With its concentration on the music industry, it's easy to forget that the Grammys have a few movie-related categories. They include best compilation soundtrack album, best score soundtrack album and best song written for motion picture, television or other visual media. One thing that's always odd with the Grammys, though, is how many nominees are so old. Take a look at the score/composer nominees, for example: Babel (Gustavo Santaolalla); Blood Diamond (James Newton Howard); The Departed (Howard Shore); Happy Feet (John Powell); Pan's Labyrinth (Javier Navarrete); Ratatouille (Michael Giacchino). Only the last of those films came out in 2007. But the eligibility period for the Grammys is always October of the previous year until the end of September of the current year. All but Ratatouille's soundtrack were released in October, November and December of 2006. Since the Grammy ceremony is only a couple weeks prior to the Oscars, the ancient films honored are easily seen as that much more old news (Babel won the 2007 Academy Award for score).

Happy Feet was also recognized in the best song category, for "The Song of My Heart" by Prince (who already has the best soundtrack of all time), despite its not having received an Oscar nomination. Same goes for one of its competitors, Casino Royale theme song "You Know My Name", co-written (with David Arnold) and performed by Chris Cornell. Dreamgirls' "Love You I Do", written by Siedah Garrett and Henry Krieger (performed by Jennifer Hudson) is the only overlap from last February's Oscar nominees (it lost to Melissa Etheridge's "I Need to Wake Up" from An Inconvenient Truth). The other recognized tracks, both from 2007 releases, are Eddie Vedder's "Guaranteed" from Into the Wild and Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová's duet "Falling Slowly" from Once.

Once is also a contender for best compilation soundtrack, though it faces a huge challenger in The Beatles, who are recognized for the album for the Cirque du Soleil show Love (how does that fall into this category and not the one for musical show album?) and indirectly for the soundtrack to the movie Across the Universe, which features covers of the band's tunes performed by the movie's cast. Other soundtrack nominees are retro musicals Dreamgirls and Hairspray. Sorry, fans of High School Musical 2.

Everyone knows that kids rule Hollywood. Without them a lot of movies wouldn't be made, wouldn't make millions and wouldn't sell a ton of merchandise. When studios aren't thinking of how to do well in foreign markets, they're thinking of how to succeed with the little ones. For the past twenty years, the Nickelodeon's Kids' Choice Awards have been showing us what the kids apparently prefer, and on Saturday they honored some more predictable favorites.

The Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest was the choice for favorite movie of the year, though surprisingly Johnny Depp was not the favorite actor. Instead the kids picked now-7-time-winner Adam Sandler, who also beat out Will Smith and Jack Black. The favorite actress was Dakota Fanning, despite the fact that kids didn't go crazy for her Charlotte's Web last year. Her competition was Halle Berry, Keira Knightley and Sarah Jessica Parker. Happy Feet won for favorite animated film, though it wasn't even nominated for favorite voice from an animated film, a category won by Queen Latifah for Ice Age 2: The Meltdown. Rounding out the movie-related awards this weekend was a special honor given to Ben Stiller, who received the "Wannabe" Award for being the person who kids most want to be like. Of course, they probably just want to be in the Museum of Natural History after dark.

Director George Miller has told the AAP two interesting things: Mad Max 4 is going to happen and Mel Gibson won't be the lead. Miller says frankly that Gibson is now too old and too 'focused on his own films' to reprise the role of Rockatansky, so instead he's going to try to recruit a new, young star for the lead. The AAP also notes that Miller began developing Mad Max 4 before production began on Happy Feet, and now that he's finished with that, he's turning his full attention to the project. "I have a few projects in the pipeline including an animation...but I want to do another Mad Max movie and get stuck back into that," Miller said. "It won't be Mel. He was 21 when he made the first one, now he's a lot older and his passion is for filmmaking and directing. I don't think he is into acting and I don't think he would be interested in being involved at all."

The amusing AAP story also has Miller claiming that he received good career advice from his fellow Aussies Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman -- to not get a big head after his Oscar success with Happy Feet. "I was warned not to inhale too much because you can take it a little too seriously," Miller said. "We didn't expect to win, but it was a good excuse to drink, party and to act like teenagers again." No further details were offered as to the timetables and plans for the Mad Max sequel, but my two cents is that Gibson should return if only for a small role. Is it really Mad Max without Mad Mel?

This past weekend was full of award ceremonies (including the BAFTAs), many of which fall on the path toward the Oscars.

• The Writers Guild of America presented its awards Sunday. Top prizes went to Michael Arndt for his original screenplay for Little Miss Sunshine and to William Monahan for his adapted screenplay for The Departed. Both scripts are the best bets for the Oscars. Amy Berg also won an award for documentary writing for Deliver Us From Evil.
• It remains a tight race for the animated feature Oscar, but Cars beat Happy Feet for the top honor at the Annie Awards Sunday. So far the former has taken some big awards like the Golden Globe while the latter has won most of the critics' prizes. Other than Best Animated Feature, Cars only won for its music. Flushed Away took home the most Annies (5), and Over the Hedge won 3. Bambi II won the award for direct-to-video titles.
• Sunday's Grammy Awards had some love for movies, honoring the soundtrack to Walk the Line, John Williams' score for Memoirs of a Geisha, Williams' composition "A Prayer for Peace" from his score for Munich and Randy Newman's song "Our Town" from Cars. Also semi-related are the Dixie Chicks' five wins, which make up for the Oscar snub of their documentary Shut Up & Sing.
• The Visual Effects Society Awards were also presented Sunday. The biggest winner was Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest with six awards, including the two top prizes. Other winners were Flags of Our Fathers, Casino Royale and Cars.
• Maggie Gyllenhaal presented the tech Oscars Saturday. You can look forward to the quick montage of winners shown during the Academy Awards telecast in two weeks.

Cartoons are a pixel's-length away from taking the Academy by storm. Animated films this year have a serious increase in competitors, giving award voters a lot to choose from. As the Oscar watch warmsup, studios are wooing Academy members for their animated films as much as they are for Dreamgirls or Babel. This year there are sixteen animated features that are contenders for Best Animated Feature nominations. A category once dominated by Pixar and DreamWorks, the pool has now grown to include Fox, Sony and Warner Brothers.

Last year, AFI dove eagerly into a sea of drama and politics. They cuddled with Brokeback Mountain and got whiplash with Crash. With only an old virgin to keep them afloat, it seems that the AFI powers-that-be started to sink into the drama, and were happy to be rescued by the smiling lifesaver of 2006. Unlike the heaviness of the groups previous choices, this year's choices are ... different to say the least.

First comes the familiar -- the films that aren't surprising. There's some overseas drama with Letters from Iwo Jima and Babel. For home flavor, there's the indie teacher drama, Half Nelson, Spike Lee's Inside Man, United 93, and some music with Dreamgirls. So far, so not surprising. It's a decent range of dramatic choices, although by no means complete.

Then comes the smiling life saver. There's a penguin with Happy Feet, for starters. Top that off with two huge indie hits -- Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan and Little Miss Sunshine, and you hit some mainstream, some satire, and one hell of a Miss Sunshine performance. But then -- and this is where I get really confused -- there is The Devil Wears Prada. When I wiped away the eye-rolling feelings of superiority from her friends, the fat comments (which may be accurate, but are still scary), and a few other too-cheery moments, I liked the film. I wasn't sad to have seen it, or to have even spent the extra coin to see it in a cushy theatre with seat service. However, that being said, is AFI so desperate for relief from last year that they went a little too far in the other direction?

Happy Feet, as we all know, has so far done quite well at the box office, holding the top spot two weeks in a row and crossing the $100 million mark in only 10 days. By pretty much any measure, the film is a financial success. Parents are certainly lining up at the box office to take their tykes to see the penguin flick -- a no-brainer of a choice in a weekend of otherwise lame family fare like the dreadful Deck the Halls -- but are they happy once they've seen it?

I've been fascinated by the comments people are leaving on my review of Happy Feet; rarely do we get so many comments on a review of any film, much less a kiddie flick. I was even more surprised to see how many parents were in agreement with me that, with its sexual overtones and environmental heavy-handedness, the film is inappropriately marketed to young children. So here are my questions to all you parents out there who took your kids to see Happy Feet (and there must be a lot of you, judging from that $100 million in box office receipts, so don't be shy): After seeing Happy Feet with your kids, were you happy? Did you feel the film was appropriately marketed to young children? And what ages are the kids you took to see the film?

Personally, I think the box office results are misleading. I think a lot a people took their kids to see Happy Feet based on it being marketed so heavily to kids as a simple, cute, little story about a dancing penguin, and ended up steamed at the the overt sexuality in the film, the environmental message, or both -- but I could be wrong here. So let me know what you think, folks. Was Happy Feet the best kids' film of the year, or was it all wet?

I love when celebrities speak their minds, because 1) it is interesting to hear what they have to say, and 2) their minds are often filled with controversial statements. Actors especially are given crap for giving their opinions, but really how is it different for them to advertise a cause or point of view than to sell fashion or goods? Is it different because they aren't getting paid for their thoughts? Is it okay for them to support charities and causes through events but not through interviews? And shouldn't Susan Sarandon, who is well known for being one of the more outspoken celebrities in the world today, find another way to attempt communication with more conservative-minded people than by way of her own voice? Here are the latest in celebrity causes and criticisms:

• According to the Daily News, Sarandon is one of a few celebrities trying to get The Ground Truth seen by members of the U.S. Armed Forces, and subsequently one of a few now slamming the military for lack of interest. On Veteran's Day, the actress joined Cher, Paul Haggis, Olivia Wilde and others for a special AOL event, during which they spoke with war veterans and promoted the documentary. Now, apparently Cher has made 5,000 copies of the film's DVD for American soldiers to view, but Army, Navy and Marine Corps bases are not showing any thanks. An Army spokeswoman responded via the newspaper, saying that the film is an activist piece, not a documentary, and says that it, "has a definite point of view," adding that the military isn't encouraging soldiers to boycott the film, but it isn't interested in promoting it to them (what does she find more suitable for the troops? Sahara). While it is obvious that The Ground Truth has a bit of a slant -- it would be impossible for it not to -- I found it mostly unbiased, actually. You can read my review of the film here.
  

Call me old school, but I like my children's films to actually be written for children. With the glut of animated films flooding the kiddie film market, it seems that studios -- and the people they hire to write the scripts for them -- are convinced that the only way to get parents to take their tykes to the theater to see a kids' movie is to fill them to overflow with adult references, and Happy Feet is the latest offender. The film opens with a female penguin, Norma Jean (voiced by Nicole Kidman), swaying seductively through a crowd of male penguins. The female is drawn with an inflated chest, presumably to simulate a large bosom. Real female Empire Penguins don't have boobies, of course, but I suppose the filmmakers thought that real men can't manage to sit through a 90-minute film with their kids without some simulated penguin cleavage to keep their attention. Norma Jean moves through the males, singing, until her attention is caught by Memphis (Hugh Jackman), who channels Elvis and says things like, "Whoa, Mama" a lot.

I still don't understand the success of March of the Penguins. I don't understand the film's popularity, and I really don't understand how it beat Murderball for the documentary Oscar. I do understand its influence, though. Yes, Happy Feet was coincidentally in production before the release of the penguin doc, but as far as the public knows, the animated movie is coming on the heels of March, and it should be of help to Warner Bros. that kids might be hungry for more penguins (not literally, of course). Earlier this month, the New York Times featured an article on the penguin craze and mentioned other related movies coming out in the near and distant future, including Surf's Up, a Madagascar sequel and a long-in-the-works Opus picture. Of course, there's also Bob Saget's March parody, Farce of the Penguins, which heads straight-to-DVD in January.

But what about the nature documentary? What influence has March of the Penguins had on its genre as opposed to its subject? Obviously, Hollywood isn't so keen on celebrating the medium, especially when that medium is one typically associated with the Discovery Channel and other cable outlets more than with theatrical box office gold. Sure, before March of the Penguins there was Winged Migration, another doc about birds that grossed about $11 million domestically, but compared to March's $77 million domestic earnings, that can easily be forgotten in studio execs' memories.