Iran’s state TV dismissed the Oscar-winning film Argo on Monday as an “advertisement for the CIA” and some Iranians called the award a political statement by America for its unflattering portrayal of the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Well of course they say that.

And while Argo has not appeared in any Iranian cinema, there has been no shortage of buzz from those who saw the movie through bootleg DVD networks.

The discussions over Argo in Iran have often pried open a generational divide: Iranians who took part in the 1979 Islamic Revolution picking apart the portrayals…

This season, Argo has emerged as the heavy favorite to win Best Picture (despite the lack of a corresponding Best Director nod), as has Anne Hathaway for Best Actress. But the picture isn’t as clear for some of the other categories, and in any case there are no guarantees until the victor is clutching that little gold man up on that stage. Here’s hoping for some pleasant surprises.

Click on through to get the full list and a truncated blow by blow of how it went down. I’ll just mention a few here and make some comments.

Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained

Well…

Bryan Singer‘s first two X-Men movies are generally very well-regarded. They were so well-regarded, in fact, that Singer was given the keys to the biggest superhero of them all: Superman, leaving the door open for Brett Ratner to direct the third film, X-Men: The Last Stand. The results were disappointing. The Last Stand looked like an X-Men film, but the script was all over the place, killing major characters and all but destroying the franchise. Thankfully, Matthew Vaughn swooped in to fixed much of the damage with the reboot X-Men: First Class.

Couldn’t have said it better myself. I…

While the first Iron Man was a great film, it was not necessarily so because of it’s villain, Obadiah Stane played by Jeff Bridges. He was okay, but not particularly menacing or memorable. The film was more about Tony Stark and his character development and that’s what made the film good.

The second Iron Man film was pretty much an unmitigated disaster because it tried to focus on the villain at least as much as it did on Stark and failed miserably.

Now we have a new villain for Iron Man 3, and he looks pretty legit. The Mandarin as played by Ben Kingsley looks like he’s going to be…

Let’s see if we can find something — anything for you guys to watch. Quite frankly, there are no new releases I’m interested in this week. This is just not a good week for movie releases.

New This Weekend

Dark Skies - PG-13
Meh.

From the producers of Paranormal Activity, Insidious, and Sinister comes Dark Skies: a supernatural thriller that follows a young family living in the suburbs. As husband and wife Daniel and Lacey Barret witness an escalating series of disturbing events involving their family, their safe and peaceful home quickly unravels. When it becomes clear that the…

Let it be said here and now that this film brought me to tears on more than one occasion — not because I cared about the stars of this film (such as Adolf Hitler), but because of the shear senselessness and moral depravity that could move men to do what the Nazis did. A particular scene involving the murder of children was perhaps the most difficult for me.

It is not a film I will ever see again for I have no desire to see it again. Yet it must be highly rated, praised even, for that which it accomplishes in its viewing. It is a film that everyone should see I think. For this film…

But one person who won’t be watching the Spidey reboots is Raimi himself, but not for the reasons you might think.

 

There are no grudges or hard feelings about the studio or Webb taking another spin on the franchise, rather it’s just that Raimi isn’t quite ready to watch it. “I’m a big Marc Webb fan and a giant fan of Emma Stone. And of Andrew Garfield...And I love the producers of that movie because they are dear friends, and the writer. But, I haven’t had the guts to go see the movie yet. Because I don’t want to go to my girlfriend’s wedding,”

Much more gracious and professional…

Warning! Spoilers for House of Cards.

Say what you will about Netflix’s new model for serving up an entire season in one fell swoop, it works for me. I watched the series over the weekend and sticking with it for the duration helped me discover its Shakespearian side. The only question is: which Shakespeare?

At first it’s Macbeth with Frank “Thane of Cawdor” Underwood conducting nefarious acts of treason. In this version, there are no ugly sisters bearing the news of the thane’s forthcoming triumph. In fact his hopes are dashed in the very first scene. Nevertheless the shadow operation…

Now that Ewan McGregor has voiced his enthusiasm for playing Obi-Wan Kenobi again, Disney should make it so. The actor, who’s out promoting Jack The Giant Slayer told MTV News that he thought reprising his role as the Jedi Master was “a good idea” and had clearly done some thinking about where an Obi-Wan standalone movie could fit into the about-to-be-rebooted Star Wars franchise

Call me cray cray, but I would actually go see this film. One of the (very few) redeeming qualities of the Star Wars prequels was Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan. He was a true beacon of light in a very, very dark…