[Being the latest in an infrequent series devoted to movie-related puff pieces so over the top that they're a show all by themselves..]

So it turns out that Winona Ryder is in the new Star Trek movie, where she plays the Vulcan ambassador Sarek's baby mama, and Vanessa Thorpe's profile of Ryder and the current state of her career has kind of science-fiction vibe to it itself. Did you know that Ryder was once "acclaimed as the most promising, most beautiful and most fashionable star of her generation - the generation, that is, that had become known as 'X'?" It's news to me, and I think I'm of the generation that had become known as 'X' myself, so long as we're all committed to writing in the style that has become known as "funny-looking'." Thorpe must have worried that we'd think it was just her, so she cites a back-up source: Ryder's father, who says that twenty or so years ago, his daughter and Johnny Depp were "the hottest couple in the United States." All together now--ewwwwww!! Is it possible that when all those folks at the red carpet premieres leaned across the police barricades and screamed, "You're the most promising, most beautiful, and most fashionable star of your generation," they were talking to Johnny? Thorpe herself undercuts her argument by describing Ryder's features as "elfin", a term I've always associated more with the likes of Michael J. Pollard or the guy on Two and a Half Men who isn't Charlie Sheen than anyone who might qualify as the most beautiful anything. It's possible that Cate Blanchett and Orlando Bloom in The Lord of the Rings have forever rewritten the rule book on this one, but not in my apartment.

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If you checked out our Oscar picks yesterday and are planning to use them as a basis for your own office pool, you should know that I, for one, pulled my short film predictions out of my hat. But at Beyond the Multiplex, Andrew O’Hehir has actually watched all the nominees. “Short films, at least as the category is defined by the Academy Awards, have even less to do with one another than feature films do. I mean, think about it: With very few exceptions, the films nominated for best picture over the years have all been three-act stories with plot, characters and a script, costing multiple millions to make and running somewhere between 80 and 160 minutes. A short, on the other hand, is any motion picture less than 40 minutes in length, and as in previous years, the 2008 nominees in animated and live-action shorts run the visual, conceptual and philosophical gamut.”

Hollywood and Fine uses the brewing Faye Dunaway/Hilary Duff feud as a jumping off point to discuss aging stars and plastic surgery.

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