Three words: ZOMBIE VERSUS SHARK.

Mad props to Derek, who works in the office of my department, for alerting me to the existence of the Italian film Zombie, which features (according to Derek) the only cinematic staging of zombie vs. shark to date.

IMDb associates the following "plot keywords" with this film:
Blood / Cannibalism / Cemetery / Eye Skewering / Intestines

And, let us not forget, a zombie fights a shark.

We must see this film, and soon.

Oscar -- land lubber?

George Clooney made a joke without reading the teleprompter. If you tell your girlfriend you want to have a threesome with Daniel Craig, she will love you forever. Ennio Morricone is every bit as weird as his music makes him out to be.

These are lessons to live by, but what is up with Oscar's snub of our beloved Leviathan films? Our only respite was the nominiation of Poseidon for Achievement in Visual Effects -- and this, I submit, is hardly enough. Has Hollywood turned its artifically-tanned, Tai-Bo-sculpted back on the movies of the sea?

We've had infrequent success at the "Academy" "Awards" -- for best picture in '43 with merman-manatee-human-squid Peter Lorre's stunning Casablanca (with passable support from Bogart and some floozy), and again in '54 and '57 for On the Waterfront and The Bridge on the River Kwai. And since then? As little recognition as a Great White Shark gives a Scallop. Hollywood's elite traded water -- whether salty or fresh -- in favor of champagne, whiskey, red wine, Pomegranate juice, or Woody Harrelson's oxygen bar.

And so I watched last night's spectacle with mild disgust, as victory was awarded to a film set in Boston which failed to visit its beloved Aquarium. Jack Nicholson dressed as a seal, though, which was compensation -- perhaps even compensation enough to make up for the Academy's historical and continuing neglect of the cinema of the deep (although it is hard to expect more from those who define themselves as the ultimately and absolutely shallow).