best picture. The least-watched Oscars ceremony ever was in 2003, when there were 33 million viewers. [Snip] Nielsen has no estimate yet on how many people watched Sunday night, but based on ratings from the nation's biggest markets, the Oscars will be hard-pressed to...

We have to work the dark side. So said Dick Cheney a few days after 9/11, discussing the war on terror. Is this what he meant? In December 2002, an Afghan named Dilawar had scraped together enough money to buy a taxi. He was fingered by a paid informant as a terrorist connected with a rocket attack. Taken to the American prison at Bagram, Afghanistan, he was tortured so violently that he died after five days. An autopsy showed that his legs were so badly mauled, they would have had to be amputated, had he lived. Later, the informant who...

Michael Moore: Bring Fidel to the Oscars By MARCELA ISAZA, Associated Press Writer 13 minutes ago "Sicko" director Michael Moore jokes that Fidel Castro would be a "ratings grabber" at Sunday night's Academy Awards show. Moore's Oscar-nominated documentary on the health-care industry concludes with a trip to Cuba, where he seeks care for a group of 9/11 responders who have experienced health problems. They are greeted with open arms at a Havana hospital and given what appears to be top-notch care that they could not get in the United States. Castro, who is 81 and in poor health, announced his...

George Clooney is already practicing his "it's an honor just to be nominated" speech, telling Time magazine in a new interview that he doesn't have a shot at beating out Daniel Day-Lewis for Best Actor at Sunday's Academy Awards. "For me, it's like being Hillary Clinton," says the Michael Clayton star. "If it weren’t for Barack Obama, it would have been a very good year." Adds Clooney: "I thought Daniel Day-Lewis had the best performance of the year."

In theory, if I correctly predicted every single Oscar race, nobody could outguess me, and by default, I would win the prize. Alas, that has never, ever happened, and it's unlikely again this year, because as usual I will allow my heart to outsmart my brain in one or two races, which is my annual downfall. In any event, for what they're worth, here are my Academy Award predictions in a year rich with wonderful films. PICTURE Prediction: My heart cries out "Juno! Juno! Juno!," but my brain dashes a pail of cold water and sternly corrects me: "No Country...

Well, the writers strike is over, the Oscars will go on and, by golly, we conservatives just can’t wait to watch Hollywood pat itself on the back for another year of anti-American, anti-military, anti-traditionalist filmmaking. And while red-carpet anticipation is giving me the shivers, I can’t help but imagine an alternative Oscar ceremony in a different kind of Hollywood with this list of exciting best-picture nominees: * “Oono.” Hilarity ensues when a 16-year-old girl finds herself pregnant and gives the baby away to a similarly unmarried neurotic so that the infant grows up to become a drug-addicted loser and dies...

Ever since this year's Oscar season got under way in January, the Hollywood writers strike has loomed fatefully above it: first threatening to cancel Oscar night entirely, then stoking much expectation that the last-minute settlement would result in an evening either grander or duller than usual.

Right after that, a documentary against the Iraq war and GITMO are announced in a second award category. Is this outrageous, or is it me? Having the military introduce a film on same sex issues given the don't ask don't tell policy, and then have it followed by anti Iraq war, anti WOT films is political and using the troops as pawns IMHO. Quote from the winner: Let's hope we move this country away from the dark side. . .

... Oscar is 80 this year, which makes him now automatically the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. You have to admit, this is a huge election. An historic election. So much excitement. For the first time in so many years we don’t have an incumbent president or an incumbent vice-president. The field is wide open. Have you all had a chance to examine all the candidates, study their positions and pick the Democrat you’ll vote for? Democrats do have an historic race going. Hillary Clinton vs Barack Obama. Normally, when you see a black man or a woman president an...

It's an Oscar Party!Warning: might contain snark and/or discussions about fashion.Best Picture:"Atonement""Juno""Michael Clayton""No Country for Old Men""There Will Be Blood" Best Actor:George Clooney, "Michael Clayton"Daniel Day-Lewis, "There Will Be Blood"Johnny Depp, "Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street"Tommy Lee Jones, "In the Valley of Elah"Viggo Mortensen, "Eastern Promises" Best Actress:Cate Blanchett, "Elizabeth: The Golden Age"Julie Christie, "Away From Her"Marion Cotillard, "La Vie en Rose"Laura Linney, "The Savages"Ellen Page, "Juno" Best Supporting Actor:Casey Affleck, "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford"Javier Bardem, "No Country for Old Men"Hal Holbrook, "Into the Wild"Philip Seymour Hoffman, "Charlie Wilson's War"Tom Wilkinson,...

Well, the writers strike is over, the Oscars will go on and, by golly, we conservatives just can't wait to watch Hollywood pat itself on the back for another year of anti-American, anti-military, anti-traditionalist filmmaking. And while red-carpet anticipation is giving me the shivers, I can't help but imagine an alternative Oscar ceremony in a different kind of Hollywood with this list of exciting best picture nominees: "Oono." Hilarity ensues when a 16-year-old girl finds herself pregnant and gives the baby away to a similarly unmarried neurotic so that the infant grows up to become a drug-addicted loser and dies...

Complete list of 80th annual Academy Award nominations announced Tuesday: 1. Best Picture: "Atonement," "Juno," "Michael Clayton," "No Country for Old Men," "There Will Be Blood." 2. Actor: George Clooney, "Michael Clayton"; Daniel Day-Lewis, "There Will Be Blood"; Johnny Depp, "Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street"; Tommy Lee Jones, "In the Valley of Elah"; Viggo Mortensen, "Eastern Promises." 3. Actress: Cate Blanchett, "Elizabeth: The Golden Age"; Julie Christie, "Away From Her"; Marion Cotillard, "La Vie en Rose"; Laura Linney, "The Savages"; Ellen Page, "Juno." 4. Supporting Actor: Casey Affleck, "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert...

Some years ago, I was a movie reviewer. I started out at UCLA, reviewing for the Daily Bruin, and then moved on to be the first critic for Los Angeles magazine. All told, I stuck it out for about a dozen years. What I didn’t realize at the time was that, all in all, I had had it pretty good. But it took seeing a rash of movies recently to drive that point home. At least back then, the inflated egos of the director and the star didn’t make it inevitable that every movie would run well over two hours....

With the Golden Globes’ collapse, writers have struck a $75-million blow in their labour dispute, and the Oscars might well be the next casualty. The scribes aren’t celebrating, though, because no one expects this to end soon HOLLYWOOD – As symbols go, there probably isn't a more accurate one for the current crisis in show biz. It's a picture of Oscars host Jon Stewart with his fingers crossed, sheepishly hoping all is well, that adorns the new visitor's brochure of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The brochure was likely printed before the Writers' Guild of America (WGA),...

The Hollywood writers' strike claimed its biggest casualty this past week when the threat of picket lines forced NBC to pare back the annual Golden Globes awards ceremony. The network will air an hour-long news conference Sunday night instead of the star-studded, hours-long dinner event that drew 20 million viewers last year. The upending of the awards season comes as more television shows air their remaining first-run episodes produced before the strike began on Nov. 5. Popular entertainers such as Jay Leno, meanwhile, have faced criticism for crossing picket lines and returning to work earlier this month after showing reruns...

The Golden Globes are one thing, but what advertising executives are really worried about is the Oscars. The decision to truncate the Golden Globes from a full-blown awards show to a news conference is sending chills down Madison Avenue as it looks ahead to next month's Academy Awards broadcast, the second-biggest advertising night of the year after the Super Bowl. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences says the Oscars are still on schedule. But news that the Globes ceremony is being scratched left media buyers scrambling yesterday to come up with contingency plans in case the Oscars, too,...

Seriously Inconvenient Truth: Producers of Gore’s Film Asked to Return Oscars By Noel Sheppard | October 11, 2007 - 22:46 ET As media in America fall all over themselves with glee at the thought of the Global Warmingist-in-Chief winning a Nobel Peace Prize, Wednesday's findings by a British judge that Al Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth" contained nine material falsehoods has prompted a request to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to strip the movie's producers of the Oscars they received in February for "Best Documentary." How delicious.As reported by The West Australian Friday:   A conservative...

It was about 6:30 p.m. when Helen Thomas, the first recognizable face of the evening, showed up to the red carpet for the premiere of Michael Moore’s new documentary, “SiCKO.” She looked stylish in a black pantsuit and a large double strand of pearls. Was she excited to attend? “I hope so,” she replied. “How do I get in?” She was understandably confused. The long line of photographers, reporters, TV crews and clumps of screaming, chanting protesters made it difficult for moviegoers like Thomas to figure out how to maneuver themselves into the Uptown Theater on Wednesday night in Cleveland...

This week's Pop Culture Update is all about Oscar 2007. We got fashion, we've got sarcasm, we've got gossip.