For me the most entertaining part of the annual Oscar schpiel is not seeing which films get awards and what actors earn the most respect; it's scratching my head through the boneheaded decisions that seem to come a) out of nowhere and b) from a bunch of people who really ought to know a little better. Here are my picks for the seven biggest pieces of silliness regarding this year's Oscar nominations:

7. Borat for best adapted screenplay? Whaaaaat? Did we see the same movie? Don't get me wrong: I absolutely LOVED this movie -- I called it "one of the funniest movies ever made" and I stand by that opinion today -- but didn't most of the funniest bits come from moments best described as "off the cuff," "reaction-driven" and "semi-improvised"? I understand that more of the flick was scripted than one might expect, but c'mon. Unless all of Borat's interview subjects were given lines to read, I really don't see how this nomination makes any sense. I love seeing the movie get some respect, but what a silly way to do it.

6. Click gets nominated for best makeup ... but Pirates of the Caribbean 2 does not? What the hell? Did any of the Academy members see this movie? Yeah, I know that most of the more dazzling FX were full-bore CGI, but heck; the makeup used on Naomie Harris was more impressive than anything in freakin' Click! Fat suits and really lame "old man" makeup is all it takes to get an Oscar nom these days? Sheesh. Plus I just don't like living in a world that calls Click an Oscar nominee.

5. Nominating The Devil Wears Prada for Best Costume Design is like nominating Talladega Nights for Best Product Placement. Welcome to the world of Home Shopping Cinema.

Sundance is, like any major film festival, too many films in too little time in too confined a space. Synopsis spills upon synopsis; buzz can wind up just being onomatopoeia. But even a cursory spin through the film catalog reveals movies which, for whatever reason, you want to watch. This isn't the full list, nor does it reflect those sudden gems you stumble across or become aware of, but anyone getting ready to go to Park City next week has a list of about seven films they really want to see. And right now, those seven are, for me:

2006 was the first full year of Cinematical, and it was a very busy year for its bloggers. A lot of big news, shocking news and ongoing news kept us busy as we followed the important stories and passed the significant bits onto you. There was good news, bad news, unexpected news and unbelievable news. There were deaths, births, rebirths and remakes. There was so much going on that it takes an amazing film geek to recall everything (have you tested your memory yet?).

But what was the most important story for film in 2006? The end of the box office slump? The Weinsteins' devilish pact with Blockbuster? Peter Jackson's possibilities of directing The Hobbit? Uwe Boll boxing his critics? Sorry, but none of those affected the consciousness of cinema as much as these other stories from the past 12 months:

• Disney Buys Pixar - When 2006 began, the future of Disney's relationship with Pixar was still uncertain. There had been hint of a new deal between the two companies in the last few days of 2005, but nothing was concrete. Three weeks went by, in which time the new year came in and Pixar's stock prices went up, and then finally the first installment of news came through on January 19: Disney would buy Pixar. Three days later, we were reminded that the deal was not yet done, that it was still awaiting approval from Steve Jobs and the rest of the animation studio's board. On January 23, however, it was in the bag: Disney bought Pixar for $7.4 billion. And John Lasseter was named head of Disney animation.
  
  The story didn't end there. Throughout 2006, the effects of the acquisition continued to be felt. First, Toy Story 3 was killed. But then it was greenlit again. Disney closed its new computer animation studio, Circle 7. Then many months went by before Disney fired a whole lot of people working in its animation departments. Finally, just a few weeks ago, the company announced they'd be trying out the ol' hand-drawn stuff again. By year's end, it felt as though Pixar was the one who owned Disney.
  

Feeling just a little bit cynical about the Christmas season by now? Sick to death of sweet seasonal flicks like It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story and, um, Bad Santa? Ready for a few choice chestnuts full of yuletide terror? Well unfortunately there are very few Christmas-based horror flicks that are actually, y'know, good movies. Most of 'em are low-rent horror knock-offs that are barely worthy of the celluloid they're stored upon, but hey, it's an amusing little sub-genre nonetheless. So let's get ready for a little late-night stocking stuffing and tons of creepy coal.

Silent Night, Deadly Night -- The first one is the flick that caused all that nasty controversy back in 1984, yet when you look at it today ... the thing's almost embarrassingly bad. But once you've seen a few of the sequels -- Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987), Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out! (1989), Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation (1990) and Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker (1992) -- the original doesn't seem quite so rotten anymore. (Actually, it is.)

Christmas Evil -- Also known as You Better Watch Out and Terror in Toyland, this 1980 cheese-fest benefits from an odd sense of humor (and the presence of longtime character actor Jeffrey DeMunn) but struggles to fill its overlong running time. It's basically another "looney in a Santa costume" schpiel desperately hoping to ape the success of Halloween, if not its attention to quality.

Silent Night, Bloody Night -- Just like the original Black Christmas was a forefather of Halloween and Friday the 13th, so too is this semi-starchy 1974 thriller a forefather of ... the original Black Christmas, kinda. It's about a guy who inherits an old mansion (one that used to be a lunatic asylum, natch) during the holiday season and must contend with, yep, a local psycho. Patrick O'Neal, Mary Woronov and John Carradine add a little color to the affair.

So, since it's Christmas, and 'tis the season and all that, I'm going to list here the seven movie weapons I wouldn't mind having. Before you recoil in horror from your computer and decide that I'm a loon, hear me out. When I was a kid, we always wanted the hottest movie toy around, and that doesn't seem to have changed at all today. A walk down a toy aisle in any store these days will show you items like Jack Sparrow's Cutlass or a self-inflating Superman suit that lets any kid become a Child of Steel. you see, a really good movie weapon makes you want it. When you see a bad guy or a good guy wielding a plain old gun or a knife on screen, you're like, "Eh, big deal." However, if it's a knife that can cut through stone, or a gun that shoot bullets into the past, then you tend to say, "Holy cow! I want one of those!"

These are seven weapons that made me do just that. Granted, some of them are a bit silly, and some are a bit over the top, but the main point is that none of them exist ... yet. I've found myself wishing I had one at different times, usually while dealing with extremely annoying things like the line at the DMV, people who talk too loudly on cell phones, or people who like to cut you off on the freeway in Southern California. So, these are some of the items that would be in my own private arsenal. What do you want in yours?

All during the year, there are moments -- little things in movies that may be long gone, or may not even have opened yet. And they're all brief -- but, in their way, they've stuck with me. And a few seconds can tell you a lot about a film -- and please bear in mind that by and large, these are all movies worth seeing, and some of them are in my Top Ten. Here are seven great movie moments from 2006 that have stuck with me:

1) Two Syllables from Willem Dafoe, Inside Man

Spike Lee's rock-solid heist thriller didn't work just because of the intricate plotting of the robbery, or the high-wattage cast or even the best sense of New York while a crime is on we've gotten since The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. It also rocked the block thanks to a wicked sense of humor, and a hint of mockery under the hard-boiled talk. Case in point? The way Willem Dafoe turns a two-syllable question -- "Five bucks?" -- into the punchline of the year.

2) Kanye West and the CSU Marching Band, Dave Chappelle's Block Party

First of all, how cool is it that Dave Chappelle invites a randomly-selected marching band to play his block party? And then, to catch a shot -- a perfect, loose shot -- of Kanye West watching, smiling, as the Central State University of Ohio marching band are jamming the hell out of his sterling composition "Jesus Walks"? In a world where we're too often barraged with idiotic coverage of no-talent 'celebrities,' it was a nice chance to see a popular artist get a glimpse of just how popular they are.

It's a Wonderful Life has an odd place in the American canon: Well-known but half-remembered; dismissed as mawkish but revered as moving. It may be one of those dream-films we only recall as images -- the haunted stumble into Pottersville, the exultant return to Bedford Falls, a small, ringing bell -- but it's worth watching with your mind as well as your heart. Here are seven things you may not know about the Frank Capra / Jimmy Stewart classic, from where it began to its reverberations in the here and now.

1) Familiarity Breeds Content

Contrary to popular belief, It's a Wonderful Life didn't enter the public domain in 1974; rather, it fell out of copyright -- a subtle distinction, but regardless, it certainly wasn't expensive to show on TV for a span of several years -- during which it attained cultural ubiquity. (In fact, the legal status of It's a Wonderful Life meant that at one point, a po-mo variation on What's Up Tiger Lilly was planned by The Upright Citizen's Brigade.) A mix of re-asserted copyrights and a weird kind of veneration mean that these days it's only shown on network TV on a limited basis -- but it's made it's way into the Christmastime zeitgeist nonetheless, thanks to years of the kinds of repeat airing where, as a pre-semi-stardom Woody Harrelson put it on Cheers, "From now until Christmas, It's a Wonderful month. ..."

2) The Premise Works

And does it ever -- you can click yourself stupid doing on-line research on pop-culture re-iterations of George's guided tour of a George-less universe. (And researching how George Bailey and Mr. Potter both owe a debt to a Mr. Crachit and a Mr. Scrooge can take the same amount of time.) There's an entire essay in parsing whether the easier question would be 'What bad sitcoms have done It's a Wonderful Life episodes?' or 'What bad sitcoms haven't?" When a movie influences high and low art, that's a kind of eternity in and of itself -- even if one of your standard-bearers is MST3K.

OK, with a name like "Weinberg," I wouldn't blame you for questioning my expertise in the arena of "Christmas." But I've been a big fan of the holiday, the season and (yes) even the music since I was old enough to ask my parents "Why don't Jews believe in Santa Claus?" (I stumped her on that one, I think.) And one of my very favorite things about Christmas are the traditional movies. (In my house, "traditional" Christmas movies include Scrooged, A Christmas Story, Gremlins, Die Hard, Black Christmas, Bad Santa and Christmas Vacation.) So when the newest crop of Xmas flicks hits the scene each year, I try to keep an eye out for the solid ones -- and then yesterday I saw a trailer for something called Deck the Halls.

Now, obviously one cannot judge a film without having seen the thing, but -- holy moley does this thing look like a cinematic abortion of the loudest and most hellaciously obnoxious order. Danny DeVito and Matthew Broderick play a pair of neighbors who'll stop at nothing to prevent each other from having the flashiest Xmas-house on the block. Expect 79 minutes of horrible slapstick schtick by hateful characters and 11 minutes of warmed-up seasonal "warmth" that fits into the movie about as well as a tongue-kiss fits in at the dentist's office.

So anyway, the Deck the Halls trailer reminded me -- hey, there's been a whole BUNCH of really rotten Christmas comedies over the past few decades! At least seven, anyway! Which brings us to the list; all naughty, no nice.

I love Westerns. They're such great stories full of symbolism and pathos, often with great performances and compelling characters facing life and death situations. Westerns explore what it means to face your fears, to carve out a life among the harsh wilderness -- to be an American. Cowboys, one of the most enduring and recognized symbols of America, are a part of our history and who we are as a nation.

I remember the first time I watched a Western. My father was a huge John Wayne fan (still is) and when I was pretty young, he took me to see "The Duke" in the movie The Shootist. Even as a young man I reacted to the story about the last days of a gunfighter who knows he's about to die from cancer but wants to go out on his feet, fighting, instead of on his back. After watching the movie, I was hooked. Of course, my experience was made even more special by the fact that The Shootist was John Wayne's last film. How fitting that it should be a Western.

From then on, I watched as many Westerns as I could. Over the years as I grew older, I came to appreciate Westerns not just for their stories, but because of what the stories, characters and situations represent. Over time, I made a list of the Westerns that typify the Western -- those films that would serve as an excellent introduction for anyone wishing to explore this genre. In truth, I could populate this list with films mostly from the same director -- John Ford. His westerns are among the best and most widely acclaimed of all time.

He's an icon of the genre whose best work featured the stalwart and similarly iconic John Wayne. But to be fair, there are many other Westerns that have come out in the history of Hollywood that deserve your attention. Even if you don't love the genre, these films are still an entertaining mix of action, suspense, drama, and romance. They also happen to have compelling characters, horses, fist fights and even the occasional gun fight. And yes, stuff even blows up once in awhile too.

So, settle in at the saloon, pour yourself a shot of rye, and let's take a look at some great Westerns.

We lost a giant this week when we lost Robert Altman, who was surely one of the greatest of all American film directors. In choosing seven representative works, I'm going to skip over M*A*S*H (1970) and Nashville (1975), given that everyone knows them. They're both fine films, but I've just never really been drawn to them. (I've also opted, painfully, to leave out the well-known classics The Player and Gosford Park.) Rather, I like his maverick works, the ones that people seemed to ignore or misunderstand. That's how I see Altman, anyhow -- always punching away at the envelope.

1. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
This revisionist Western is unquestionably Altman's masterpiece. Warren Beatty plays an entrepreneur in the Old West who tries to organize and build a brothel, but finds he can't do it without the help of a whorehouse madam (Julie Christie). It sounds like a silly, modern-day romantic comedy about the clashing of two opposing personalities, but Altman does it correctly, getting to the root of these psychologically flawed characters and using the chilly, grungy atmosphere as part of the plan. The climactic shootout is the textbook definitions of "anti-climactic," with Beatty's character stumbling around in the snow.

If you're like me, you eat way too much on Thanksgiving. And the last thing you want to do after eating so much is to watch a film about food or eating. Kevin made up a great list of food movies in honor of the holiday, and Kim wrote about "eating" films with a twist, but following your feast, you might get stomach pains just thinking about most of them. None of them could do too much harm, however, because they are all enjoyable fictional films. As a companion piece, I have come up with seven documentaries that you would definitely want to avoid in the wake of turkey day; A few of them you will want to avoid even after your digestive system has settled.

The term "turkey" was long ago coined to describe either bad movies or huge financial flops, and there is a long list of them. (Although Kevin Costner movies like Waterworld or The Postman could better be described as "ham.") I combed through the trash to find seven treasures that I would actually recommend; these are the Butterballs.

1. Ishtar (1987, Elaine May)
Today, it's actually fairly difficult to see Ishtar, that "musical comedy" starring Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty, even if you wanted to. It hasn't yet been released on DVD (except in the UK), and I bet most of those old VHS tapes have been carefully disposed of. But Elaine May's famous flop deserves reconsideration, if only because recent years have shown that May's first three films, A New Leaf (1971), The Heartbreak Kid (1972) and Mikey and Nicky (1977), were masterworks way ahead of their time.

Ah, Turkey Day ... my house smells like roasted turkey (although my enthusiasm for eating turkey today has been dampened somewhat by my five-year-old demanding a detailed explanation about just how exactly two happy, alive turkeys with friends and families, dreams and goals, became turkey corpses sitting in buckets of brine in our lean-to laundry room). The pineapple is perfectly suspended in its lime-green gelatin home, the yams are ready to be immersed in butter and brown sugar and pumpkin pie spice -- and I'm slurping down my second coffee of the morning, and banging out this post for you before I get elbows deep in the dressing. I was pondering last night how many movies -- not just movies with Thanksgiving dinner as the centerpiece, but just in general -- have pivotal scenes or themes around eating.

Kevin posted his fave "films for foodies" earlier today, but in honor of a day set aside for stuffing ourselves silly, I thought I'd offer up a little round-up of some of my own favorite movies that focus on eating in slightly unexpected ways. When you're done eating Thanksgiving dinner, why not cozy up with one of these films? They're sure to keep you more awake than yet another football game.

Food has been an important part of films ever since Charlie Chaplin made his dinner rolls into dancing shoes in The Gold Rush (and don't forget the Thanksgiving shoe dinner from that same flick). Since then we've had scenes ranging from the classic turkey scene in A Christmas Story ("Sons of bitches! Bumpuses!"), to the extremely erotic (and messy) kitchen scene with Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger in 9 1/2 Weeks.

We've also had films where the focus is on food exclusively, or the cooking. It's a bit strange watching a movie that features food as a central part of the plot, because you'll eventually find yourself wondering when the film will finally end so you can go chow. The day that a filmmaker shoots a movie that focuses on popcorn and sodas, watch out concession stands. It'll be on onslaught of ravenous people, marching like zombies towards the smell of fresh butter and the hiss of carbonation rushing through plastic tubes. They'll sell one hundred times more snacks than they will tickets -- a theater owner's delight.

These are my seven favorite movies that are either about food, or feature them in a way that is integral to the plot. In fact, if I can get through this entire post without my stomach growling, I'll be impressed. With Thanksgiving upon us, and everyone focused on eating, you might consider renting one of these movies to watch before your turkey dinner in order to get the juices flowing. By the time everything comes out of the oven, you should be well-prepared and ready to wolf down the goods.

Now that there's been a matter of, you know, 72 hours since the release of Casino Royale, enough time has passed for an assessment of the canon -- out of the James Bond films, which are the best? Well, it's easy to name the best seven -- and in doing so, draw our week of Bond pop-culture coverage here at Cinematical to an end. Bear in mind that this list is only worth noting as a source of minor-scale arguments -- which is exactly why it's fun. And now that my inner Rob Gordon is ready, let's talk about the best Bond films of all time ... In no particular order, except for number one.

7. Casino Royale

Yeah. It's in there. In the top third, most definitely. There's more in my review, but there's not a single part of this film I didn't enjoy -- or, if I wasn't enjoying it, I was at the very least respecting it as part of the plot, as an attempt to set mood or build character, to tackle the backbreaking stoop labor of thriller-style exposition. Craig is a great Bond, and it felt real -- like the sort of thing that may, in fact, happen in something like the real world. Well, not the kick-ass free-running sequence, but still. Oh, and also: There are computers and cell phones in Casino Royale, and only one piece of gadgetry was essential to the film. Everything else? Guns, knives, fists, phones. It's down-to-the-ground stuff, and it's amazing to watch.