Marty missed out again, making it the third time an actor-director has beaten him to the director Oscar, after Robert Redford with the boring Ordinary People, and Kevin Costner, who went on to make The Postman. The other two times he lost to Barry Levinson, who directed Toys and Sphere, and to Roman Polanski, who had sex with a 13-year-old girl. As you can tell by these harsh slatings of talented people, I’m not in a good mood about it, even though I knew, in my heart of hearts, that they were going to give it to Clint. Apart from my bias, my predictions of the ‘big’ Oscars were okay, except I didn’t think that the academy would actually be nice to the deserving Freeman.

With my feelings in turmoil, no new content today from me. Instead, I’ll point you to other people who are providing me with distractions from my sorrow.

Tom does a fantastic liveblog of the Oscars for those, like me, who didn’t watch it while it happened, with such lovely entries such as:

7:48 — Yo-Yo Ma performs during the Obituary Page portion of the evening. Applaud for the most popular!

Thanks, Tom, for a great job. Makes me almost want to have seen it, if not for the aforementioned sadness.

Paul O’Brien makes some excellent points about the online comics community over at Ninth Art. He has a great way of hitting the nail on the head sometimes:

There is no such thing as an invalid reaction. If the readers think the book sucks, it’s no answer to turn round and tell them that their opinion is inadequately reasoned. It’s still their opinion. It might be expressed in an uninformative and rather boring way, but it’s an opinion nonetheless.

If you don’t already, you should read his reviews at The X-Axis. Sharp, perceptive, funny and always readable, even if you don’t read the X-Men. Alan David Doane agrees, in response to the article, in his own way of course.

Jog posts an excellent look at Seven Soldiers #0, covering everything you want to know about it.

Ian has a wry idea of how comics will look in the future, based on internet reaction.

Greg talks of his love for Elizabeth Braddock (but in a good way) in a great post charting the history of the character, that makes me want to get out my old Claremont X-Men books and relive my youth.

Harvey opines for the loss of the Priest version of the White Tiger in this eloquent post, now that Bendis is introducing a new version in Daredevil (and Priest’s Black Panther run is being ignored for the new hip-hop flava version currently in stores).

The Pulse has a chat with Devin Grayson and Brian Stelfreeze about their upcoming Matador creator-owned series in this post, trying to help me decide whether to wait for the trade or not.

That should keep you busy until tomorrow, when I should have reviews for last week’s comics.