"Naomi Watts says she had to paralyse the right-side of her face to play Princess Diana in a new biopic."

"The 44-year-old actress was so determined to perfect the late Princess of Wales’ mannerisms that she changed the way her mouth moved."

“I didn’t just want to appear like her, it’s also about the tone of her voice and the way she moved her face,” Naomi explains.

“It’s completely the opposite of how I move my face. I move my face on the right-hand side and she moved hers on the left. I had to walk around with a cocktail stick in my mouth to paralyse the right-hand side of my face for weeks.”

Oh, she did it with a stick in her mouth. The headline made me think she used injections.

And isn't it a shame? After all that effort, the movie has putrid reviews. These body modification hijinks get attention from the awards-giving community, but not when the movie is terrible.

Stick in your mouth for weeks, eh? Not quite Christian Bale and "The Machinist," but thanks for playing Win an Oscar.

"The Internet in its wisdom has provided GIFs of the best reactions" to the Oscar song-and-dance routine "We Saw Your Boobs"...

"... including Naomi Watts’, perhaps best described as 'the death of a smile'..."



"... and Charlize Theron’s, perhaps best described as 'ice-cold daggers hurled directly from the eyeballs.'"

No Lisa Kudrow? Then I just don't care about any of your opinions.

The Screen Actors Guild Award nominees were just announced.

A quick scan reveals what you'd expect to see. For movies, they round up the folk from "Capote," "Brokeback Mountain," "Walk the Line." There's TV too. Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series. Oh, it's the usual Patricia Heaton, Megan Mullally stuff. No Lisa Kudrow, for the brilliant "Comeback"? Then I really don't care about your judgment about anything. Or do you think if she was good the show wouldn't have been cancelled? Or, why waste an award on a show that can't be helped?

Well, this reminds me. Whenever you read one of these lists of nominees, what you really want to know is who got snubbed. I mean, there are some things actors do that are just such over-the-top pleas for a nomination that it's really embarrassing when they don't get it. Like, for actress-in-a-movie this year, they had to feel required to give a nomination to Felicity Huffman for "Transamerica." She did the big gender identity thing this year. That's usually good for a nomination. Oh, and Charlize Theron got ugly again, so we need to say yes, Charlize, very nice. Again.

So, who got snubbed?

Bonus link: the Directors Guild Award nominees.

UPDATE: Chris emails:

OscarWatch.com has a list on the left side bar of all the potential contenders, and it has color-coded asterisks marking which ones got the nominations from each group, so you should be able to figure it out there.

But I'll tell you, here (these are just all the people they list on oscarwatch.com who didn't get nominated):

Actor: Terrence Howard (Hustle & Flow), Jeff Daniels (The Squid and the Whale), Ralph Fiennes, Eric Bana (Munich) snubbed.

Actress: Keira Knightley, Joan Allen, Gwyneth Paltrow, Naomi Watts, Vera Farmiga (who I've never heard of).

Sup Actor: Bob Hoskins is the main snub. Terrence Howard in Crash apparently, when he's also a contender in Hustle & Flow in the lead category. Will Farrell, Frank Langella, and Kevin Costner

Sup Actress: This is more interesting--Maria Bello and Scarlett Johannson snubbed. Laura Linney, Diane Keaton, and some other people I don't think anyone cares about.

DGA "snubs": The Constant Gardener, Walk the Line, Cinderella Man (Ron Howard), King Kong, Syriana, Match Point (Woody), A History of Violence.

"King Kong."

Have you seen it yet? I'm too busy even to have considered going to see it yesterday, but I was resistant to the idea anyway for several reasons. It's 3 hours long, and the prospect of getting bored is way too real. I don't like CGI, and the clips I've seen have especially bad CGI. I especially disliked shots of Kong jumping about weightlessly and of a herd of dinosaurs running straight at the camera. That the human beings can stand unharmed amid the stampede is not surprising: these things are insubstantial.

But Chris saw the movie yesterday and gave it a mixed review. It was too long. It takes an hour just to get to the island, with nothing much happening. Was Adrian Brody good? He had little to do. Was the CGI bad? The close up shots of Kong were great, but the long shots were not. Yeah, that's what I thought from the clips. Everything close up with Kong and Naomi Watts was really good. Naomi Watts was great. And the whole last hour was great.

Maybe I'll stop by and just see the last hour. It's not like I won't understand the story without the two hours of build-up, and that way I won't be stuck dying to leave and looking at my watch during the only part of the movie I have much chance of liking. But I'm not so sure I'll enjoy all those close ups as much as Chris did. I dislike big close ups, especially in CGI, and I already dislike the Kong face I've seen too many times in the magazines. It's so dominated by nose, that crinkly, creased, complicated nose. What's the point of staring into those nostrilly depths for an hour?

And why are his nostrils always so sparkling clean? Does being good somehow serve the same purpose as Kleenex? In movies where a monster is bad -- think "Aliens" -- it's festooned with strings of mucus. I'll bet there's never a trace of snot in those big gaping Kong nose holes.

UPDATE: And then there's the racism question. Does Kong represent a black man? Is there something about the way we live now that absolves the new Kong of that reading?

IN THE COMMENTS: A reader thinks it's "silly" for me to attack a movie I haven't seen. My disagreement includes the assertion that the guys who make movies don't deserve fairness.

MORE: For my response to a blogger who criticizes me for writing about a movie I haven't seen, go here.