
Once again the tension is mounting. Oscar Eve is upon us.
The Smart Money, we are told, is on Helen Mirren. She is one of maybe three Sure Things set to look up from the stage of the Kodak Theater this Sunday into the full glow of Academy acclaim. The Smart Money is also on Dreamgirl Jennifer Hudson and — until just recently — Eddie Murphy.
Now readers, we know you’re just like us: longtime Academy-Award watchers, the kind of people who started rehearsing their Oscar speeches in the mirror at age six. We Nightcharmers know that Smart Money predictions and Shoo-Ins are a tradition of Oscar Night.
So is The Major Upset. (more…)

Elmer meet Harry (Daniel Radcliffe, at right), in a just released still from the upcoming summer release
Somehow we knew “the Buff Boys of Boystown” would find their alliterative way into the Surreal and Continuing After-Death Life of Anna Nicole Smith.
Every cable news station has turned into Access Hollywood.
Atwitter this week the gay blogs have been.
As Brokeback was a clear-eyed picture of gay men in love that accurately assayed an American landscape of self-loathing and violence, so too did Dreamgirls, in its seemingly lighter way, show the sidetracking of black talent in a culture that awards sameness over sharp-angled innovation, that can only superficially look at the sights, sounds, moans and screams of its Jim Crow heritage.
When you begin life as a Mouseketeer on the Disney Channel and you’re heading into 




