Penoptic

For those of you living under a rock this past Sunday, the 80th Annual Academy Awards aired on ABC. Though advertised as beginning at 8 p.m. EST, but it turned out this was just a ploy by ABC to get you to watch Regis Philbin for half an hour. Anyway, here are the Oscar winners: Best Picture: 'Atonement' 'Michael Clayton' 'There Will Be Blood' 'Juno' 'No Country For Old Men' Best Director: Julian Schnabel for 'The Diving Bell & The Butterfly' Jason Reitman for 'Juno' Tony Gilroy for 'Michael Clayton' Joel and Ethan Coen for 'No Country for Old Men' Paul Thomas Anderson for 'There Will Be Blood' Anyone noticing some repition here? Best Actor: George Clooney for 'Michael Clayton' Daniel Day-Lewis for 'There Will Be Blood' Johnny Depp for 'Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street' Tommy Lee Jones for 'In The Valley of Elah' Viggo Mortensen for 'Eastern Promises...

Chuck Thompson promises in his book Smile When You’re Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer to dispense with the usual preaching that you find in books like Lonely Planet . Instead, he says, he wants to share “the most memorable experiences … [that editors say] always seem ‘too negative” to put into print. And for the first half of the book, he doesn’t disappoint. His stories about teaching English in Japan at 22, searching for coke in Alaska at 3 in the morning, helping a friend have “Korean sex” before getting married, all have a charm that’s so straightforward and honest that, though the material is rather frat-boyish with a healthy side of misogeny, it never occurs to you to hold it against him. After all, he's only reporting the reality of his experiences back to you. Rarely, if ever is he a willing, active participant. You fall for his upfront candor, rejoicing in his successes and keenly feeling his failures. Not only that, but he writes so convincingly that you have ...

There's a commercial on television for Orajel, a gel that's meant to cure toothaches. A woman sits in her living room talking about her tooth problem. She says, "It was worse than labor pains." Already I don't believe her.

It takes less than four hours to explore Los Angeles’ Olvera Street in its entirety. Most of it has disintegrated into tourist traps and specialty shops: Augusto’s Leather Shop, Catalina’s Imports, Rudy’s Gifts Imports, Ramon’s Imports, Mexican Imports, … you get the idea. Food peddlers sell the most interesting and (probably) most authentic items there. Taco stands fill the street selling bean and cheese burritos as big as your forearm and crunchy taquitos in spicy chile verde . As you walk up and down the street surrounded by Mexican kitsch, your eyes – and nose – are automatically drawn to La Golondrina café situated about two-thirds of the way to Cesar Chavez Avenue. The patio sheltered by a wooden roof painted deep maroon, wagon wheel borders and Victorian wired chairs whispers to you of bygone times. It looks more like the stylish 19 th century hacienda that it was built as in 1857 than the restaurant it was been converted into during the 1920’s. The second storey goes almost ...

Rogers & Hammerstein's 'South Pacific' was gloriously adapted from the Broadway play in 1958 with Mitzi Gaynor playing the role of Nelly Forbush the Nurse, which Mary Martin made famous on the stage. I remember watching the movie when I was growing up. I was utterly captivated by John Kerr as Lt. Joe Cable, Jaunita Hall as Bloody Mary (she's the girl I love! Now ain't that too damn bad?) and Rossano Brazzi as Emile de Becque. I still sing 'Dites-Moi' absently in the shower. The first fifteen minutes were enough to keep me watching for over two hours. How can you not love a group of horny sailors, led by a balding, tattooed Luther Billis and a 7-foot-tall baritone named Stewpot, singing: There ain't a thing that's wrong with any man here That can't be cured by putting him near A girly, womanly, female, feminine dame! Come on, you know you love it. They're just freaky enough to keep you watching. The perfect middle ground between 'An Of...

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts, also known as BAFTA, is the British equivalent of the Oscars, and tonight on BBC America their awards ceremony aired in the US. Delayed only by that nasty little time difference. Here are the winners: DIRECTOR Joe Wright - 'Atonement' Paul Greengrass - 'The Bourne Ultimatum' Florian Henckel von Donnersmark - 'The Lives of Others' Joel & Ethan Coen - 'No Country for Old Men' Paul Thomas Anderson - 'There Will Be Blood' ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY Diablo Cody - 'Juno' Steven Zallian - 'American Gangster' Florian Henckel von Donnersmark - 'The Lives of Others' Shane Meadows - 'This Is England' Tony Gilroy - 'Michael Clayton' ADAPTED SCREENPLAY Paul Thomas Anderson - 'There Will Be Blood' Joel & Ethan Coen - 'No Country for Old Men' David Benioff - 'The Kite Runner' Ronald Harwood - 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly' Christopher H...

I couldn't believe they'd pulled it off. After knocking on wood every time someone in the room said something that could tempt fate, after drowning my sorrows in beer and chicken wings, after holding my breath from the first seconds of the second quarter until three minutes from the end of the game, the Giants pulled it off and upset the favored Pats to win Super Bowl XLII, 17-14. It was unbelievable. Especially after Eli Manning's throws kept going unreceived by any of his team mates. "Dude," I shouted at the other Giants, who were constantly about five feet away from where they needed to be, "Why can't you get there?!" Okay, so I deleted some expletives. And then, when it came time for that touchdown, oh man, they were close. They were so close. And yet it took them about three tries before they finally managed to score. And then that extra point, which, to the TV viewer, looked l ike it was only inches from not getting counted at all. Eh, I could ...

I've discovered that the old adage of 'You never forget your first time' is true for many things. Most recently for me, it's true for Wagner. I wasn't raised in a Wagner household. I'm not even sure my parents were overly enthusiastic opera lovers; they usually preferred theater and the symphony. But when I was eight, old enough for my first grown-up night out on the town, they made the mistake of taking me to see an English translation of Carmen . And I've been hooked on opera ever since. Mostly French and Italian operas, but occasionally there's the odd English opera or German Mozart opera mixed in the bunch. But I've managed to avoid, in sixteen years of attending the opera, going to any German operas. The fat ladies with fake armor and horned hats just couldn't compare with the sweet, slight women who, as Mimi, gave a voice to the meaning of melancholy, or to the Carmens who flirted and smiled their way in ecstasy to their eventual deaths, wi...

On a dark and stormy night, in a far away land called New York, a young graduate student crashing on the couch of a friend desired some dinner. Her hostess had plans for the evening, and so the young student was left to fare for herself. Since the land of New York was fabled for having absolutely everything available for delivery, the student did what anybody else at that time would have done. She did a Google search. In her search she came across a Mexican restaurant called La Hacienda on East 116th Street, a mere twenty-five blocks from the apartment where she was resting her head. The single-paragraph blurbs by critics at nymag.com and timeout.com raved about La Hacienda's pumpkin seed quesadillas and authentic Mexican salsa. And, best of all, the minimum price for delivery was only $10. For our poor, struggling student, this sounded just right. Hungry as she was, she obediently handed over her address, cross-streets and directions, her phone number, and placed an order for th...

There’s nothing quite like a Williams-Sonoma store to make a poor graduate student feel about as big as a cockroach, and just as welcome. A mere tour around the store can cause spontaneous gasps of incredulity and amazement, usually caused by the store’s admirable attempt to aid inflation (they want $77 for a knife?) while simultaneously drawing the wistful sighs of, “Oh, I wish I could afford that $80 mortar and pestle. I’d use it every day.” The nature of the chain store is that, no matter where you go in the country, the stores not only look exactly the same, but also feature the same clientele. For Williams-Sonoma, these are elderly grandmothers in Lord & Taylor suits, domestic matrons sporting the cleanest two-year-olds in town, brides-to-be registering everything in sight. But I enjoy the occasional perusal. The place reminds me of my mother’s dream kitchen. She could spend hours looking at all the different varieties of olive oil alone. When she got a gift cert...