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…)

Muggles are the cwaziest people, as Elmer Fudd might say if he could ever get the hat with the earflaps off and forget about wabbits.

Elmer meet Harry (Daniel Radcliffe, at right), in a just released still from the upcoming summer release Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix .

As the quite teenaged Harry demonstrates, every boy has a magic wand in Potterville — but we’ve already gone on at rococo lengths about the nude cheek of stage actor Daniel.

Harry knows all about knuckleheaded Muggles and their small-minded ass-backward Dursley ways. He would not be surprised — as neither were we — to read a story that appeared today in the Washington Post:

Pentecostal chaplain in the Army has a crisis of faith, switches to Wiccan and is booted out of the military. (more…)

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.

West Hollywood’s finest appear in no more than a walk-on in this, the third act of The Prince and the Polegirl, and yet…

Who can look away when buns and pecs compete with each other for Most Outlandish Feature on a circuit boy’s body?

Who can not fully understand the mad lusting after such super-sized geegaws or why they would play so … definitive… so damning … a role in a certain paternity claim for the most fathered child in America?

From the wonderfully nasty newsletter popbitch : (more…)

Okay, so far its been 24/7 Anna Nicole.

Every cable news station has turned into Access Hollywood.

War in Iraq? Bombs over Iran? Who gives a hoot!

All we wanna know is did Zsa Zsa Gabor’s husband father Baby Dannielynn?

And so Nightcharm will scoop them all with 10 Totally True*, Totally Shocking Things About the Anna Nicole that Nobody Knew.

And when we say TRUE, we mean The Star true. We mean The Globe true! (At left, Anna does Marlyn in an ad for the animal-rights organization PETA.)

Here then are 10 things you’ll soon hear repeated — we’re sure — by the Inquiring Minds at 24/7 News, ever on the hunt to hike up ratings with new Anna Nicole tidbits. (more…)

Atwitter this week the gay blogs have been.

And not just the gay blogs, the mainstream media as well. Everyone seems tweaked over some shirtless shots of “Harry Potter” (actually, the actor who plays him, Daniel Radcliffe, at left), who at 17 looks 17 and so sports a modestly adult body. This body comes standard with such secondary characteristics as five-o’clock shadow and those wisps of hair that taper from belly button to pubes, lovingly called “a treasure trail.”

Here’s what’s roiling those who are roiled by such things: Radcliffe has very famously played a child — a child increasingly younger than himself as the Potter movies lag the Potter books by about two and a half years. (When the series ends, Harry will be all of 17*.)

The commotion is not so much about Radcliffe’s rather staid display of shirtlessness but the fact that the pictures were taken in conjunction with the actor’s coming debut on the London stage in a play where he will be — try not to yawn — briefly nude in a few artfully dimmed scenes. (more…)

And the Answer is …. Yes!

Last month we wondered if Dreamgirls would be aced out of a best-picture win for reasons similar to 2005’s shut out of Brokeback Mountain.

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.

Well today, with the announcement of the Oscar nominees, we got our answer. Dreamgirls received the most nominations (eight to be exact) of any one picture in the field, but fell shy of a best picture run. The candidates for best picture are Babel, The Departed, Letters from Iwo Jima, Little Miss Sunshine, and The Queen.

Why was Dreamgirls brought right up to the top and yet shut out from the ultimate award? After the jump we run our original reflections on the matter, from December 20, 2006. (more…)

When you begin life as a Mouseketeer on the Disney Channel and you’re heading into elderly twinkdom, you get a little … well, desperate.

You might suddenly want street creds and ghetto bling, gold teeth and inky tattoos.

Anything but the naked, virgin chest of yesteryear’s Boy Band sensation.

You might want to be Justin Timberlake, who this month will debut in the film Alpha Dog as a white gang banger.

Think Emenem — but not repellent. Think, actually, babydoll cute with a slaveboy haircut and a lovely sun-kissed six-pack constantly on display.

Yes, Justin is all Street — except the street is Rodeo Drive.
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