The 79th Annual Academy Awards were announced on Monday morning, and I was very happy to know that The Departed won the Oscar for Best Picture, and Martin Scorsese won for Best Director.  I never got to see the actual show (as I don't have a TV here), but saw the complete list of nominees and winners at the IMDb 2007 Oscars Page.

Speaking of the IMDb, they've redesigned the layout of the movie information pages.  The information was there earlier as well, but the new page design shows more details than before in an elegant way.  Here is the Redesign FAQ that talks about the changes they made.  I noticed a couple of new things that popped up today — the release date of the film is also mentioned now, and so is the film's aspect ratio!  Take the Fight Club page for example, and observe.  (But I thought it was in 2.4 : 1 aspect ratio and not 2.35 : 1?)

There is a new trailer for the Danny Boyle film Sunshine available to watch, and it reveals a bit more information about the plot of the movie.  Fantastic stuff!

It's been a while since I updated last, and there have been people telling me that they're looking forward to new content over here.  I actually added a couple of drawings and some other stuff a while back.  But now I've got a "highlight drawing" which gives me an excuse to send off an email to a whole bunch of people promoting that, and the other recent additions!

First off, the recent drawings on the site...  Some time back, Varun asked me do a title screen for a game he is working on, called "One Way Out".  I did, but that drawing didn't suit the tone of the game, and hence it was not used.  I've uploaded it here.  Then, there's a zombie drawing I did for last week's Illustration Friday topic, and finally, the highlight drawing this time, called Saw Trilogy, which is my tribute to the most excellent Saw movies!  Here are links to the drawings, please do leave your comments —

• One Way Out (Unused Title Art)
• Crash Test Zombie
• Saw Trilogy

Now for some more movie and other news —

• Came across this a while ago, and it's something quite amazing — movie posters in 3-D!  This article at AICN and this one at PosterWire talk about the new technology, and also have links to the site of the company that produces these posters.
• Will Write for Chocolate is a well-written blog about freelance writing, apart from having a very nice webcomic series!
• On this article, director Zack Snyder (he of the upcoming 300) revealed some details about his film adaptation of the graphic novel, Watchmen.  Adapting such a book is a frightening challenge, Snyder seems to be up to it though.
• AICN has posted a number of reviews of the upcoming CGI movie TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), and they're mostly positive, like this one.  I was a huge fan of the Turtles when I was younger, hence I look forward to watching this movie.  Anyway for now, one can download the JoBlo.com exclusive TMNT wallpapers.
• Initial buzz on the David Fincher serial-killer-hunt movie Zodiac is extremely positive, but then we're talking about the director of Se7en and Fight Club here.  As far as I'm concerned, he can do no wrong!
• This is a little old, but Saw director James Wan's upcoming film, Dead Silence is releasing in March, and the official site is here.
• The initial trailer for Resident Evil: Extinction was released recently!  There's quite a bit of time to go though, as the movie'll be out in September only.
• Oh, and the second, even more awesome trailer for the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez collaboration Grindhouse was released recently at Yahoo! Movies.
• Movies I watched recently include the wildly entertaining but at times disgusting Jackass: The Movie and Jackass Number Two, the David Cronenberg SF-cerebral splatter (in more ways than one!) film Scanners, the SF-drama Children of Men, the Oscar nominated short film Cashback, the sequels Escape from L A and The Butterfly Effect 2, the hilarious Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the X-rated 1975 cartoon Fritz the Cat, and the gangster action movie Smokin' Aces.
• I was very pleased to see that The Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Film Review is back in operation and has also gone through a facelift!  I really love the comprehensive reviews of Richard Scheib at this site, and look forward to reading lots more of his informed commentary.
• We had a book exhibition at our office recently, and I bought Michael Crichton's latest book, Next.  It's very interesting so far, and the fake site, Nextgencode, designed as marketing for the book, is also really good!

Whew, I guess that's it for now, I will write about Next once I finish reading it.  Don't forget to have a look at my "Saw Trilogy" drawing!

I've come across a few interesting pieces of movie news recently, so I thought I'd post those here.  A lot of good stuff coming our way in the next few months!

The adaptation of Frank Miller's comic 300 from director Zack Snyder is going to be released in the IMAX format.  The stunning visuals would make for quite a viewing experience on such a large screen.  If it comes to the IMAX theatre in Hyderabad and if I am there at the time, I would definitely jump at the opportunity to watch it!  I'm keeping my fingers crossed.  (The film's US release date is March 9.)

Head over to this link to watch the very amusing teaser trailer for Rush Hour 3!  Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker are back and their target for causing havoc this time appears to be France.  Brett Ratner returns to direct this sequel, scripted by Rush Hour 2's Jeff Nathanson.

The IMPAwards site has put up the 2006 Movie Poster Awards, go there to view the nominees and winners in various categories including Best Poster, Worst Poster, Best Tagline, etc.  The image above, by the way, is from the International Poster of The Hills Have Eyes, which won the award for Scariest Poster.

I loved Danny Leiner's 2004 stoner comedy Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, and thought it was a really well done movie.  Hence, I was very happy to see this article at JoBlo, indicating that a sequel (Harold and Kumar Go To Amsterdam?) is in the works.

I was fortunate enough to watch The Departed in a theatre in Bangalore in December, and I've become a huge fan of director Martin Scorsese since then.  The film itself is absolutely amazing and it has now joined the ranks of Fight Club and Pulp Fiction as one of my all-time-favourite movies.  Therefore, this article, at the Miami Herald's "Reeling" blog, which shows that Scorsese inserted X symbols throughout the film as a "sign of impending doom", was very interesting.  I came across this page from this article on JoBlo.  One thing I noticed in the movie was that Jack Nicholson's character, Frank Costello, remains in shadow throughout his introduction in the first scene.  It is only when he says the line "My father used to say to me that we could become cops or criminals.  What I'm saying to you is this — When you're facing a loaded gun, what's the difference?", that he emerges into the light.  I don't know the exact significance of this.  My feeling is that it was done to position the character as someone who's "pulling the strings" from the background or as almost a mythical presence (like Keyser Soze in The Usual Suspects), as the character certainly plays such a dominant role in the formative years of Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon's character).  At any rate, it is just one of the reasons why I feel the movie is a masterpiece.

Another March release I am really looking forward to, is the action-comedy Hot Fuzz starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, and directed by Edgar Wright.  This is the same team that was behind the excellent 2004 romantic-zombie-comedy Shaun of the Dead, and the film itself looks like it is going to be a blast, going by the UK trailer and the US trailer.

How come I didn't hear of this earlier?  Sunshine is an upcoming film from director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland (the guys behind 28 Days Later), and it is about a team of astronauts who are faced with the task of re-igniting our dying sun!  Go to the film's website, which has tons of interesting information and videos, and don't miss this article, about the science of the film (I will have to do a bit more reading on what supersymmetric particles are, though); and the film's breathtaking trailers (UK version, international version), which contain a rearrangement of Clint Mansell's fantastic Requiem for a Dream music.