I reviewed James Frey's book, A Million Little Pieces, and commented on the brouhaha surrounding the falsifications in his book. I thought it wasn't a big deal since he seemed to be fibbing on areas I thought were fairly minor.

I did jibe that at least he wasn't fibbing on the root canal with no painkillers ...

Uh, well, perhaps he was, as he now is fessing up on a recent appearance on Oprah.

Dude, Oprah is seriously pissed off at you.

Saw Syriana on Tuesday night. There were tons of people at the Metreon theatre in SF and it surprised me. Then we ran into our friends, Seth and Mia, at the same movie and they told us that the New York Times was giving out $5 tix for their subscribers for this theatre only.

Syriana was very good. Stephen Gaghan the writer and director also wrote the script for Traffic which Stephen Soderbergh directed and I really liked that film, so I had high expectations.

I had heard that you really have to pay attention to what is going on because it's difficult to discern relationships and backgrounds. This was true but I liked it that way because it kept me very focused and tuned to what was happening. For what was mostly a talking heads movie it was shot quite beautifully.

Syriana - ***1/2 out of possible *****

(Giving it the stars reminds me that the Netflix stars system sucks. You cannot grade a movie by the half-star. There are SO many films I'd give a 2 1/2 or 3 1/2 stars.)

Disney buys Pixar for a buttload of money and Steve Jobs is sitting pretty.

While I’m definitely not a fan of Disney over the years, one has to remember that the Eisner era is over and the Iger one has begun and so far Iger has made some bold moves with ABC content on Itunes and now buying Pixar. Buena Vista is a powerfully dominant distributor. I have to say it makes sense for both companies here.

What will be interesting to see is how the Pixar culture remains intact. The fact that Catmull and Lasseter have top jobs at Disney creative now bodes well that things will not only stay the same in Emeryville but also progress in socal as well…?