9:00: It's the 35th annual People's Choice Awards!! Which was your favorite? I loved the 16th annual edition personally. The people were really on it that night.

9:01: Gavin Rosdale is here?? Anna Lynn McCord? And Robin Tunney! TPCA is pulling out the big guns!

9:02: We're not really going to pretend that the People's Choice Awards are somehow congruous to President-Elect Obama's victory are we? What's that? We are? Ah, okay, just checking before I lost all respect for everyone involved a full two minutes in.

9:04: This…

I'm so over talking about the 2009 Oscars. I'm done debating Penn v. Rourke v. Langella. I don't care anymore which four actors are going to be given the honor of losing to Heath Ledger. I've stopped losing sleep over how they'll come up with enough worthy Best Actress nominees in such a male-dominated year. And I've made my pitch for The Dark Knight so many times by now my friends and family can probably recite it from memory.

But just because I'm sick of talking about this year's awards contenders doesn't mean I've lost my…

Way back in November 2007, I wrote a piece called "Ten 2008 Films That I Would Use a Time Machine to Avoid Seeing," predicting what I thought would be the worst movies of the year. But as it turned out, only two of them were genuinely awful (College Road Trip and Mamma Mia!), a few more were bad or so-so, and a couple -- Horton Hears a Who! and Get Smart -- were actually pretty good. (Two others were pushed back to 2009, so they might still be bad. Keep your fingers crossed!)

My track record is not excellent, in other words,…

With The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke is back in the headlines and maybe even the Oscar hunt. He always seems to be just a DUI or an assault on a director away from slipping back into B movies and straight-to-DVD thrillers, but even if he does, don't worry. He'll be back.

1. Body Heat (1981)
In his breakout role as an arsonist helping a lawyer cover up a murder, Rourke made his first big impression on audiences. Only on screen briefly, he was billed far below William Hurt and Kathleen Turner, but almost stole the show.

2. Diner (19…

Perhaps you are an energetic, bright-eyed young film critic, just starting out in the biz, and you'd like to boost your name recognition by getting quoted in movie ads and trailers. This is a natural inclination. All writers want to attract readers, and being quoted in a film's promotional material is like a heapin' helping of free publicity!

But how do you do it? There are thousands of people writing about movies, and only a handful of them get quoted. What separates them from you? How can you emulate them and turn yourself…