Beardwatch 2013 Last week on Survivor, most of the episode was devoted to the Bikal tribe, aka the Favorites. Our homeboy Matt Bischoff didn’t get a ton of airtime, but was selected to join an alliance with Sherri, Laura, Julia, Shamar and Mike. The other alliance, referred to as “The Lovers,” is comprised of the four attractive people who bonded early on their collective attractiveness. When Gota got their buts kicked in the immunity/reward challenge, Cincy-born Reynold Toepfer immediately addressed his issues with Shamar. The Iraq War veteran, who started a tiff with Matt last week, prefers to “conserve energy” and do crazy Pilates stretches over wasting time fishing, securing the shelter or doing pretty much anything else.                                                               Feel the burn!After Reynold spoke his peace, he proverbially slipped in an extra chair at the popular kids’ lunch table and asked Matt to join the pretty people’s decision and vote Shamar off, going against Matt’s original alliance. Later, Reynold found a hidden immunity idol (which is a thing?) that protects whoever’s in possession from elimination. After hiding the object in his pants, trying to keep it secret, Laura immediately noticed a telling “bulge” and knew the plan to eliminate one of the Lovers was foiled. Clearly, this was all just a producer’s plot to get people to talk about Reynold’s “bulge.” Success! Unfortunately, Reynold did not give his immunity idol to cuddle buddy Allie, and the blonde got six out of 10 votes (Matt stuck with his original alliance). Looks like there’s more space at the popular table! Speaking of locals on TV, it looks like Cincy has their own Sons of Anarchy (I wish). You know how at the end of every Law and Order episode, a message states that the stories are not based on actual events? Well, we all know that’s a bunch of bullshit, and this week’s upcoming episode of Special Victims Unit couldn’t make that any more clear. Via Dlisted: A famous young Hip Hop couple in a physical dispute screams “Chris and Rihanna!” but, in SVU world, the abuser done gets killt! People love it when local products make national news. The latest: BuzzFeed’s list of “Cincinnati Foods That Are Better Than Yours.” Sure, you’ve got the ubiquitous Skyline and Montgomery Inn (yawn, sorry), but there are some fresh Cincy exports like Tom + Chee’s grilled cheese donut, Kings Island’s blue soft-serve and portable yums from It’s Just Crepes. Check nearly any humor blog/Internet recreation site and you’ll likely find a list of the “Worst Tattoos EVAR” complete with misspellings, poor drunken decisions and unfortunate portraits. Also, you’ll probably see this picture. Well, not anymore — Scott Versago of Akron’s Ohio Ink Studios fixed the butchered tat! Channeling my guilty pleasure crush Oliver Peck (panel judge on Ink Master and ex-husband of Kat Von D — don’t judge me), I have to say the “new” tat has entirely too much dark shading, but it’s certainly an improvement and looks much more like the original woman who passed away. The Oscars were kind of fun this year. Seth MacFarlane didn’t attack us with his arsenal of voices (though many saw his jokes as misogyny at its finest) and the awards were pretty spread out among the films (as opposed to the usual one or two favorites). But after watching Saturday’s Film Independent Spirit Awards, no other movie awards show will match up. The much-funnier-than-MacFarlane Andy Samberg hosted, the show is uncensored on IFC and the evening was brought to us by Jameson, an apparently magical ingredient for a high-larious evening. And, yes, independent films are way cooler than Lincoln. The night kicked off with the award for Best First Screenplay (See what I mean? What a cool award.) As the camera panned around to all the nominees, Derek Connolly (of the perfectly surreal Safety Not Guaranteed) took a giant swig of what appeared to be a wine glass full of Jameson (each table had a half gallon!). To his surprise, Connolly won and went on to make a speech that stumbled along for more than six minutes (this was what appeared to be the only time the show was cut/censored), ending with a fabulous moment with the one and only Bryan Cranston. Check out this moment and more highlights: And one last Oscars gripe: I was enraged to see Channing Tatum perform an entire dance sequence onstage without tearaway pants, Ginuwine's "Pony" or a single pelvic thrust. They totally overlooked a potential Magic Mike nod and I don't appreciate it.

More and more restaurants and food trucks are offering late-night yums to meet the demands of the area college students, bar crowds and general night owls. Usually “fourth meal” conjures up the thought of tacos or pizza, but what about donuts? Busken has set up a pop-up donut shop at 1218 Vine St. (between A Tavola and Sloane Boutique), open 7 p.m.-midnight Thursdays and 7 p.m.-1 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays through March 16. Here, guests can swing by after dinner or drinks for a free Lite-Hearted donut, Busken’s new heart-shaped glazed treat. After tasting one of these bad boys, you’ll be shocked to find they’re only 140 calories a pop. You won’t have to feel too bad about indulging in a mindnight snack, but you may be left wondering whose soul Busken had to sell to get these delicious donuts to clock in at 2.5 grams of fat. Bockfest might not officially begin until next weekend, but events leading up to the big parade and festival are already in full effect. Friday is the annual Precipitation Retaliation Happy Hour at Milton’s Tavern. Why the retaliation? In 2008, a huge snowstorm nearly shut down Bockfest, so the next year a paper snowman was set ablaze as a sacrifice to the precipitation gods. The burning snowman tradition stuck, and it continues tonight at 8 p.m. Grab a drink and watch the sucker burn! In the market for some unique furniture, home décor or apparel? 20th Century Cincinnati is a must this weekend. The 19th annual show brings vintage and mid-century modern trends to a one-stop shop at Sharonville Convention Center. Sixty dealers bring furnishings, paintings, textiles and much more, filling 20,000 square feet. And fashionistas: There will be lots of vintage clothing, costume jewelry, accessories and more dating from the ‘20s to the ‘80s. The showroom is open 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; $7 admission is good for the full weekend. Find more info here. The Northern suburbs of Cincinnati sometimes get left out of the city’s biggest celebrations, so they made one their own! The Taste of Northern Cincinnati, also in the Sharonville CC, features food from some of the top eateries in the ‘burbs. From noon-4 p.m. Sunday, attendees will enjoy grub from LaRosa’s, Red Squirrel, Velvet Smoke BBQ, Blue Goose and more. These restaurants will also be competing for awards for best appetizer, salad, entrée, dessert and a people’s choice prize. Admission is $18; $5 for kids. The Academy Awards are Sunday and if your invitation also got lost in the mail (every damn year!), there’s a local way to celebrate. People Working Cooperatively presents its annual Oscar party at the Hilton Netherland Plaza, complete with a red carpet, cocktails, dinner, and a live screening of the show. Ticket sales benefit PWC’s Modifications for Mobility Program, which helps low-income, elderly and disabled homeowners make important alterations to their houses so they can remain safe and comfortable in their own homes. Buy tickets and find details here.Check out our To Do list and full calendar for more events, art exhibits, theater shows and concerts.

Now that Sunday night’s Oscars are over, the Internet is full of catty stories and tweets parsing every last second of televised coverage, from Angelina Jolie’s exposed leg to Adam Sandler’s participation in a taped segment in which actors discussed why they love movies. (If he really loved movies, he’d stop making them, some have said.) It’s both understandable and sad that the Oscars — and movie-award season in general — ends like this, with far more interest in the telecast’s trivia than in the movies that win awards. Arguably, the news value of this year’s show peaked before it even officially started, when Sacha Baron Cohen, in costume as “The Dictator” for an upcoming movie, spilled an urn of faux human ashes (ostensibly Kim Jong-il’s) on interviewer Ryan Seacrest. It’s getting worse, too, now that the Internet and 200+-channel cable television have educated us ad nauseam to the nature and inner workings of the Oscar campaign season. We carefully learn how a film builds momentum by moving through all the secondary award ceremonies from critics groups and the Hollywood professional guilds and associations. As a result, the Academy Awards themselves have become anticlimactic, which partially explains the media devotion to dissecting the telecast. And the attempts by the Motion Picture Academy to build false enthusiasm by allowing up to ten Best Picture nominees have been a disaster, since we all now know how to “read” the   nominations to distinguish the real ones (they also have Best Director nods) from the padding. Not all that long ago, few outside Hollywood insiders even knew there was a well-orchestrated “campaign season,” much less how to follow and handicap it. Convention wisdom, and you hear a lot of it these days, would be to revive the Oscar telecast by de-emphasizing the importance of the awards, themselves. Reduce the number given out on TV, especially the more esoteric or niche ones, in favor of increasing the glitz, spectacle, star power and big production numbers. Do like the Grammys have done, where classical, jazz, folk, blues, opera, international and more are rarely ever presented on the show. But I think the Academy should go the other way and try to increase public awareness of the importance of Oscar nominations. But maybe not for the Big Four categories – Best Picture, Director, Actor and Actress, which probably do suffer from overexposure by the time the telecast comes around (although The Artist, this year’s big winner, could use the help since many people have been scared off by the fact it’s a black-and-white silent film).Click the jump for more on ways the Academy could draw more attention to deserving films such as A Separation, In Darkness, Footnote and Bullhead. 

Read More

The nominees for the 84th annual Academy Awards were announced this morning. Local-boy-done-very-very-good George Clooney, as expected, is up for this year's Actor in a Leading Role trophy for his work in The Descendants, while The Ides of March scored Clooney another nod for best Adapted Screenplay (the only nomination for the largely-locally-filmed flick). Below is the full list of noms. So — who's winning an Oscar this year?

Read More