Sissy Spacek Joins Big Love

Billy Crystal brings the same old stuff

(NEWSER) - Last night's Oscars, like its Best Picture, was a throwback to a different time in film history. And though the show may have topped last year's Anne Hathaway-James Franco fiasco, it was boring and tired throughout:

• "The whole night looked like an AARP pep rally," writes Alessandra Stanley in the New York Times . "For a town that prides itself on tinsel and titillation, the night was pretty tame." "It all looked very familiar," but that "is perhaps necessary when so few of the nominated films are."

Spanish heartthrob promises bad heavy metal

(NEWSER) - Forget that Academy Award. Javier Bardem has landed a really important slot in American pop culture: a guest-starring gig on Glee. The No Country for Old Men star vows to "rock the house" on the hit dramedy, reports Entertainment Weekly . The Spanish hearththrob promises: "We’re going to do some heavy metal—Spanish heavy metal, which is the worst." More»

41.3M viewers tune in, highest since 2005

(NEWSER) - Last night's Oscar telecast attracted more viewers than the awards extravaganza has drawn in the last 5 years. Some 41.3 million viewers tuned in to see The Hurt Locker triumph over Avatar, compared to 36.3 for the 2009 show. The all-time high for Oscar viewership also involved James Cameron—55.2 million saw him declare himself "king of the world" as he accepted the Best Picture award for Titanic in 1998, Broadcasting & Cable reports. More»

Food, drink, and fashion flubs start awards season off right

(NEWSER) - Awards season unofficially begins with tonight's Golden Globes ceremony, an alcohol-addled free-for-all that makes the Oscar telecast feel like a prayer meeting. Breeanna Hare of CNN runs down 10 reasons the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's shindig beats the Academy Awards:

• Booze: "The Globes would not be the Globes if the nominees weren't loose enough to potentially shirk their handler's instructions and drop an F-bomb or two during an acceptance speech."

The Wire , The Sopranos , Six Feet Under , Mad Men —get the picture?

(NEWSER) - For television, the past decade has been “as the sixties are to music and the seventies to movies”—some of the worst content ever was produced, but the cream of the crop rose to the level of art, Emily Nussbaum writes. Sure, “you could easily memorialize the aughts as the Decade of Reality TV,” but then you’d be leaving out The Sopranos, Mad Men, and, most important, The Wire. The best of the best dared audiences to take them seriously and didn’t have time for those who wouldn’t. More»