In quite the unexpected move, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science has announced that next year’s 82nd Academy Awards ceremony will have a massive adjustment to it: the normal 5 Best Picture nominees will instead be 10 Best Picture nominees.

This is another apparent move for the Academy to try and bring in new viewers after their shake-up last year, bringing in Hugh Jackman to host instead of the usual comedian host (which I still personally prefer). As mentioned, the typical number of movies that were nominated each year was five, but way back in the early years of the Oscars, there were many more — sometimes as many as twelve, so this is a really a return to classic form. The last year that this format was used was in 1943, when Casablanca took the top prize.

This is shocking to me, but something that I’m pretty excited about seeing. You can’t help but think of all the movies in past years that people wanted to get a Best Picture nomination and didn’t; namely — using 2008 as an example — the animated features like Wall-E, the not-so-traditional contenders such as The Dark Knight, as well as the flat-out snubbed movies like The Wrestler. All of these movies were considered better films than some of the actual nominees, especially The Reader and Milk. If this change had been made last year and Dark Knight was in the mix, would it have made a run or would Slumdog Millionaire have still pulled it off? These are the questions that shouldn’t remain unanswered this year! Unfortunately, so far, this summer isn’t offering up any similar movies that are making a case for awards contention.

Just a few days ago, word swarmed the internet that Shia LaBeouf had decided to step away from the long-rumored Y: The Last Man adaptation (Read: Shia LaBeouf Takes Himself Out Of The “˜Y: The Last Man’ Equation), where he was set to play the lead Yorick Brown behind director D.J. Caruso. LaBeouf had apparently come to the conclusion that the character of Yorick was far too similar to his Transformers character, Sam Witwicky, and that wasn’t a good thing for him.

Many loved this news because, well, Yorick Brown is a hell of a lot more complicated than Sam Witwicky, for one; but if LaBeouf did play the part in Y, he would definitely seem like Sam Witwicky just by default, and this was bad. Unfortunately for those who had become elated with this recent development, it has now quickly been clarified.

Shia LaBeouf sat down with Frosty from Collider and let it all pour out. He explained that Y: The Last Man is his absolute favorite comic book, and it’s D.J. Caruso’s favorite as well, so they still really want to do it. He also clarified that right now, right this moment, the script is nowhere near ready. But because of the similarity of Witwicky and Yorick Brown, he wants to do something else now, but doesn’t want to completely walk away from Y: The Last Man either. This means that LaBeouf is looking to do a couple of other projects over the next few years first, and then, when things are more prepared, he would be willing to look at this project again.

Captain America #600
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Butch Guice and others
Marvel Comics
Price: $4.99
Released date: June 15, 2009

The big news in the comics world was Marvel’s announcement of the imminent return of the original Captain America, Steve Rogers. Now if you’ve been reading comics for any amount of time, you probably know that death is only a temporary issue for any of the major characters, and that eventually ALL dead characters will be coming back, so I wasn’t surprised to hear that Steve would be coming back.

I had hoped that Marvel Comics would leave him alone for a while, mostly because the current Captain America series following Steve’s old sidekick Bucky Barnes as Cap has been amazing. The twenty-five issues since Steve Rogers’ “death” have been easily the best book being produced today by anyone. The series has been consistently smart, action-packed, and straight-up entertaining, and it’s all due to the writing of Ed Brubaker, who managed to bring back Bucky and make it not only believable, but compelling. Now that we’ve seen the start of the return of Steve Rogers, it will be interesting to see if Brubaker can maintain the high level of quality that he has brought to this title.

Now that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is upon us, the focus will slowly begin to shift toward Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — the final book in the series which is being turned into two movies. The pair of films will take the smart path and are filming right now, immediately after Half-Blood Prince so they don’t lose any more time or youthful looking actors. One of the big questions that has plagued fans since learning of the two-part finale is of course where do they stop the first part to cut them into two? Well, it seems they have a good idea where they want to slice it.

First off, producer David Heyman and star Daniel Radcliffe spoke to Empire, where Radcliffe claimed that the split would occur at a major cliffhanger. Heyman added:

What happens when the most powerful man on the planet in President of the United States, Barack Obama, meets the most “explosive” director in cinematic history, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen director Michael Bay? Does the universe implode? Does God shoot off some fireworks synchronized to an Aerosmith soundtrack to set the mood? Maybe we just get an innocent and amusing little story and quote.

While at a press conference recently, Bay was asked about why he chose to use President Obama’s name in his Transformers sequel instead of a fictional Presidential figure. Bay went on to tell the story of his meeting Obama in an airport in Vegas right after the start of his Presidential campaign. The entertaining part of the story comes when Obama found out Bay was a director and which movies he had made, he humorously corrected him by saying “So you’re a big-ass director,” to which Bay surely takes pride in.

Obviously this is more just a fun little tid-bit and not that important. But while the story is entertaining, the original question is a bit odd. Anyone who has seen the original Transformers knows that the President in that movie is pretty obvious, so it shouldn’t be all that shocking for Bay to name Barack Obama as the President in the sequel. Maybe the questioner was aware of the story and wanted Michael Bay to tell it, who knows.

Click over to see the brief video of the question and answer.