Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

Folded:

• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (thought provoking, stunningly realised)
• Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona: So, Penelope Cruz or Scarlett Johansson? (utterly pointless discussion really because you’ll never bed either. Still, don’t rule stalking out)
• Loco Roco 2 (you’ll ever love it or want to kill everyone around you within two minutes of playing)
• Try this voucher code at Pizza Hut online and get 50% off your bill if you spend over £30 – FOW0501XN (£15 for a feast of mozzarella goodness? You’re welcome)
• Fruli (people will take the mick, then end up drinking half of yours)

Creased:

• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (poncy critic fodder)
• Valentine’s Day cards (to my ‘girlfriend’, ‘boyfriend’, ‘one I love’ – how about ‘to the cheapskate who never leaves the car full of petrol’?)
• Lenny Henry (did you see him on Live at the Apollo a few weeks back? He’s still doing impressions of his granddad)
• Creme Eggs (they don’t scan at automated checkouts in the supermarket, which makes them annoying and not tasty like they should be)
• Letmegooglethatforyou.com (damn, the internet’s getting full)

In the eighties we pretty much plagiarised the crap out of everything JRR Tolkien ever wrote.

Well, we say “plagiarised” loosely. We certainly stole most of his characters, themes and settings, but we made them better by including several direct references to Samuel L Jackson (Frodo keeps babbling about Sam’s short role in Spenser: For Hire).

Our books were awesome – and Peter Jackson somehow thought so too – because he stole the whole thing and turned it into a fairly popular Hollywood franchise. Minus all the S. Jackson references.

Kind of reminds us of current accusatory Benjamin Button goings-on, actually.

If you ask us the most curious thing about Benjamin Button is how he died without fully reentering his mother’s womb. We think we can all agree that for full closure – a scene like that would have definitely been necessary. The fact that said mother’s womb had already been decomposing for eighty-something years by that point would only have made things more interesting.

We like all our Brad Pitt flicks infused with a touch of zombie vagina. Had Edward Zwick thought of this, Legends of the Fall would have been far more interesting. Please note the intentional emphasis on the word far.

But Zwick has never thought outside the zombie-box. Neither has Pitt. And neither has Adriana Pichini, for that matter. She’s an Italian writer who claims her short story ‘Arthur’s Return to Innocence’ got ripped off and smeared all over the Benjamin Button script – or as All Headline News puts it:

“Adriana Pichini, an office worker by profession, alleges in a lawsuit she filed on Friday that the Brad Pitt-starrer flick is based on her short story “Il ritorno di Arthur all’innocenza” (“Arthur’s Return to Innocence”). She copyrighted her story in Italy and sent it to U.S. publishers, although it didn’t get printed.

“Her lawyer, Gianni Massaro, said a file was opened with the Rome Tribunal Court, which would mean a judge will watch the film and read the story to determine if there are enough similarities to warrant an investigation.”

Some obvious plot-points that probably exist in both stories include the bit about Brad Pitt aging backwards, the bit where Brad Pitt kills lots of ocean-going Japanese, and the part where Brad Pitt eventually has to make love to a giant hamster as a means of atoning for a backwards-life full of strange misdeeds.

It’s a good movie, really. If you haven’t seen it you should.

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Remember all that talk about how The Dark Knight should be given an Oscar nomination for Best Picture?

Yeah, it didn’t happen. The Oscar nominations have just been announced and, while The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button has managed to rack up 13 nominations, The Dark Knight has been comprehensively snubbed.

Shut out of the Best Picture and Best Director categories, the only real hope that The Dark Knight has of winning an Oscar in a big category now is with Heath Ledger‘s Best Supporting Actor nomination. And even if he does win, his acceptance speech is bound to be crap.

Yesterday there was all kinds of speculation that The Dark Knight would be nominated for Best Picture at this year’s Oscars. A nomination, it was claimed, would be a shot in the arm for the ceremony itself – by our calculations it’s been about a decade since anyone won an Oscar for a film that a member of the public even knew existed, and so giving a Best Picture nomination to The Dark Knight would motivate the potential Oscars audience much more than, say, Hugh Jackman flapping around the stage in a flowery blouse ever would.

But that hasn’t happened. The Oscar nominations have been announced and it looks as though The Dark Knight will have to make do with all its People’s Choice awards, even though that’s basically the awards season equivalent of the Waggiest Tail rosette at a dog show for animals with dangerously concussed owners.

And The Dark Knight hasn’t just been ignored in the Best Picture category – Christopher Nolan didn’t get a Best Director nod despite his groundbreaking work with the Imax equipment. Hans Zimmer didn’t get a Best Soundtrack nod even after all the kerfuffle over whether it was eligible or not. And Christian Bale was locked out of both the Silliest Voice By A Main Actor and the Most Hilarious Arrest Over An Alleged Assault Of An Actor’s Clown Mother categories.

It’s disappointing, but we’ll still be rooting for Heath Ledger in the Best Supporting Actor category and whoever it is who did the sound mixing for The Dark Knight. We might even make a banner for the last one.

But if The Dark Knight isn’t going to win all the Oscars now, what is? Well, if the Oscar nominations are any indication The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button might do quite well. It’s picked up 13 nominations, for everything from Best Actor for Brad Pitt to Best Picture to Best Director for David Fincher to Best Adapted Screenplay to Best Supporting Actress for Taraji P. Henson.

And The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button would have probably got even more Oscar nominations, too, if only the academy had listened to our requests to introduce categories for Best Forrest Gump Rip-Off, Best Lead Character Who’s Infuriatingly Unable To Complete Entire Sentences and Picture Most Likely To Give You Full-Blown Deep-Vein Thrombosis.

Which other movies got Oscar nominations this year? We’re not exaggerating when we say all the movies you expected to. But if you really must know, Fox has got a complete list for you.

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