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…

Rentrak Corporation, today announced the official weekend theatrical box office numbers for the weekend period of February 22nd, 2013 through February 24th, 2013 according to the company’s Box Office Essentials theatrical box office data collection and analytical service.

At the top of the list, Identity Thief. It’s a shame such a terrible film is in the lead. Speaks to the lackluster offerings available right now.

Now that the film has crossed $200 million worldwide, Paramount and Skydance are reportedly in the process of building the scaffolding for another installment.  The previously cited box office target was $250 million, but when you’ve got a proven draw in Tom Cruise (Jack Reacher marks his 19th film to hit that total), it makes those dice easier to roll.

Well that makes me happy this morning. I liked the film well enough and would be glad to see a sequel. The only question left is which novel will the next film be based on in the series? Last year’s film simply titled Jack Reacher was…

G.I. Joe is one of those films I look forward to just because it’s likely to be fun. I don’t expect it to be a great film, or have an overabundance of plot or anything like that, but it does look fun.

Then again, the last film I looked forward to in the same vain didn’t work out so well for me (A Good Day to Die hard which I just didn’t enjoy at all). Still, I can’t help it. I enjoyed the first one and I’m hoping this one will be at least that enjoyable.

Here’s two new TV spots for you to feast your eyes upon.

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…

Captain James T. Kirk made a visit to the Academy Awards last night. He traveled back in time all the way from the 23rd century to try to help MacFarlane out and prevent him from being the worst host ever.

Seriously William Shatner may be starting to show his age a bit (he’s going to be 82 this year, can you believe it?) but it was good to see him in that uniform again — and I still think that uniform design from the post The Motion Picture Original Series Trek films is the best… but I’m losing my train of thought here.

Check out the video below to see Captain Kirk at the Oscars.

Yay! I’ve heard from Joe this morning. He’s on the mend and, more importantly, Episode 32 is a go for today! We’ll be talking about the Back to the Future trilogy, rocking out with Marty McFly and the Doc, and we’d love to have you listening live and with us, partcipate  in the chat room, and generally having fun with us!

We’re going to be broadcasting at 3:30 PM Central Time (4:30 Eastern) so be sure to tune in, and be ready to travel to 1985, 1955, 2015, and 1885 with us, it should be a blast from the future past!

Okay guys, here’s the deal: I roused Joe on iMessage long enough to get him to say that he thought he would be well enough to do episode 32 on Monday.

Since we’re already off schedule, we’re thinking of doing it during the day sometime. How many of you would be able to listen to us live during the day (say around lunchtime) as opposed to our normal 6:30 PM. Is that better or worse for you guys? Because we would love to have you listening live and interacting with us in the chat room. We’ll be talking about the Back to the Future trilogy.

Let us know in the comments what you think.