The Voices in Frank's Head

Milla Jovovich will host the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Scientific and Technical Awards on Saturday, February 11, at the Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills. Jovovich will present 10 awards to 30 individual recipients during the evening. Milla Jovovich is the star of The Fifth Element and the Resident Evil franchise. She will next be seen in the feature Resident Evil: Retribution . Portions of the Scientific and Technical Awards presentation will be included in the Oscar ceremony. Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2011 will be presented on Sunday, February 26 at the Kodak Theatre and televised live by the ABC Television Network. The Oscar presentation also will be televised live in more than 225 countries worldwide.

A press release came across my desk recently, announced that John Myhre  had been named production designer for the 84th Annual Academy Awards. The odd thing is that I had to do a double take when I saw it. I could have sworn, when I first saw it, that it said John Mayer  was named production designer for the telecast. This prompted me to wonder why a singer was designing the production - for about 5 seconds until figured it all out. Will someone please tell me that I'm not the first person to confuse John Myhre with John Mayer?

Oscar Night - No Gay-Bashing and Actually Funny Brett Ratner  resigned as producer of the 84th Annual Academy Awards in the wake an uproar from anti-gay comments that he made. The Academy released a statement saying, in summary, that they wished him well but that derogatory comments such as his had comments. Soon after, it was announced that Eddie Murphy  had resigned as host of the Oscars. He was, of course, a longtime creative partner of Mr. Ratner's. Personally, I think this is a great combination of resignations. It means that there probably won't be any gay-bashing at the Oscars this year and we'll be able to get a host who is actually funny.

I published my picks for the 83rd Annual Academy Awards earlier this month. I only made picks in 18 of the 24 categories. Of those, I was right with 10 of them. It wasn't my best year ever as far as Oscar picks go. However, getting 10 out of 18 right isn't too shabby either.

It's almost time for the 83rd Annual Academy Awards. Every nominee this year is incredible. Of course, only one of them will be able to walk away with the Oscar. Oscars. Oscars. Oscars. I am proud to present my predictions for this year's Academy Awards. Overall, I believe it is going to be a big night for  The King's Speech. However, I do not think it will be able to dominate every category. These, therefore, are the films that I predict will win an Oscar in each of the various categories. Leading Actor Colin Firth  for  The King's Speech Supporting Actor Mark Ruffalo  for The Kid's Are Alright Leading Actress Natalie Portman  for Black Swan Supporting Actress Amy Adams  for The Fighter Animated Feature Toy Story 3 Art Direction Inception Cinematography Black Swan Costume Design Alice in Wonderland Directing The King's Speech Documentary Feature Exit Through the Gift Shop Documentary Short Killing in the Name Fil...

Hosting the Oscars It's official: the eternally yummy  Anne Hathaway will co-host the Academy Awards this year with  James Franco . The awards will air February 27 on ABC. I'm always happy to see anything with Anne Hathaway. Her at the Oscars is that much better.

The 82nd Annual Academy Awards are now only a little more than eight hours away. I usually make predictions in each of the categories. This time around, however, I feel like doing things differently. My Oscar prediction for this year is that the folks at YouTube will be spend most of their day tomorrow taking down videos in response to copyright complaints from ABC and the Academy. What's your prediction?

It's no secret that I think Once is one of the best movies to come along in a quite some time. I've posted about this fact here. However, I came across a video of Alvin from Alvin and the Chipmunks singing the Academy Award winning song "Falling Slowly" from Once . I cannot stop laughing at this. If you're not laughing then I guess you just need to go rent the movie.

I entered this world at 3:57 a.m. on August 20, 1970, which means that today is my birthday. I was lying in bed a moment ago; not quite able to get to sleep. My mind was pondering too many things all at once. Partly to assuage my own anxiety that I haven't accomplished enough at this point in my life, and partly as a mental exercise, I started making a mental list of all that I've seen, done or accomplished in my life that would be truly noteworthy. It wasn't long before this list became too long for me to keep track of in my own head. Since I still couldn't sleep - and the mental list probably was keeping me awake - I decided to compose all of these thoughts in one blog entry. This will, of course, be a fairly long entry. It's a recap of 38 years worth of existence, after all. Rather than go into every point, I'll just record some of the things that most people don't already know about me. In my 38 years on this planet, I published my own novel. It n...

Sydney Pollock passed away yesterday at the age of 73 after battling cancer. He was a two-time Academy Award winning actor, director and producer. As a director, he was the creative force behind such landmark films as Tootsie and Out of Africa . Earlier in his career, Sydney Pollock worked with Alfred Hitchcock when Mr. Pollock directed two episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour . As an actor, he appeared in a wide variety television shows and movies - from 1950s Have Gun Will Travel and The Twilight Zone to modern classics such The Sopranos and King of the Hill . Sydney Pollock will be missed.

I must have died because I think I'm in heaven at the moment. First, there's the fact that the Hamtramck Blowout starts tonight. Yes, that's right. The world's largest music festival (4 days + 20 venues) returns for its eleventh installment. And it all starts in a matter of hours. Not to be outdone by that, I was leafing through the Metro Times the other day and discovered that Gaelic Storm is performing next Thursday at the Royal Oak Music Theatre . In and of itself that's cool because they are a really cool band that I've always wanted to catch in a live performance. Plus, as if that wasn't cool enough, Academy Award winners Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova will be there on May 10. If you've read any of my blog posts about the movie Once , you will no doubt know that I practically tripped over myself to buy tickets to this one.

Variety is reporting that the 80th Annual Academy Awards this past Sunday had the lowest ratings ever. It's an absolute shame. This means that a lot of people not only missed Jon Stewart's top-notch monologue during the show, they also missed Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova performing "Falling Slowly" from their movie Once . They went on to win an Oscar for their song. However, let's face it, their movie was good enough that they deserved a lot more than just one nomination. Oh, well. Maybe next time around.

Okay - so I haven't posted very much this month. One could even say that I've been down right neglectful of all things in cyberspace. The fact of the matter is that I launched a brand new event this month - the first annual Detroit Oscar Film Festival . It showcased some of the Academy Award winning film makers who have come from Michigan as well as some of the young, up and coming ones. The main event happened at the Music Hall on January 13, but I also had a launch party at the Garden Lofts the evening before. I was even lucky enough that one of my favorite photographers showed up to snap some cool photos of the event . (Thanks again, Liza!) You can see the rest of Liza's amazing photos here . Anyway, the weeks leading up to Oscar Fest were a non-stop flurry of activity. There were interviews with local newspapers . I also went on three different radio stations (WDET-FM, WJR-AM and WWJ-AM) as well as the local ABC affiliate, WXYZ-TV. We had a decent turnout for an ...

This year's Academy Award nominations were announced this morning. I would feel remiss if I didn't take a moment to put forward my picks. We'll have to wait a little over a month to find out just how accurate these picks are. Best Picture : No Country for Old Men. Actor in a Leading Role: Viggo Mortensen in Eastern Promises. Actor in a Supporting Role: Tom Wilkinson in Michael Clayton . Actress in a Leading Role: Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth: The Golden Age . Actress in a Supporting Role: Amy Ryan in Gone Baby Gone . Director: Ethan & Joel Coen for No Country For Old Men . Original Screenplay: Tamara Jenkins for The Savages. Adapted Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson for There Will Be Blood . Animated Feature: Ratatouille . Foreign Language Film: 12 . Art Direction: Sarah Greenwood and Katie Spencer for Atonement . Cinematography: Roger Deakins for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford . Documentary Feature: Richard E. ...

Academy Award nominee Heath Ledger was f ound dead in New York City this afternoon at the age of 28. I first saw Mr. Ledger in his 1999 film 10 Things I Hate About You and was impressed with his acting abilities. My respect for him only grew as he moved into more challenging roles. He will be missed. His family and friends will be in my thoughts and prayers this evening.

I’m working with the Music Hall to produce an event in January that will bring a bunch of Oscar winners and nominees to Detroit. Someone got the idea that we should have a signature cocktail for the event. I got the assignment on Friday and promptly gathered together a crack team of expert alcoholics to test various recipes. All of them had to incorporate Faygo pop because Faygo is one of our sponsors. It was many hours of exhausting research but we finally perfected the Oscar Orange. I would tell you its ingredients, but it’s a trade secret until January 13th. Yeah, I love my job! After that I walked over the Kales Building in downtown Detroit where two different groups of people were having loft parties – one on the 11th floor and a second on the 3rd where we made our own gourmet pizzas from scratch. Both parties ended just in time for everyone to walk a couple of blocks to Campus Martius Park for the tree lighting. Tree lighting a Campus Martius is something that could have...

The 79th Annual Academy Awards are behind us now. Of my 24 Oscar predictions, 11 of them turned out to be true. I was thrilled that An Inconvenient Truth won for Best Documentary (Feature). I was slightly suprised that it also for Best Original Song. I was also thrilled that the Oscars went green this year , with so many of the nominees arriving in a zero emission car. I hope that next year the Academy takes it a step further and convinces the Kodak Theatre to use solar power (or some other source of renewable energy). However, I was complete shocked that Pan's Labyrith di dn't win for Best Foreign Language Film. I was convinced before the show that they were unstopable in that category. All in all - it was a great show and everyone involved with it deserves to be proud.

The 79th Annual Academy Awards are only hours away at this point. With that in mind, here are my picks for the Oscars in each of the various categories. Actor (Leading): Forest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland Ac tor (Supporting): Eddie Murphy (Dreamgirls) Actress (Leading): Helen Mirren (Volver) Actress (Supporting): Cate Blanchett (Notes on a Scandal) Animated Feature: Happy Feet Art Direction: Pan's Labyrinth Cinematography: The Illusionist Costume Design: Dreamgirls Director: Letters from Iwo Jima Documentary (Feature): An Incovenient Truth Documentary (Short): Recycled Life Film Editing: Pan's Labyrith Foreign Language Film: Pan's Labyrith Makeup: Pan's Labyrith Original Score: Babel Originial Song: "Love You, I Do" - Dreamgirls Short Film (Animated): The Little Matchgirl Short Film (Live Action): West Bank Story Sound Editing: Letters from Iwo Jima Sound Mixing: Dreamgirls Screenplay (Adapted): Children of Men S...