IRELAND has a lot of good things to be animated about for a change with two Irish made films – The Secret of Kells and Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty – among this year’s Oscar nominations.

Cillian Murphy will be joined by Lucy Liu in the romantic-comedy being shot in New York by debut director Paul Soter … In Watching the Detectives, Murphy plays a film buff with female problems.

A producer of The Aviator credited with persuading Leonardo DiCaprio to play Howard Hughes has been ditched from the Oscar nominations because of over-crowding.

The producer of this year’s Oscars telecast has ordered winners to keep their acceptance speeches short and warned that if they don’t they will be drowned out by the orchestra.

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has filed a lawsuit against a company that offers replica Oscar statuettes equipped with male genitalia.