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Julie and Julia has all of the winning ingredients of your lady-happy chick-flick, mixed with some run-of-the-mill award baiting biographical gubbins and sprinkled with a couple of ‘it’ leads – but this recipe is overcooked.

It’s hard to find a more likeable lady in Hollywood than Amy Adams, with the innocent twinkle in her eye and an irresistible charm to her performances, she is perfectly capable here of portraying one half of this twin-bio as Julie Powell. The other half comes from Meryl Streep, in another performance for her to literally chew on in the hope it’ll shit out a few more awards. Here she jumps into some big shoes to play the hormonally challenged Julia Child.

It is really Streep’s show – as you would expect – managing to make a decent embodiment of Child and her eccentricities, including the voice that sounds like a drowning goat. It’s a thorough performance and slaps a bit of smugness on Streep’s part (she must have had some space in her awards cupboard to fill).

As Julie starts blogging her way through Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, we get flashbacks to Child becoming the legendary master chef that she was known as. It’s a tale of two women who struggle through culinary woes and the only missing piece from the biopic checklist is the usual drug addiction act – but the only cold turkeys are the ones in her fridge.

The film never really exceeds its expectations but manages to be an enjoyable romp. It doesn’t even act as gratuitous food porn (you’ll have to look elsewhere for that), as all the culinary delights on offer won’t urge you to be prepping lobster thermidor any time soon.

As the plot trickles on we just see the two characters’ meteoric rise to success, with few struggles on the way. Only Julie comes across an obstacle in the form of the most pathetic break-up argument ever to have been committed to the silver screen (we’ve shouted at children in the street with more ferocity). In fact, Julie’s boyfriend Eric (Chris Messina) is a wet blanket, given nothing to do but stuff his ridiculously sculpted face and then hit on Adams – how could we possibly like a character who gets paid to do that?

The film seems to build-up to a meeting between the two leads that never happens, and the happy ending is loosely pinned together in the cheesiest way possible. Julie and Julia themselves are a couple of sweet characters with a nice bit of decorative icing on top, but after indulging on them for too long we felt the urge to be sick.

‘Spray Rating: 3/5

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Miley Cyrus was at the Oscars on Sunday, possibly because Hannah Montana: The Movie was up for the Biggest Load Of Cack award.

But possibly not. Either way, Miley Cyrus was at the Oscars, and her date for the night was her newest Liam Hemsworth. We’re telling you this not because the pair of them are rumoured to be dating, or because Miley came tantalisingly close to confirming those rumours. No, we’re telling you this because, while describing Hemsworth, Miley Cyrus said “I think we’re both deeper than normal people.”

You heard it here first, everyone – Miley Cyrus is deeper than you. No matter what you do in your entire life, you’ll never even be a tenth as profound as Miley Cyrus is, even when she’s just talking about her hair or whatever. Sorry to be the ones who had to break it to you. Deal with it.

She may only be 17 years old, but Miley Cyrus has been put through the wringer when it comes to romance. She’s run the gamut of boyfriends in her time. She’s done the physical thing by going out with that underwear boy. She’s done the annoying, underdeveloped squeaky-voiced eunuch thing by going out with a Jonas Brother. She even spent a while hanging out with a creepy, long-haired, vest-wearing weirdo with a horrible mini-beard who was old enough to be her dad. Oh, that was her dad? Sorry, our mistake.

But what Miley Cyrus craved more than anything was her intellectual and spiritual equal. You know, somebody who could match her thirst for knowledge. Someone who understood the staggering profundity of, say, standing next to a man of Pacific-Asian descent and making your eyes go all slitty or taking most of your clothes off and rolling around on a guy’s lap for an ill-advised MySpace photoshoot. Someone like Liam Hemsworth.

Liam Hemsworth is Miley Cyrus’s co-star in the upcoming The Last Song, which is being heralded as Miley’s first foray into adult-orientated films because – even though it looks like a lightweight piece of teenage nonsense that nobody would ever willingly watch – at no point does she put on a yellow wig and sing a song about how happy rainbows make her feel or whatever. And, reportedly, he’s also Miley Cyrus’s boyfriend.

What drew the two of them together? Oh, we don’t know – maybe the fact that they’re both basically smaller versions of Arthur Schopenhauer and Charles François d’Abra de Raconis but with perkier teeth. Here’s how Liam Hemsworth and Miley Cyrus described each other in Teen Vogue this month:

“Working with Miley was a alot easier than I thought it was going to be,” Hemsworth admits. “From the first time we [met], It was like I had known her before.” His famous girlfriend adds, “I think we’re both deeper than normal people–what they think and how they feel. He’s very grateful for what he has, but he doesn’t let it go to his head. I’m like that too.”

Finally! Someone’s given Miley Cyrus credit for being the transcendentally enlightened individual that she is. Because, come on, if the lyrics to Party In The USA aren’t on the same level as, say, Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy: Philosophy as Rigorous Science, and Philosophy and the Crisis of European Man by Edmund Husserl then we’ll eat our hats. In fact, we heard that Miley’s next single is to be a meditation on Mortimer Adler’s assertion that, to avoid the naturalistic fallacy, we must formulate at least one self-evident prescriptive truth, allowing us to reason to the truth of other prescriptives.

What? It’s not? It’s going to be another song about how boys make Miley’s heart smile? Oh fine, forget everything we just said.

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If last night’s Oscars taught us anything, it’s that George Clooney can do no wrong.

There he was, right in the front row, pulling a thousand faces that made him look like everything from a bored child in church to a bored child in church with a nasty case of intestinal parasites, and the ladies still swooned all over him. Why? Because George Clooney and his ilk are lotharios. If only you could be more like him, eh? Eh?

Luckily, we’re here to help. To make sure that everyone has the chance to become an old-school jet-setting charmer like Clooney or Brad Pitt or Roger Moore, we’ve knocked up this handy guide to becoming an international charmer. Enjoy, and thank us later…

Dress code

At first we were going to suggest a sharp Don Draper-style suit, but that’s no good. A hit with the ladies he may be, but Draper’s all about work. Imagine what a sweltering wreck you’d be if you spent your summer strolling around Capri in a full suit and tie. No, to pull this look off, you have to think like the masters – what you need is a tiny pair of Speedos, with a velvet smoking jacket to set it off in the evenings. As for accessories, you can never go wrong with a giant gold medallion nestled in a luxurious mane of chest hair. You may also like to think about experimenting with a moustache.

Transport

To become a true international lothario, you’ll need a yacht and a tiny Italian sports car. But then you’ll only be a good international lothario, and they’re ten a penny. If you want to be a great international lothario, why not invest in a helicopter? After all, any idiot can drive a car along the Amalfi coast, but only a true jet-setter can zoom over it in their own chopper with three giggling supermodels on each arm. Be sure to throw your head back and laugh like you haven’t got a care in the world every couple of miles, too. You’re much more likely to crash as a result of doing this, but what do you care? You don’t fear death, you’re rich!

Accent

Remember, you’re an international lothario. Blathering away in your natural Billericay accent won’t get you anywhere. You need to sound witty and profound and charming and deep if you’re going to ahead with the European glamourcenti. So why not take a leaf out of Daniel Day Lewis’s book? In Nine, Daniel adopted a bizarre mid-European accent so utterly bewildering that the likes of Penelope Cruz, Kate Hudson, Marion Cotillard and Nicole Kidman couldn’t help but throw themselves at him. Remember, nothing is sexier than sounding a bit like Borat’s developmentally-challenged younger nephew.

Hobbies

As a man of incredible style and wealth, you’ll need to find something to occupy your time. And playing Mario Kart in your pants probably won’t square with your new image as a jet-setting charmer. You could collect art, or become a wine buff, or learn to appreciate opera – but that’s hardly exciting. Some form of sporting activity works well – look at what a dollop of tennis prowess did for noted jetsetter Jacques D’Azur, on and off the court – but if you’re going to do something, you may as well do it properly. So why not develop a side career as a master criminal instead? It’ll ensure that you remain a member of the idle rich, it’ll keep you in expensive clothes, it’ll give you a hint of danger that will drive the ladies wild and – if Danger: Diabolik is any indication – you’ll get to live in a psychedelic underground cave that contains a giant, rotating, money-covered bed. Plus you get to wear all-in-one leather ninja suits, too. How many wine buffs can get away with that?

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Iron Man 2 is one of 2010’s biggest films – because what do people like more than beardy, middle-aged punching robots?

Nothing, that’s what. But what can we expect from Iron Man 2? Will there be more explosions? Yes! Will there be more fight scenes? Yes! Will there be more gnarled, topless old men who talk in an affected Russian accent so ludicrous that it’d be offensive if it wasn’t so indecipherable? Yes!

We know this because a new Iron Man 2 trailer has just been released. But, like most modern things, it’s all a bit too whizz-bang for us to understand. So we’ve decided to slow down the new Iron Man 2 trailer and talk you through it scene by scene. Once again, you’re welcome…

So let’s get things started right away. Here’s the new Iron Man 2 trailer…

Wait, what just happened? We don’t know either. That was such a jumble of unconnected images and noises that there isn’t a human being on the face of the planet who could have absorbed all of that information at once. So let’s put on our decoding hats and work out exactly what Iron Man 2 will hold…

IRON MAN 2 TRAILER SCENE 1

Hey, look, it’s Sherlock Holmes! No, wait, not Sherlock Holmes, the other one. You know, Charlie Chaplin. No, wait, not Charlie Chaplin either. That bloke from Ally McBeal? Yes, that’s who it is. He’s wearing a metal suit, but that’s probably got something to do with one of Ally McBeal’s zany fantasy sequences. Yes, that’s almost definitely what’s happening here.

IRON MAN 2 TRAILER SCENE 2

It’s Scarlett Johansson. This is undoubtedly a good thing, because she always improves every movie she ever stars in. Like, say, that crappy Woody Allen film. And Michael Bay’s The Island. And He’s Just Not That Into You. And… oh, who are we kidding? Scarlett Johansson makes all films worse. Incidentally, the sound you can hear over this shot in the Iron Man 2 trailer is the sound of Gwyneth Paltrow grinding her teeth because she’s not the prettiest woman in Iron Man any more.

IRON MAN 2 TRAILER SCENE 3

This is Mickey Rourke’s big scene. His big monologue that introduces not only his character’s personal philosophy, but also one of the main themes of the film. So it’s a bit of a bloody shame that he’s decided to do it in a ridiculously impenetrable Russian accent. We think he’s saying “Ivooka may cobbley, pee poo wiseizto bleevim. Deyvill deploy dewatoo anna shaksucum. AHAHAHA!” But we could be wrong.

IRON MAN 2 TRAILER SCENE 4

Here are some of the other enemies that Iron Man will face in this movie. They’re stormtroopers. No, wait, not stormtroopers. Footsoldiers. No, wait, not those either. Oh, we don’t know.

IRON MAN 2 TRAILER SCENE 5

But, look, here’s Robert Downey Jr and Not Terrence Howard blowing some of them up. Poor Terrence Howard. He must watch this and feel so sad that it isn’t a wholly computer-generated image of a robot of roughly his size that’s blowing up other computer-generated robots in a film.

IRON MAN 2 TRAILER SCENE 6

In this scene, Scarlett Johansson makes something hot fire out of Robert Downey Jr’s penis. No, wait, we meant she’s made his weapon ejaculate. No, wait, we meant she’s wanked off his metal shaft. No wait, we… oh, actually we were right. Scarlett Johansson has wanked off Robert Downey Jr’s metal shaft.

IRON MAN 2 TRAILER SCENE 7

In Iron Man 2, the Iron Man suit can be reduced into the size of a portable suitcase. The moral here is that you should never stand behind Robert Downey Jr at airport security. If a line can be held up by someone not taking their laptop out of their bag properly, imagine what they’d do if he tried to put a fully-functioning flying robot through the scanners. You’d be waiting for hours. You’d probably miss your plane. He’s inconsiderate, that’s what Robert Downey Jr is. Screw you, Robert Downey Jr! You can stick your Iron Man 2 up your arse!

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Remember Hedgehog Launcher? Good, because MegaDrill is that in reverse. Rather than fling a hedgehog into space to collect coins dangling from the sky, MegaDrill gets you to plough into the ground to collect coins lodged in the Earth’s crust.

And rather good it is, too. MegaDrill gives you 25 goes to dig into the ground, then upgrade your machinery, then dig again, then upgrade again, until you’re able to dig so deep that you can collect diamonds as big as a house. Worth playing this one until the end, too, just to see the weird animation when you complete it. To our knowledge, MegaDrill might be the only online game in history to show a cut-scene of you paying a percentage of your earnings as tax.

Play MegaDrill now

That’s the last we’ll see of Lil Wayne for a while. He’ll be spending the next year having the time of his life.

Admittedly he’ll be in jail. But if Lil Wayne has any sense, he’ll use this year as a chance to refocus his priorities – he could maybe take up painting, or study meditation, or learn to love being stabbed in the thigh by an institutionalised lunatic whenever the warden isn’t around. Stuff like that.

But that’s all up to Lil Wayne. After two false starts, he was finally sentenced to a year in jail for attempted possession of a weapon yesterday. That said, he could be out in eight months for good behaviour. Fingers crossed that happens, because we really don’t want to wait another year for the Lil Wayne Christmas album.

Oh Lil Wayne, the things you’re going to miss. The World Cup. The inaugural Youth Olympic Games. Shanghai’s World Expo. The Russian launch of the world’s first Peruvian nanosatellite. If only Lil Wayne had thought of all these monumental fixtures before he allowed a gun onto his tour bus in 2007, maybe he wouldn’t have been hauled off to jail for a year yesterday. Remember the Peruvian nanosatellites, that’s our motto. Always remember the Peruvian nanosatellites.

That said, Lil Wayne has been enjoying a lot more freedom than he must have expected – yesterday marked his third attempt at sentencing. First it was postponed because Lil Wayne had a bit of toothache. Then it was postponed because the courthouse caught fire unexpectedly. But yesterday there was nowhere to hide, and Lil Wayne found himself being sent to the big house. BBC News reports:

Rapper Lil Wayne has been sentenced to a year in prison after pleading guilty to gun possession. His lawyer said the rapper expected to be held in protective custody, separated from other prisoners, at New York City’s Rikers Island jail complex. The singer delivered a brief bow as he was led from Manhattan criminal court. Lil Wayne… has vowed to keep writing while behind bars.

That’s encouraging. If anything’s going to get Lil Wayne through the next year of his life, it’s dedication to his craft. He has the potential to come out of this jail sentence with a career-defining album about his experiences in prison. Or just lots and lots of half-finished lyric sheets that were abandoned because he couldn’t think of anything that rhymed with ‘Please stop bumming me’.

Either way, it’ll have to be better than his last album, on the basis that everything that has ever existed or will ever exist is better than his last album.

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The Earth is a big place full of water, clouds, deserts and the occasional country. Now wouldn’t it be rubbish if everywhere was the same?

If everywhere was depressing as, say, Hartlepool, then nobody would feel any joy. Thankfully, various countries have their own differences. America gave us extra large portions and Scotland introduced us to the worst sort of diet possible. And the UK? Well, after chomping on the national dish of curry and imported lager, it’s time to finish the evening off with a fight.

One country which is constantly admired for its general mentalness is Japan. Honestly, pretty much anything goes over there, and the place has a lot more than cute girls eating bits of fish wrapped up in rice and seaweed. Now the ladies have gotten weirdly angry and want to hurt themselves for your pleasure. Video after the jump, of course…

Don’t fret poppets; we wouldn’t divert your attention to something like that if it was real. Even we’re not that wrong in the head. Instead this is an old clip from a Japanese movie called Tokyo Gore Police.

Like you, we don’t have any idea what’s going and, yes, we are confused about why someone made a fake commercial with girls stabbing themselves. But did it amuse us for ten seconds? Yes, it certainly achieved its aim. So thank us by sending chocolate.

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Don’t you just hate it when people overstep their mark in society? After all, what right does Katie Price have to really have a pop at anyone?

Her whole career has been built on her flashing her jumper bumps to people who’ve picked up a newspaper or gone out to purchase some gentlemen’s literature. Against the genetic code of booby models, she does seems to have a few braincells that occasionally click together. Although she is still a mouthy cow.

Nothing positive ever happens for Katie. Either the window cleaner has nicked a warm pie cooling on her windowsill or she’s just sobbing about relationships. One of her main issues seems to be with the seemingly perfect Peter Andre. Everyone seems to love him, just like cake. Know anyone who doesn’t like a nice baked good? Of course not, cake’s lovely. But Katie Price hates Peter Andre nonetheless. Perhaps he’s made of cake or something. Oh, we don’t know.

As a pop star, the general rule of thumb is that they should have a nice clean cut image. And Peter Andre has it all, a firm body for the ladies to squeal over, a foreign accent we can understand and the ability to nail crap dance moves. He doesn’t seem the sort to knock back several pints of lager and beat his partner with a kebab box.

Or does he? Because coming out of the woodwork like a typical crazy lady is his former wife Katie Price. Or Jordan if she feels like baring her tits. Even though everyone in the world knows about their relationship falling to bits and not caring, she likes to remind us that it happened. She told The Mirror:

“Peter is dragging me through the courts at every opportunity. He wants me to lose money and make me unhappy. It’s sad Pete’s having to do that, it’s like he wants me to lose everything I’ve worked so hard for.”

The oddest thing about this quote is that it comes from LA. That not odd because we think she should be banned from being there, but because  Katie Price has somehow blagged her way into one of Elton John’s merry old Oscar parties. How she qualifies to go to a movie party is beyond us. That’s like getting us to judge a diving competition due to our expert knowledge of spectacularly falling over when drunk.

The Mirror also reports that she is going to release more grizzly details in a book that will no doubt be put on sale for £25 for all her moronic fans to buy. It’s strange that for a person who is constantly being filmed, we have the chance to read about her life too. Especially given the presumption that her fans can read. She said again:

“You just wait. It’s time the truth came out on me and Pete. I’m not going to hold anything back. I’d be very scared if I was him.”

Blah blah blah blah blah.

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No wonder people are flocking to see Alice In Wonderland – where else would they get to see the dream team of Tim Burton, Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp?

Oh, that’s right. Everywhere else. Anyway, why has Alice In Wonderland topped the weekend box office? Early reviews have largely been negative, citing a lazily-defined plot and an over-reliance on computer animated 3D graphics as its main weaknesses, so maybe the reason why it’s done so well is because people keep confusing it with Avatar.

Or maybe it’s top of the weekend box office because everyone thought they were really seeing a film called Alice In Sunderland, and then became disappointed when they were presented with a fantastical fairy tale instead of a grim melodrama about a dirt-covered northerner shuffling around a bleak industrial town eating dead animals off the road for sustenance.

It’s a big weekend for movies. Thanks to yesterday’s Oscars, we now know what the best film of the last year was, and – more importantly – we also know what Meryl Streep looks like in a nice dress. And thanks to the US weekend box office, we know that people quite like Alice In Wonderland. Or at least they liked the look of Alice In Wonderland enough to pay to see it, and then didn’t hate it enough to torch their cinemas to the ground midway through act two. That’s roughly the same thing, isn’t it?

Here’s the US weekend box office top five…

1 - Alice In Wonderland (Tim Burton loves the UK enough to adapt Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Sweeney Todd and now Alice In Wonderland into movies. Next up: a breathtaking reimagining of 1987 Rumpole Of The Bailey episode Rumpole And The Judge’s Elbow, starring Johnny Depp as Rumpole and Helena Bonham Carter as the judge’s elbow) $116,300,000

2 - Brooklyn’s Finest (A Tesco-style experiment. Brookyln’s Finest is the first film to be released, directed by the brain behind Training Day and starring the likes of Ethan Hawke and Richard Gere, and tickets to see it are relatively expensive. Next week it’ll release Brooklyn’s Value – a remake of Brooklyn’s Finest directed by Nick Love and starring Dean Gaffney and Paul Danan. Tickets will be 10p each) $13,500,000

3 - Shutter Island (We’ve still managed to get this far without figuring out what the big Shutter Island twist is. Unless the twist is that Leonardo DiCaprio was mad all along, in which case we may as well not bother bloody watching it now) $13,300,000

4 - Cop Out (There’s a very good chance that more people watched Bruce Willis’s cameo in the new Gorillaz video than Bruce Willis in Cop Out this week. There’s a lesson there somewhere) $9,145,000

5 - Avatar (Almost definitely Avatar’s last week in the weekend box office. That’s unless people start spazzing out about how it did at the Oscars and go to see it again and it goes back to number one next week and our nightmare starts afresh, of course) $7,700,000

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Fact: nobody watches the Oscars because they like the films. They watch the Oscars because they like the dresses.

And this year’s Oscars red carpet didn’t disappoint. The frocks on show definitely heralded a new wave of old school glamour, with elegant silver and blue gowns de rigueur among this year’s crop of A-list fashionistas. It really was a glorious sight to behold.

Sadly, we haven’t been able to secure any of the copyrighted red carpet paparazzi photos from last night’s Oscars red carpet, so we’re afraid we can’t show them to you. However, undeterred, we’ve teamed up with a leading photo-realistic graphic agency to bring you a high-quality image gallery of last night’s greatest sartorial triumphs, utilising an array of cutting-edge CG technology. What you’re about to witness is so uncannily accurate that you’ll feel like you’re actually standing on the Oscars red carpet alongside the likes of Sandra Bullock and Kristen Stewart. You’re welcome…

SANDRA BULLOCK

As you can see here, Sandra Bullock showed impressive restraint during her Oscars moment of glory, paring down the accessories to really allow her silver Marchesa gown to be the star of the show. A triumph.

CAREY MULLIGAN

Carey Mulligan made a spectacular Oscars debut in a daring strapless Prada number that radiated glamour while still reminding the world that she’s still young enough for a bit of fashion fun every now and then. Both the intricate detailing of the frock and Mulligan’s glowing joie de vivre are captured perfectly in this picture.

MARIAH CAREY

Never let it be said that Mariah Carey doesn’t make the most of her assets! Mariah turned heads from the moment she set foot on the Oscars red carpet in a stunning blue Valentino gown that we’re bringing to you in such tremendous quality that you almost want to reach through your computer screen and feel the softness of the fabric for yourself. Mariah also hinted that ’something special’ would be happening in the next few months. More special than that outfit? We don’t think so, sister!

KRISTEN STEWART

Talk about the caterpillar that transformed into a beautiful butterfly! Kristen Stewart won the hearts of millions of fashion fans on last night’s Oscars red carpet as she emerged in a figure-hugging Monique Lhullier gown so attention-grabbing that it didn’t need to be accompanied by any jewellery whatsoever. This picture replicates Kristen’s Oscar look so comprehensively that even her own mother would think that this was a photo.

GABOUREY SIDIBE

Not sure. A tarpaulin or something. A blue one, with white bits on it. Honestly, not a clue.

This should be all the Oscars red carpet fashion that you’d ever need. PopSugar has a bunch of actual photos of the dresses, but frankly they aren’t as good as ours and we’d be offended if you actually went there to see them. You hear us? Offended!

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Described as ‘a full-on music festival that just happens to be taking place in the mountains’, Snowbombing is an exhilarating week-long whirlwind of momentous moments in mythical venues, delivered by a blizzard of brilliant bands and awesome avalanche of artists.

To get you primed for all that fun in the snow, Volvo and Snowbombing have kindly donated a snowboard, 8G iPod nano and iTunes vouchers to us, that one lucky winner can get their mitts on by answering a simple question…

Volvo is also giving five mates the chance to join the Snowbombing Road Trip via www.facebook.com/insidevolvouk! Driven by Volvo – 120 cars and 500 revved up Snowbombers driving from London to Mayhorfen, Austria – you’ll join DJs, celebs and bands including The Enemy and Reverend and The Makers for the ultimate travelling party.

Your final destination is Snowbombing – the music festival in the snow from 3rd – 10th April, with fantastic bands, parties and snowboarding, set against the stunning Austrian mountains. Plus Volvo will take care of your accommodation, ski and snowboard hire, lift passes AND you’ll get a brand new Volvo XC60 DRIVe to drive on the Road Trip!

To be in with a chance of winning the Snowboard, 8G iPod nano and £25 iTunes voucher simply watch the video below and answer this question:

Which of the following is one of the headliners at this Snowbombing festival this year?

•    Thin Man Chubby
•    Fatboy Slim
•    Fats and Small

Email your answer, along with your contact details to hello[AT]hecklerspray.com with the subject line ‘SNOWBOARD!’, and we’ll pick a winner at random at midnight on Sunday March 14. UK readers only, please. Good luck!

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Last night’s Oscars set up a number of rivalries – Sandra Bullock vs Meryl Streep, Steve Martin vs Alec Baldwin.

Crippling tedium vs wanting to shoot yourself in the mouth. But perhaps the biggest Oscars rivalry of them all was Avatar vs The Hurt Locker. One a low-budget issue-led drama about modern warfare, the other the world’s most expensive PS3 cutaway scene. One a commercial juggernaut, the other a flop. One directed by a woman, the other directed by a man with woman’s hair, which is more or less the same thing. Which film would emerge from the Oscars triumphant?

Turns out it was The Hurt Locker. So, you know, it’s probably time to start pretending that you’ve already seen it and stuff.

Chances are you’ve probably already seen some footage from the Oscars by now. And, if not, maybe you followed one of the billion Oscars liveblogs that just about every website on the face of the planet decided to run last night. And, if not, maybe you’ve read stories about it in newspapers or heard your colleagues talking about it. But if none of that applies to you, hey, we’re here. And if you’re primarily getting your Oscars news from us, you have every reason to feel utterly ashamed of yourself.

But nevertheless, here’s a whistlestop rundown of all the major Oscar winners from last night. Just in case you haven’t already seen them. But you have. We honestly don’t know why we bother sometimes.

Best Supporting Actor – Christoph Waltz, for the uncannily accurate German accent he trained so hard to nail in Inglourious Basterds.

Best Supporting Actress – Mo’Nique, which means she’ll have to gradually start phasing her surname into the credits of her future movies, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson-style, because she’s a real actress now.

Best Actor – Jeff Bridges, not because Crazy Heart is very good – because it really isn’t – but because he grew a beard and he probably won’t get nominated ever again after appearing in that bloody Tron film.

Best Actress – Sandra Bullock, who couldn’t really cry very convincingly during her acceptance speech, probably because she’s had her face surgically tightened to such an absurd degree that her tear ducts are now located just behind her ears.

Best Picture – The Hurt Locker, a magical futuristic yarn about the peace-loving Na’vi race and their fight against colonisation by… oh, no, whoops, it’s the one about explosions and people looking sad. Sorry. Poor old James Cameron, eh?

Best Director – Kathryn Bigelow, who became the first woman to ever win an Oscar ever. No woman has ever won an Oscar before, not even in any of the 81 previous Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress categories. Truly, Kathryn Bigelow is a visionary and a pioneer. Her acceptance speech was probably about periods or how much she likes eating cake or something. We weren’t really listening.

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It is really about time that someone renamed Lost The Badass Sayid Jarrah Show. Our friendly neighbourhood Iraqi soldier exploded leapt forth from the background of the last few episodes, turning this into one of Lost’s more exciting episodes.

Straight away he realised that Samurai Dogen had been frustratingly ambiguous for far too long, taking him to point – that would be the point of Sayid’s boot to his face – in a fight that threatened to tear through the polystyrene walls of the Temple. Dogen soon realised that Sayid was a weapon of mass destruction, sending him sword in hand to deal with Cocke and prove that he’s still a good little torturer inside.

Kate came back to have a chat with Claire – of whom Miles got his one line of the week to express his impeccable taste, declaring she was ‘still hot’ – and the crusty-haired wonder looked like she was preparing to kick the crap out of Kate for looking after her precious baby.

While we know Claire is firmly on Cocke’s side, the bald supremo had recruiting in mind and, nonplussed after Sayid plunged a sword into his chest, he won Sayid over with little more than a cheeky grin. Returning to the temple with a warning of smoke being bad for everybody’s health and advising people to get on their running shoes, Sayid was now a man on a mission.

Not much intrigue was displayed in this episode, and not a lot of teasing nuggets for us fans to get to over-analyse for the coming week. Not that it really mattered because this was a Sayid episode, guaranteeing two things: a shaky accent and death. There was no better example of the latter this week as Sayid had a little one-to-one with Dogen – who spoke of why he came to the island – and then  swiftly drowned him and left him to float about like a rotten turd in the temple’s giant chemical toilet. He also turned John Lennon into a Pez dispenser for being a shit character. With Jacob offering to save Dogen’s son’s life in exchange for helping out on the Island, and Cocke offering a similar deal for Sayid, these two omnipotent manipulators are clearly ruthless business men.

Cocke offered Sayid the chance to be with the one he loved again (we are assuming Nadia as – like the rest of us – Sayid has forgotten all about Shannon). This did leave the big question mark over his flash-sideways – could it possibly be the life that Cocke promised him if he helped kill everybody?

The trip into this alt-verse did little more than show him as the tortured torturer again, while revealing encounters with the trigger-happy freighter folk from season 4, Omar and Keamy (he makes good eggs apparently, as if it’s bloody hard). After delivering bullets into the now double-dead freighter blokes, Sayid finds a bound and gag Jin in a fridge. Jin is clearly up to some dodgy dealings in his alt-life, or into some weird larder-based sexual perversions.

Back on the Island, Smokey tore through the temple, destroying everyone in his path. Ben, Sun, Illana and Frank then turned up and quickly left again with Miles, leaving Sayid, Kate and Claire to go off with Cocke on another mission to kill every background extra working in Hawaii. Still, Sayid proved to be the most loveable masochistic, blood-thirsty, Iraqi on television – we can’t wait until we can have him in cuddly toy form.

(Side Note: Yes, our theory was wrong about the flash-sideways order – no Charlie next week then)

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Timbaland and Timberlands.

Folded:

• OK Go video for This Too Shall Pass (not so much with the music, but a great band for giving you something to watch)
• New trailer for A Nightmare On Elm Street remake (Jackie Earle Haley is a very scary man)
• eBay disputes for buyers (no matter how precise the seller’s listing, how well packaged the item, PayPal will always find in your favour. If you have the time, make it a game. Buy some used boots and claim they’ve been worn)
• Pizza Hut Teriyaki Japanizza (it’s a Japanese takeaway – on a pizza!)
• BBC (really smart to cut funds in internet coverage and minority programming. Now we can all sit back as they get a good kicking in the press. Which after Coming of Age they thoroughly deserve)

Creased:

• Alice in Wonderland (seems nobody’s that keen, and we’re no exception)
• PS3 owners (for about 24 hours we didn’t feel so smug about the ‘three rings of doom’ all of a sudden)
• Question Time for ‘first time voters’ (as pointless an exercise as with the grown ups, only with added guff about Amnesty International and the environment)
• Pizza Hut Teriyaki Japanizza (it’s a Japanese takeaway on a pizza)
• Sony (not big on apologies. Or explanations)

Because it’s still cold enough for our knackers to shrivel up outside, we thought it was only fair that we went for some literally-titled music.

Unless the old lady from the Marks And Spencer’s adverts stands at your bus stop every morning in hardly any clothes, you probably won’t be too familiar with Twiggy Frostbite. But fortunately there’s a band of the same name, so let’s talk about them instead.

Twiggy Frostbite are an all-girl trio who are amazingly talented in creating gentle soundscapes. They aren’t prancing around in their knickers to over-produced music or promoting a soulless product for shits and giggles. What we have here is yet another female act that have to annoyingly work that little bit harder. Yet another excellent export from Sweden, Twiggy Frostbite are a must for fans of the post rock vibe, or the recently trawled and much loved Deer Tracks.

For more:

Twiggy Frostbite MySpace

Each year the Oscars have a theme. Admittedly most of the time the theme is Sobbing Millionaires, so nobody really notices.

But not this year. This year it looks like the main Oscars theme will be Whatever You Do, Don’t Piss James Cameron Off. One movie producer has already been banned from the Oscars for badmouthing Avatar in an email, and now Sacha Baron Cohen has also been told to stay away because his planned Avatar skit might have ended up offending James Cameron.

Not that James Cameron minds. In fact, he’s said that he’d love the Oscars to poke fun at Avatar. Obviously the people responsible for the poking will never work in Hollywood again, and their house might mysteriously burn down in the middle of the night, and all the food they eat afterwards might taste a bit like poison, but that’s all part of the fun, isn’t it?

This might not be especially obvious – what with Avatar quite clearly being a hilarious satire of movies that go out of their way to clumsily moralise about badly-defined issues at every turn and directors who are so in love with themselves that they absolutely lose the ability to self-edit – but James Cameron isn’t exactly known for his sense of humour. We know – it’s hard to believe, isn’t it? Especially with that weird Helen Mirren haircut he’s growing at the moment.

One person who knows about James Cameron’s inability to laugh at himself, though, is Oscars producer Bill Mechanic. He was the boss of 20th Century Fox during the production of Titanic, so he’s probably witnessed enough examples of James Cameron’s self-important megalomania to know better than to jerk him around on Sunday night. That could be why a producer of The Hurt Locker has been banned from the ceremony following an email he wrote about why Avatar shouldn’t win anything. And it’s probably why Sacha Baron Cohen has been uninvited as well.

If reports are to be believed, Sacha Baron Cohen was due to present an Oscar with Ben Stiller on Sunday dressed up as a Na’vi who James Cameron had knocked up on the sly. But producers got cold feet, began to worry that Cameron would stand up midway through the skit and shout “How dare you belittle my masterpiece about the lanky, blue, magic-haired, pterodactyl-riding Jesus alien!” before storming out, and quietly dropped it from the schedule.

But James Cameron says that he knows nothing about the skit. In fact, he says that he’d love it if Avatar got a great big roasting from the Oscars. E! Online reports:

“I don’t know anything about that…I don’t produce the Oscars. If they want to poke fun at Avatar Sunday, that’s OK by me,” said Cameron, “I’m sure we’ll laugh.” As far as he’s concerned, he told me, jokes are just another element of Hollywood’s big night. And he’s fine with it. “The Oscars are a celebration of movies… even the gaffes and out-of-bounds stuff are all part of the fun.”

You hear that, Oscars? James Cameron says that it’s all part of the fun. Now you’ve got two days to bring back everything you banned. Let the Hurt Locker producer attend the ceremony, fly Sacha Baron Cohen in from London to do his Na’vi bit, reinsert all the Avatar jokes into Steve Martin’s monologue, rehire the naked blue Avatar dancers you hired to entertain the audience during the commercial breaks and dig out that picture of James Cameron’s face with the word ‘SUBTLETY’ written across it that you’d planned to include in the annual montage of people that have died.

He’ll love it. No, really, he said so.

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This week Naomi Campbell was accused of beating yet another of her underlings into a bloody pulp – but did she do it?

Possibly not. Miodrag Mejdina, the driver who called the police on Tuesday when Naomi Campbell reportedly tried to punch through the back of his skull so she could pull out his eyes and use them like a pair of slimy hen-night deely boppers, has now issued a formal apology to Naomi for ‘overreacting’ and blowing the incident ‘out of proportion’.

In completely unrelated news, some recently-kidnapped members of Miodrag Mejdina’s family have just been released by an unknown captor, although many of the children have had their fingers chopped off and the phrase ‘This is a warning. Never rat on me again’ tattooed across their foreheads. Oh, we’re just kidding. OR ARE WE?

Following Miodrag Mejdina’s apology, we’d also like to apologise to Naomi Campbell. We, like the rest of the press, may have leapt upon the story of your alleged attack on your driver with relish – lustily recounting all the other times you’ve gone batshit and tried to break everything in sight and painting you as a violent caricature of a bulge-eyed, hair-trigger lunatic – but we were wrong.

Because now that your driver has apologised for blowing the incident out of proportion, Naomi Campbell, we can see that we got you all wrong. You’re a sweetheart, deep down. You literally wouldn’t hurt a fly. So we’re sorry. Please forgive us. And, whatever you do, please don’t attempt to stave in our skull with your phone any time soon. Thanks.

Our apology was completely warranted, by the way. All the accusations of the last few days have really got to Naomi Campbell and, now that Miodrag Mejdina has admitted that calling the police was a little out of line, she’s finally decided to speak out about this week’s incident herself. And, surprisingly, by ’speak out’ we don’t mean ‘climb on top of the nearest car, scream “I’LL KILL YOU ALL, YOU BASTARDS” and then start hurling giant chunks of masonry at strangers until she’s the only person left alive within a three-mile radius before breaking down and weeping at what she’s become’.

No. In Naomi Campbell terms, she was actually quite level-headed about it all. People reports:

“I was accused of unacceptable behavior towards a driver in New York,” the supermodel says in a statement. “I have worked very hard on correcting my previous wrongdoings and I will not be held hostage to my past… I try to treat everyone with respect and I am pleased the driver has apologized,” she says. “I would like to put the last few days behind me and move on.”

That’s absolutely right. Naomi Campbell shouldn’t be held hostage to her past. After all, if we know Naomi Campbell, she’d only end up staging an impromptu 24-style jailbreak against her past, possibly by shivving several of her past’s guards in the throat with a handmade shank and then barging into her past’s office to bludgeon it with her bare fists until she was pulled off its lifeless body. Nobody wants that.

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Here’s a groundbreaking piece of brilliance for you – Windscreen Wiperz. It’s amazing. You play a raindrop, you see, and you have to guide it around a windscreen picking things up as it gets longer and…

Oh, hang on, it’s Snake. Still, when was the last time you played Snake on your phone? Years ago, probably. And Windscreen Wiperz is even better than Snake, because it hasn’t got any snakes in it, just water and squashed-up bugs. And… oh, actually, you know what? Forget it. If you like Snake, you’ll like Windscreen Wiperz. If you don’t, you’re just wasting your time.

Play Windscreen Wiperz now

Angelina Jolie has a bit of a reputation. Her vagina, they say, is much like a waterslide on a hot day.

Actors just can’t resist. Billy Bob Thornton couldn’t resist, even though he was engaged to Laura Dern when he fell for Angelina Jolie during the making of Sling Blade. And Brad Pitt couldn’t resist, even though he was married to Jennifer Aniston when he fell for Angelina Jolie during the making of Mr & Mrs Smith. And now Angelina Jolie is about to make a film with Johnny Depp. And Johnny Depp’s girlfriend, it’s fair to say, is absolutely bricking herself.

So much so that she’s reportedly ordered Johnny Depp to leave the film. We can’t help feeling that she’s worrying about nothing, though. Angelina Jolie is a changed woman these days – she won’t have sex with Johnny Depp. She might adopt him, but she won’t have sex with him.

The Tourist – the upcoming Angelina Jolie/ Johnny Depp double-header – seems woefully miscast to us. It’s a thriller about an Interpol agent who sleeps with a tourist to flush out the criminal she’s in pursuit of. And it stars Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp. It just doesn’t make any sense. It’s not a thriller about an Interpol agent who has either a) witnessed a real-life atrocity so moving that she’ll be nominated for an Oscar or b) enjoys strolling around in front of slow-motion explosions wearing nothing but a skintight catsuit, and it’s not about a funny-voiced tourist in a madcap wig.

So both Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp seem massively unsuited to The Tourist. But that’s not why Johnny Depp is apparently doing everything he can to get out of starring in it. No, Johnny Depp is apparently doing everything he can to get out of it because his girlfriend Vanessa Paradis is worried that he’ll get sucked into Angelina Jolie’s vagina and never be seen again. The New York Post reports:

Paradis “found out that there was a real long and intense love scene between [Depp] and Jolie,” a source close to the project said. “He’s currently trying to [get out of the movie], but I don’t know if he’s succeeded. But he’s trying and they’re talking about replacing him with [Jolie's partner] Brad Pitt or Leonardo DiCaprio.”

They’re both more sensible choices of co-star. If Brad Pitt was to film a love scene with Angelina Jolie, the film would undoubtedly become a hit as audiences either tried to dissect the scene to uncover hints of romantic discord or just basically masturbated until their laps ended up looking like a giant Quality Street Strawberry Cream that’d been bludgeoned with a rolling pin. And if Leonardo DiCaprio was to star, then nobody would have to worry about Angelina Jolie sleeping with him. Because, you know, he looks a bit like a great big vole, doesn’t he?

That said, part of us does hope that Johnny Depp fails in his attempt to leave The Tourist. Not because he’ll inevitably end up getting seduced by Angelina Jolie, leading to the highest-profile celebrity break-up of all time, but mainly because we just want to see what sort of silly cartoonish voice he’ll end up giving his character. We heard he’s aiming for a sort of French aardvark with a lisp, mixed with a sort of Esperanto Liberace. Sounds good.

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For anyone who doesn’t already know – perhaps you’re too cool, too busy, or too strung out to really care – it’s the 419th Academy Awards this weekend.

Yeah, we’re pretty excited.

All the stars will be on the red carpet, with their dresses and their lovely suits, and once inside that swishy auditorium, it’ll be present-giving-out time. That’s our favourite bit.

Hence, in the spirit of whipping everyone up into a seal-clapping frenzy, we thought we’d make a few predictions.They will definitely do the bit about dead people

They love the bit about dead people at the Oscars – you know, where they play sad music then show you pictures of people you don’t know, until finally there’s one you do know. This year, that’ll probably be Patrick Swayze. With the moving music, and all of those images of cameramen, and sound guys, this segment will be spent crying very openly and hysterically.

A Scientologist won’t win

If Scientologists really want to be taken seriously, might we suggest that they enlist some slightly better actors? Not one is up for nomination this year. Not one. It’s a dark year for Scientology.

There will be an upset

Mickey Rourke was supposed to win last year. Then, a few years ago, Goodfellas was pipped by the Kevin Costner film about a man who likes to ignore the pretty ladies in revealing dresses lining the walls of the ballroom, and chooses instead to dance with sexy young wolves (we haven’t seen it). There is literally always an upset. This year, a hunch suggests that James Cameron – flying high on the back of that film about blue people being environmentally friendly in 3D – will receive the Oscar cock-punch by coming away with bugger all.

A lady will cry

The Oscars demand tears. Preferably womanly ones that start slowly, like a drip emerging from a student’s bathroom tap, but morph into something altogether more impressive, like rain spatting on the windscreen of a blue Vauxhall Astra. They won’t get those from beard-stroking pipe smokers like Meryl Streep or Helen Mirren. So expect the Oscar to go to Sandra Bullock, or the gargantuan one from Precious – in either actressing category.

Someone will do a hilarious song

This year Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin are on making-it-hilarious duty, so they will probably do a funny song. On the outside, it will look like harmless fun, but on the inside, the child they once were will be tearfully begging them to stop. It wasn’t meant to be like this. “Why are you doing a song?” he weeps, still wearing the fancy dress cowboy hat that made him want to act in the first place. “You’re not a singer!”

Elton John will have a party

He always does. Loves a party, that Elton John. Absolutely loves one.

This was a guest blog by Josh Burt from Interestment Comedy. No, really, it was.

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