Los Angeles, CA

As you may have heard by now, the Golden Globes have been somewhat canceled this year due to the ongoing writer’s strike. There will still be awards, and there will definitely be glammed up celebs in designer gowns and tuxes hitting the parties and walking away with more goodies in one night than you or I will ever see, but there will be no official ceremony, and probably nothing will be televised. Many entertainment addicts are mourning this latest casualty of the dragging strike, but I say good!

Good? Yes, because this means a superfluous entertainment award show is knocked back down to just that — an unnecessary show for overinflated egos. If any of you are interested in old Hollywood, then you know by now that the Oscars, or Academy Awards, as they were called before they earned their more well-known nickname in the 1930s, was just a short ceremony held at the Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles to show some appreciation for outstanding actors at the time. You can find footage of past award ceremonies on You Tube and elsewhere, and the overall attitude is very casual. No one gives a six minute acceptance speech, there were no waterworks or hissyfits if someone didn’t win. It was just a statue. Obviously, a lot has changed, but maybe not for the better. Maybe it’ll do Hollywood good to go back to a more modest mindset. With the setback they’ve been handed by not treating their writers as equal human beings, maybe they’ll finally learn some humility. Especially if the writers’ allies, the actors themselves, continue to side with the writers and boycott the Oscars as well. Is this what it’ll take to get Hollywood to take writers seriously? Or will they still think that the people who create and animate the characters we know and love are still on par with the guy who drives the catering truck?

To read more about the ongoing developments regarding the Golden Globes, stay tuned with CNN.

I like to bring you all sorts of news here, as you can see. Yesterday morning the surviving seven actors — out of the original 124 — who played Munchkins in the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz received their own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. They have a film buff from Illinois by the name of Ted Bulthaup to thank for this honor, since he was responsible for raising the funds necessary to buy the star for the actors. He also had companies pitch in to ensure that the day was memorable for the actors. They all arrived in horse drawn carriages, wearing their distinctive bright costumes that are instantly recognizable as Munchkin garb.

The actors were interviewed at Grauman’s Chinese Theater, before a special screening of The Wizard of Oz. They all still speak in their unique high voices, though most are a little hard of hearing now and didn’t have too much to say during the interview. For Ruth Duccini, who had moved from Minnesota just to play a Munchkin villager for the film, being onset with other little people had been the first time she had seen other people just like her. It also happened to be where she met her future husband.

I think it was incredibly sweet for a fan to go this far out of his way to honor the remaining actors from a classic film, actors that are sadly overlooked and forgotten throughout time. I’m sure future fans will appreciate what Ted Bulthaup has done and that these seven actors appreciate his work for their recognition as well.

You can read more about the event through the L.A. Times.

A new film called Just Buried will be screening at the American Film Market in Santa Monica this weekend. Through a special offer, you can view this film, currently making the rounds at various international film festivals, for free! That’s right, free. What’s the catch? No catch — at least, not really. All you have to do is send an email to justburied [at] trilogyent.com to RSVP, then print out a copy of this Craig’s List bulletin and bring it with you. That’s it!

The screening is at Laemmle Theatres, address 1332 2nd Street in Santa Monica, and will be shown in theatre 1 at 9 AM. If you’d like to learn more about the film before watching it, you can find more at their IMDb page here.

star Rose Byrne and director Chaz Thorne

Ahh, drive-ins; vivid memories of my parents taking advantage of my small build by concealing me on the floor of the back seat. Now that I think of it, maybe that’s why I’m not keen on sitting in the back seat of cars…

In lieu of your diminuitive children, take advantage of balmy nights and stellar movie openings at Pacific Vineland Drive-in. One of the dinosaurs left to enjoy summer cinematic enjoyment, this drive-in is open year-round, has expanded to 4 screens, with an overall capacity for over 1500 cars. Part of the drive-in experience was the raggedy intercom, threaded thorugh the cracked car window that never stopped the mosquitoes from feasting. Fortunately, Vineland’s audio is provided by FM stereo radio broadcast.

The best theatre to go to on an opening night of a really fun movie is The Vista (4473 Sunset Dr
Los Angeles, CA). I’ve been there for the opening of Snakes On a Plane, Pirates of the Caribbean II, and 300 and all three times it was just the movie-going experience that I was hoping for: a fun, enthusiastic crowd minus the obnoxiousness that you can expect from say, Mann Chinese 6.

An added bonus: tickets are $8 bucks for an evening showing and the front door usher is usually in costume in the spirit of the opening flick.

Spider-Man 3 is gonna be huge. Actually, scratch that: It is huge. I personally can’t wait to go see it. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make it to theaters on Friday…but here’s a list for the diehard fans to go see it at the earliest possible times: Midnight!
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