There's A Hole in Healthy Donut Logic

So Krispy Kreme is introducing today a new whole-wheat donut, eh?

I don't know who wrote this press release -- with an exclamation point in the lead and one of those horrible manufactured quotes from a company executive -- but it is worthy of The Onion.

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C., Feb. 26 -- Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc (NYSE: KKD) announces the introduction of a new Whole Wheat Glazed doughnut made with 100% whole wheat that has a sweet caramel flavoring covered in Krispy Kreme's Original Glaze. And, to make it even better, the doughnut is ONLY 180 calories!

"The Krispy Kreme Whole Wheat Glazed doughnut delivers the delicious taste that our customers have come to expect from us," said Stan Parker, Senior Vice President of Marketing for Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. "This sweet treat is an alternative for health conscious consumers with the benefits of 100% whole wheat and only 180 calories," he added.

Do you think Stan really talks like this? For the sake of Mrs. (or Mr.) Stan and all the loved ones in his life, I certainly I hope not.

And with all due respect to the good folks at Krispy Kreme, I have another idea for health-conscious consumers: Eat a banana or an orange or oatmeal for breakfast, and join a gym.

Health and fitness is just ... a donut away? Next stop: Washboard abs? And we wonder why American has grown so fat.

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Post-Sunday Letdown

I can't believe it's over. The press coverage. The media punditry. The office pools. After weeks of frenzied speculation in the blogosphere, Sunday's presidential election in Senegal is now just a memory.

And although we know that Binta & The Great Idea (starring a little girl from Senegal) did not win for Best Live Action Short last night at the Oscars, the results of the Senegalese Presidential election still remains in doubt as millions of Americans anxiously await word from half a world away.

Will the winner be the octogenarian incumbent Abdoulaye Wade, a professor and free-trade advocate who opposed socialist rule in a surprise win seven years ago?

Or will be it be one of 14 other opposition candidates, including the popular Idrissa Seck, a former Wade ally?

Or how about Ousmane Tanor Dieng, a diplomat who represents, perhaps, the best hope for the Socialist Party?

But don't count out Moustapha Niasse, leader of the Alliance of Progress Forces. His former experience as a diplomat and prime minister could be just what Senegal needs right about now.


This is an important election for the 11 million souls of this west African nation. The country ranks 156 among the 177 countries listed in UN's 2006 human development index ranking. Can this fragile young democracy break the Top 125 under a new president?

In other news, did you see that Jack Nicholson shaved his head?

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Five Movies to Watch For in 2007, Inspired By Movies From 2006

Now that the Academy Awards are over -- the broadcast did eventually end, didn't it? -- it's time to look ahead to the great movies of 2007 that will be loosely inspired by the movies of 2006 and early 2007.

Notes On A Sandal: A lesbian diarist spends a summer at the beach.

Charlotte's World Wide Web: A spider starts a blog and captures the heart of a nation

Last King of Scotch Land: A biopic on the life of Peter O'Toole.

The Ghost Writer: A man sells his soul to the devil (Harvey Weinstein) to get a movie script produced. Nicholas Cage stars.

Blood Diamonique: The seedy underbelly of faux jewelry.

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Ellen Hosts the Oscars

I don't agree with this. I agree with this.

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These Little Girls Are Winners

Two little girls portrayed in movies set half a world apart -- Albuquerque and Senegal -- could win Oscar gold tonight.

Binta & The Great Idea is a movie about a young girl who tells the story of a man (her father) who hopes to change the world, and a girl (her cousin) who wants to go to school. It's nominated for Best Live Action Short. It'd get my vote.

Over in the Best Picture category, it's certainly possible that Little Miss Sunshine could pull off an upset, and in the Best Supporting Actress category, voters tend to like surprise choices. This puts a win for Abigail Breslin in the realm of possibility, even though Jennifer Hudson already has the mantle space cleared off.

In any case, I'd say it'd be a great idea not to bet against Binta, a ray of sunshine that left me beaming.

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You can download the nominated live action and animated shorts here.

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MONDAY UPDATE: Binta did not win for Live Action Short, and Little Miss Sunshine won two Oscars: best supporting actor and best original screenplay.

It's Your Turn to Be A Movie Producer

I knew I'd regret this. Voting is still open.

You people are SICK!

This is Horrifying

Dancing cardboard stars. Snow White. Rob Lowe. Oy.

This is 10 minutes long. It feels like forever.

But it is fun watching the phonies clap.

Oscar Prediction For Best Film

Last Sunday was TV Sunday -- 12 straight hours of hangover-induced TV watching, and a span where I didn't bother to crack a book, strike a yoga pose or utter a responsorial psalm.

Today is Big Movie Saturday. Within a 24 hour period I will have seen three full-length movies and five shorts -- all of which have some connection with tomorrow's Academy Awards.

After today, I'll be qualified to judge 80 of the 113 individual nominations covering every category, which isn't bad considering I saw fewer movies in 2006 than in a long time.

This includes seeing every nominee for Best Picture.

So, what movie do I think will win, and what should win?

If the vote were held an hour from now, I'm not sure which film I'd choose for Best Picture. It really would depend on my mood at the time.

For starters, I wouldn't vote for Babel. Why? Here's my "54 word" review.

I also wouldn't vote for Little Miss Sunshine, though I loved it. By even being nominated, this movie has won, and it's a ray of welcome sunshine in a world that needs great comedies.

So it's down to three movies as my personal choice:

* Letters From Iwo Jima. This is one-half of the Eastwood World War II masterpiece, along with Flags of Our Fathers. This film had moments that will stick with me forever. (Here's my thoughts on the film.)

* The Departed. Maybe the most entertaining film of the year. Think about it: This film was based on a Hong Kong film that was inspired by Scoresese in the first place. So it's derivative of something that was derivative of Scorsese to begin with. How often has that happened? But this isn't Scorsese's absolute best movie. How can Scorsese win for this fine film when two finer films, Goodfellas and Raging Bull, didn't?

* The Queen. I think this film, on all levels, was the most perfect this year, all things considered: acting, writing, everything. All involved should celebrate with a nice cup of tea. Good show!

So what do I think will win? The Departed.

Which film would I vote for, if push comes to shove? ...The Departed.

But if either Letters or The Queen comes out on top, I certainly won't be disappointed.

All three films tower over Babel.

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What do you think?

The Departed: Must-See Scorsese

THIS WAS WRITTEN LAST FALL

Come February, some tear-filled actress or emotional actor or on-top-of-the-world director are going to accept Academy Awards for their work in the motion picture industry.

It's a feeling that Martin Scorsese wouldn't know. He has never won.

Not for Goodfellas: Dancing With Wolves won in 1990, with Kevin Costner nabbing best picture and director Oscars.

Nor for Raging Bull: Another actor-director, Robert Redford, won in 1980 for Ordinary People.

And Scorsese wasn't recognized, either, for one of the all-time great comedies, The King of Comedy, a satire about media and celebrity that remains as relevant (and probably moreso) than the day it was released in 1983.

He also hasn't been honored for great work in recent years for The Aviator and Gangs of New York.

That he has never won for best director or best picture -- and yet movies such as The Greatest Show on Earth and Terms of Endearment have -- kind of cheapens the Oscar a little, don't you think?


Does anybody still care two bits about Dances With Wolves? Who wants to sit through this movie again?

Yeah, didn't think so.

That's one of the key things about his movies: Like a work of Shakespeare, Scorsese's films stand the test of time and multiple viewings. Sometimes, and I suspect this may be true of his new movie The Departed, they're even better the second time.

So when Ellen DeGeneres hosts the Oscars next year, and when a winner starts gushing a la Halle Berry or Sally Field, just remember: The work of Martin Scorcese has never been honored. Nor has the directing of Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Altman, Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles and Stanley Kubrick.

And this, my friends, cheapens the value of the Academy Award itself.

Pick up a cell phone, call a friend and go see The Departed. It's in the same league as ScorSese's all-time best.

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A Note On A Movie

Last night Wally and I saw Notes On A Scandal. Judi Dench is indescribably good playing the lonely and loathsome history teacher. It would take the pen of Barbara Covett herself, the diary-writing character Dench plays, to come up with a wickedly appropriate description of this astonishingly good performance.

In any other year, Dench would be the easy front-runner for Best Actress. No matter who else was on screen, including her co-nominee Cate Blanchett, it was hard NOT to look at Dench and relish every forced smile, grimace and (more often than not) blank stare, a stare that haunts as it betrays Covett's inner emptiness and utter loneliness.

To look away from Dench for a moment would be to miss something: This character speaks volumes even when, and especially when, she speaks nothing.

Dench probably won't get the golden statuette tomorrow night, but this performance deserves a dozen gold stars neatly placed (and long remembered) on those pages of Oscar history describing the greatest performances that didn't win.

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Oscar Predictions: Part I

On Oscar night, we here at The Cup of Joe predict that Hattie McDaniel, the first-ever African-American winner of an Academy Award for her role in Gone With the Wind, will be smiling down from heaven, celebrating the fact that 75 percent of the acting awards will, quite deservingly, go to a black person.

Here are my predictions:

Best Actor: Forest Whitaker
Best Actress: "Lone Caucasian" Helen Mirren
Best Supporting actress: Jennifer Hudson
Best Supporting actor: Eddie Murphy
Best Director: Martin Scorsese

I just hope that some Academy voters aren't of the mindset, for some strange reason, that they wouldn't vote for THREE black actors in the same year. Would that be a horrible reason, to, say, withhold a vote for Murphy or Whitaker and tilt the balance just enough in favor of another actor?

After today, I will have watched almost everything nominated in the bottom four categories above. Acknowledging that I haven't seen quite everything (like a number of Oscar voters, I suppose), my predictions are exactly the same as the way I'd vote, even though there was nothing "supporting" about Hudson's "leading" role in Dreamgirls.

I'll discuss Best Picture choices in a post tomorrow.

A Movie About, But Not For, Little Children

Little children, particularly those of a certain age, are not ones to put restraints on their urges. If they want a cookie, they'll eat it. If they're tired of doing THIS or THAT, they'll start crying and usually mommy and dad will be there to take care of the situation. The parent, giving in to the tears or the screams or even the simple unemotional request, will push the swing, switch the TV channel, empty the diaper.

There are plenty of adults who continue to act like children all their lives, always wanting something, unable to control the urges in their life. They may be married, or in a monagomous relationship, but they will cheat on their spouse because they can't resist the urge. They may have extreme credit card debt, but they'll buy that jacket they don't need because they WANT it. DESIRE wins over CONTROL.

A new movie by Todd Field, Little Children, is about adults, adults with obsessions, who for a variety of reasons can't resist the same kind of desires that cause children to steal cookies.

The mental instabilities of the characters in this film all involve obsessions: the ex-cop obsessed with harassing a sex offender; the brainy woman obsessed with the not-so-brainy hunk; the married man obsessed with masturbating on the internet; the sex offender obsessed with his complex desire to expose his genitals ... and masturbate publicly.

Most of the main characters in Little Children give in to their urges, their obsessions.

Other characters live lives of repression. The results are no better.

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Little Children is directed by the man who did In The Bedroom, which was my pick as the best movie of 2001, and is still one of my favorite films of the decade.

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AND I'M TELLING YOU

Phyllis Somerville, who plays the mother of the sex offender in the movie, gives a performance worthy of an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress. She wasn't nominated, maybe placing sixth on the list since Jennifer Hudson's LEAD role was honored with a SUPPORTING nod for Dreamgirls? What a shame. Her son in the movie, played by Jackie Earle Haley, did receive a nomination, and is so worthy of this honor.

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Near the end of the movie, a little girl around 3 years of age gives in to an urge -- the desire to get off her swing, leave a public park at night and stare from the middle of a street at bugs swarming a light pole.

What did she see in that stare? Just bugs swarming around a light?

These weren't moths drawn to a flame. These bugs aren't going to die.

But they're going to keep swarming around that light because they can't help it.

Smart Casting Move

So they're making a movie version of the old Get Smart TV series, created by Buck Henry and Mel Brooks? I guess there were no original scripts or ideas out there? Sounds terrible, huh?

Think again: Steve Carell is playing Maxwell Smart.

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KAOS over CONTROL: Both Brooks and Henry have not exactly been under a cone of silence regarding their exclusion from the creative team for the movie. Attorneys for Brooks and Henry have been busy working the shoe phone with legal threats, which you can read about here.

No word yet about any potential litigation involving Hymie the Robot.

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Lost Producers Need to Get Smart

... or fans will start saying Get Lost.

Yes: I'm talking about last night's episode.

If they jump the shark, as Fox's 24 has, how many viewers do you think will jump ship?

The Bottom Video is The Real Thing

One of the below commercials is about a soft drink, and the other one is not. They were both released within a year of each other: 1971 and 1972, respectively.

Although you can say that both commercials are inspired by the trends in advertising of that era, one of the ads goes down smooth and is still "clean and refreshing." But be careful with the other, because if you're drinking something, say a refreshing bottle of Coca-Cola, you just might do a spit-take.

TV Fun Times, Almost Spoiled By A Brit

Sunday afternoon, perhaps after drinking a wee bit too much on Saturday night, I spent about 12 hours just watching television. It's all I did, and is probably the most television I've ever watched in a single day.

Among the odd variety of shows I watched, either live or on Tivo: Reno 911 (Comedy Central), The McLaughlin Group (PBS), the last 9 minutes of Meet the Press (NBC), Scrubs (NBC, via Comedy Central), The Presidents (The History Channel), The Sarah Silverman Show (Comedy Central), The Amazing Race (CBS), CBS Sunday Morning (CBS), Ebert and Roeper (Ind.), The Simpsons (Fox) and This Week With George Stephanopoulos (ABC).

In addition, I could also stomach about 30 minutes of the one-hour Fox News Sunday With Chris Wallace, before Brit Hume belched something annoying and I had to run to the bathroom in case I suffered from yet another Brit Hume-induced episode of vomiting.

Included in this marathon was about six episodes of Scrubs from season 1, a show I've only watched a few times but have always liked. Below are some videos from season 6. They are must-sees if you like musical theater, songs about poo and "guy love." And they are a delight.

Warning: At some point during these videos, hilarity may ensure.

Michael and Walt: What Might Happen on 'Lost'

It's been some time since we've heard from the characters of Michael and his son Walt on Lost. They were last seen getting a free boat ride away from the island courtesy The Others.

Here's a theory I haven't read anywhere: Since the last few shows have hinted at time travel and rapid aging, my guess is that when the child Walt returns that ... he's no longer a child.

Under this scenario, I would also guess that when Michael returns later this season, he returns quite old, and won't live to see the end of season three.

This is a total guess.

And don't forget: It may be 2007, but it's still 2004 on the show.

In any case, the longer they drag this show out, the question becomes: will anybody still be watching to care? Last Wednesday's episode, one of the best of the season, had its lowest ratings of the season.

And for people who watch Lost a little more closely than I do, constantly freeze-framing and posting still frames of evidence on the internet: Please feel free to ridicule this theory.

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