Are you a music loser? How many of these albums do you have? If you’ve got twelve or more, you might be a Dido fan. (I have six, but if you count mp3’s of the bands mentioned, it goes much higher. Thus I’m probably a loser.)

Oscar nominees are out. A few thoughts:

• Good for Will Smith and Denzel Washington! For the first time ever, two black men are nominated in the “Best Actor” category.
• Renee Zellweger? Please. (I’m so over my pro-her phase.) All she did was put on a few pounds. Her accent was actually terrible, we discovered (when we didn’t watch the screen). Whoever thought that both Renee Zellweger and Ethan Hawke would be nominated for Oscars??
• I haven’t seen the movie, but doesn’t Jennifer Connelly have, like, the leading female role in A Beautiful Mind? Did they call it a supporting role just so she wouldn’t have to go up against Sissy Spacek?
• Personally, I think the artistic categories are the really difficult ones to call this year. I mean, the costumes in Moulin Rouge and Lord of the Rings were used for completely different purposes, and both brilliantly. How do you pick one over the other??
• It’s nice to see Amelie picked up a few. It’s a shoo-in for Best Foreign Film, I think, seeing as how I’ve never heard of any of the others.
• Wow. They caved to the critics and threw David Lynch a bone. My sister hated that movie.

I expect my friend Kel’s annual “Oscar Pick ‘Em Contest” e-mail to be arriving soon. Anybody got any hot tips?

Did you ever look for the star on a Tootsie Roll Wrapper? I was always told that if you found one, you could send it in for a prize (or make a wish on it or something). Turns out it’s just another urban legend.

“The World of the Laid-Off Techie.” Oh god. Sometimes stuff like this comes along, and it just makes me so scared that we made the wrong decision in leaving our jobs in London. It wasn’t, right?

At least Chelsea’s boyfriend never pulled this crap.

Max linked to a good article about the current European culture of fear. As an American currently living across the pond, I definitely think that the “irrational fears” are worse over here than at home. Sure, Americans distrust the government, but the British distrust everybody. Back home in Indiana, the only thing I really feared was a car accident (whether from a drunk driver or hitting a deer). Here, though, we fear the trains, we fear the beef, we fear the cell phones. We have the disasters to back it up, too! Personally, my big current one is that “deep vein thrombosis,” seeing as how I’m flying to Sydney in less than two days. My doctor advised that I take half an aspirin and move around a lot, but after reading that article I think I’m going to be jogging laps up and down the aisles. (What about alcohol? Alcohol thins the blood, right? Bring on the cocktails!)

Edited 01/03/2025: Link is unfortunately dead now.

HOLY COW! The Harry Potter movie trailer is available online! You’ve gotta see this thing… For now, you can only get it in a streaming version from the official site, but Entertainment-Rewired Magazine is going to have a downloadable version soon here.

Was that not amazing? According to AICN, the score was done by John Williams (of Star Wars fame). I really hope they manage to keep that dark, eerie feel through all of it. It looked more like a Tim Burton movie than a Chris Columbus one! Everything looked amazingly like how I had pictured it from the book. I loved the editing too, jumping from the letter to the train to the Great Hall. I really, really hope that the film lives up the quality of this trailer. *fingers crossed*