Gary Oldman ... happy birthday, 2009!

It's also happy birthday to Gary Oldman today ... and I can't believe he's 51. Mind you, I've enjoyed his movies for a couple of decades now, so I guess he must be!

His roles are so diverse, you're just left blinking. He has a gift for accents that is quite the equal of Johnny Depp ... in fact, I don't think I've heard Gary Oldman sound the same in two consecutive movies! My favorites from among his movies? It's almost impossible to choose. Immortal Beloved, Air Force One, The Dark Knight, The Fifth Element, Lost in Space ... the Harry Potter movies ...?! Like I said, utterly impossible to choose.

So I'm not going to choose -- I'm just going to nominate Gary Oldman as one of my most favorite actors, wish him Happy Birthday, and get on with the eye candy ... which is the whole reason you're on this page anyway, right? (In other words, shut up already, AG, and paste in the pictures. Right.)

And the winners are --

Yep, it's Oscar's Day -- can't say "Oscar's Night," because down here in Aus, the show goes on (and on and on and on) all day, due to the time difference!

As I write this, the great news is that Heath Ledger has just been honored with the AFI award:

See the winners come up in real time here, if you can't park yourself in front of a TV screen for about six hours during the working day -- and who can?

From my perspective, this is the big news at the Oscars -- why? Because it's the last chance Heath Ledger will have to "win the big one." And he richly deserved it. Brad Pitt and others will have many, many other chances, but this one was critically important for Heath, his family, and his fans.

Nice one, kid. Real nice.

Cold steel: Iron Man and other armored legends

Last couple of days, I've been re-reading some of the NARC books (which are my favorite gay SF of all time), and I got to thinking ... woah, if there was a NARC movie. I mean, it might never happen, but if it did, a team of designers would be working for six months to visualize, blueprint, and build, the NARC armor, right? What a blast it would be ... even trying to imaging the armor from these books is a thrill. Anyway --

Anyway -- all this got me thinking about Iron Man, and other armored heroes in the movies. Green Goblin (from Spiderman), Batman, and so on. And -- do you have about four minutes to spare? Because I found this roundup of armored heroes in the movies, and around the three minute mark, there's a great sequence showing how they got Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) into the suit. This is loads of fun:



Note to self: got to watch Iron Man tonight. One of my all-time favorites. What I loved about the movie was not just the fantastic effects -- and the armor! -- but also, Tony Stark is such a real human being, you believed him completely.