Oscar (talk) and Lucinda

Saw Little Children Friday. Kate Winslet is on my short list for best actress, though I have yet to see The Queen. For females, 2006 was a pretty thin year for roles. It seems for the past few years, many critics have lamented about how hard it was to pick five Best Actor noms while it was a struggle to come up with five noms for the Best Actress category (though this is not the case for Supporting Actress). Anyway - Little Children was like an uneasy marriage between Happiness and American Beauty.

Lost Highway is posting a few songs from Lucinda Williams' upcoming album, West
http://main.losthighwayrecords.com/product.aspx?ob=disc&src=art&pid=1715

I managed to drag my tired butt out of bed at 5:30 a.m. to make it to what I thought was a pilates/yoga class at the gym. I was wrong, it was an aerobics class. After biking a few hours on Sunday, I was in no shape for the 'butts and glutes' class. At 6 a.m. I also wasn't in the mood to get yelled at by an aerobics instructor over loud, pulsating bad 80s music (think Whitney Houston's "I Want to Dance With Somebody"). I have no problems with a stern teacher, hell, one of the things I miss most about the newspaper is the psychotic editors and copy desk chiefs. But I'm going to get pushed, I'd much rather have it be by someone who doesn't follow every statement with a cherry "ohhhhhhh, can you feel that burn! C'mon!"

Speaking of harsh teachers, just after I sent my resume to a magazine for consideration, I turned on TBS to catch Pai Mai's brutal teachings in Kill Bill Vol. 2. One of the few movies that, I can easily watch again and again and not get bored. Despite a weak ending (compared to the other hour-and-a-half), it still a cinematic blast to watch. Uma Thurman does NOT deserve the roles she's been getting.