The Fix

First Word

Scorsese's Oscars: It was anyone's game for the best-picture award going in to Sunday's Academy Awards, but now in retrospect it seems kinda inevitable that the award would go to Martin Scorsese, who also finally won a directing Oscar after being denied the prize seven times over 26 years. It was a long, mostly low-key affair at the Oscars, with the predictable wins -- Helen Mirren for best actress, Forest Whitaker for best actor -- mixed in with some pleasant surprises, like Alan Arkin's win for best supporting actor and the best-foreign-film prize for "The Lives of Others." Read Cintra Wilson's take on the spectacle for Salon here; for the full list of winners, including all those technical and science awards you're wondering about, click here. (New York Times, Oscar.com)

P2P service goes legit: BitTorrent, the file-sharing service that the music and film industries have viewed as a piracy threat for years, launched its new, all-legal service today, which lets users purchase music and TV shows and rent movies online. The BitTorrent Entertainment Network is an attempt to use the popular file-sharing service to lure those who usually get their digital pop culture for free -- downloading illegal copies of TV shows or DVDs -- to pay a small fee for legal copies. "The vast majority of our audience just loves digital content," BitTorrent co-founder Ashwin Navin said in a statement. "Now we have to program for that audience and create a better experience for that content so the audience converts to the service that makes the studios money." (Associated Press)

White noise ... Overachiever Angelina Jolie has reportedly just joined the Council on Foreign Relations, where she'll get to talk foreign policy with members like Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and Henry Kissinger. (New York Post) ... The rumor buzzing around Oscar parties in Hollywood this weekend was that Hugh Hefner, 80, is planning to marry girlfriend Holly Madison, 27, (both pictured at right; she's the woman in the center) sometime this year. It would be Hefner's third marriage. (Page Six) ... Last week's rumors that Naomi Watts is pregnant may have been accidentally confirmed in a press release from the designer who made the dress Watts wore to the Oscars. The statement sent out Sunday night by a rep for Escada read, in part, that the "gown set off her most precious new asset -- the baby she is expecting with longtime boyfriend Liev Schreiber." (People) ... Madonna says she's a strict mom -- in a recent interview, she revealed, "Late-night TV, junk food and mess are not tolerated in my house," and that there will be no boys for her daughter, Lourdes, "until she turns 18." (The Scoop) ... Brandon Davis, the oil heir pal of Paris Hilton's best known for calling Lindsay Lohan "Firecrotch" last year, apparently ruined Hilton's second birthday bash this weekend by scaring off guests Paula Abdul -- he reportedly kept shouting "Lick my [bleep], Paula!" -- and Courtney Love, to whom Page Six reports Brandon said, "'I want to squirt on you.' He was humping Courtney in front of her daughter, Frances Bean. When he put her down, Courtney grabbed Frances and they marched out of the restaurant through the kitchen." (Page Six)

Talker

Jesus slept here: James Cameron is holding a press conference later today in New York; he says he'll reveal three coffins that supposedly belong to Jesus of Nazareth, his mother, Mary, and Mary Magdalene. It's not just a public service, of course -- Cameron has a documentary, "The Lost Tomb of Jesus," about to air on the Discovery Channel. In the film, Cameron claims that a tomb originally discovered near Jerusalem in 1980 is where Jesus was buried, and that DNA evidence found there suggests that he had a son with Mary Magdalene -- check Tuesday's Fix for an update. ("Jesus: Tales From the Crypt," Time Blog)

Buzz Index

• Most popular news story on Technorati: "Christian Right Labors to Find '08 Candidate," New York Times
• Most popular story on Google: "Still No Rest for Poor Anna," New York Daily News
• Most e-mailed story from the New York Times: "Sorority Evictions Raise Issue of Looks and Bias"
• Top link on Reddit: "Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth' Wins Oscar for Best Documentary!" Ecorazzi

; )

"Oscars Reveal Widening Gap Between Best, Worst Dressed" (The Onion)

Judgment

Red-carpet reaction: If the look on the long red carpet at the Oscars this year struck you as somewhat familiar, it's because "the generally frumpy, overly beaded fashion picks offered such a diminishing return of suspense or variety that the event could have been mistaken for a repeat," according to the New York Times. The big (if not so new) trends this year included an "endless chain of strapless dresses," "gaudy jewelry built into the dresses" and "holiday dressing" -- a few stars came wrapped up in bows. Meryl Streep caught a lot of flack from TV commentators for "the papery black silk radzimire coat she covered with a hodgepodge of dancing coral and turquoise jewelry, but the broadcasters neglected to mention that Ms. Streep, one of the few actresses who refuses to hire a stylist, was in on the joke ... Ms. Streep did, indeed, wear Prada." ("Red Carpet Recycling: Who Said Knockoff?" N.Y. Times)

Numbers

The weekend box office:

(Rotten Tomatoes)

Turn On

On Tuesday night, it's the premiere of "The Black Donnellys" (NBC, 10 p.m. EST), the new series by Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco (Oscar winners for "Crash") about four brothers involved in a life of crime in New York; the Travel Channel debuts the aptly named "Bizarre Foods With Andrew Zimmern" (9 p.m. EST) -- he eats worms, stuffed frog and cheese ice cream in the first episode; and ABC presents a special called "Building a Dream: The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy" (10 p.m. EST), about Oprah's new school in South Africa.

Talk

Fix contributors: Heather Havrilesky, Scott Lamb, Kerry Lauerman, David Marchese, Laura Miller, Andrew O'Hehir, Amy Reiter, Stephanie Zacharek

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