You find a thread at the end of your week. Open? (Y/N)

Nothing really interesting happening in the world of pop culture this week. Everything’s at sort of a standstill. So you can talk about … oh, wait, there’s the 82nd Annual Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Award Ceremony coming up on Sunday. We could probably talk about that.

We’ve talked the Oscars to death in a lot of other posts, so let’s just focus on recent Oscar news:

• Mo’nique, odds-on favorite for Best Supporting Actress (Precious), made gossip columns for refusing to campaign for votes. Why a successful comic actress wouldn’t want to associate herself with the child-abusing role that made her a star, I have no idea.
• Nicolas Chartier, producer of Best Picture nominee and critical darling The Hurt Locker, has been forbidden from the Sunday night ceremony for e-mailing Academy members urging them to vote for his movie. So first we’re supposed to campaign for the Oscar, now we’re not. Unbelievable! If you can’t count on consistency from the body that’s nominated Meryl Streep for a dozen Oscars, what can you count on?
• Finally, Sacha Baron Cohen has lost his slot as an Oscar presenter, after the Academy nixed a skit spoofing James Cameron’s Avatar. Cameron claims that he would have been okay with the gag. Having seen a description of the proposed skit, though – where Cohen plays a female Na’vi knocked up by Cameron, who confronts him a la Maury Povich – I’m glad it got axed. Where’s the punchline?

Question: list your picks for Oscar winners!

Submit the most accurate list of Oscar picks, and you could win the respect of the smartest people on the Internet! And isn’t that worth more than anything? Well, except winning an Oscar. Or getting paid to predict who’ll win the Oscars (which we aren’t). Discuss these and other quandaries in the comments, since this is your … open thread.

It's hard not to want one, isn't it? Think how that'd look on the XBox.

Be grateful I didn't make it about Peter Shaffer.

Here are three potential interpretations of Bruno I’ve been hearing recently (okay, four):

— Bruno is about surprising people into revealing ugly truths about themselves, like Borat
— Bruno is a piece of stunt cinema done for shock value, like Jackass
— Bruno is (alternatively) a shameless revel in queerbashing / a clever indictment of queerbashers

Its episodic structure plays into each of these thematic approaches at times. The visual style, format and pacing are pretty similar to Borat, and it has a lot of similar set pieces and gags. It has a lot of gay jokes of questionable kosherness. All true and welcome. But these all seemed subplots, side themes to me, not really the main thrust of the piece – not what it was about.

My gut impression, which thinking about it more has only confirmed, was that Bruno was a much older sort of comedy, a comedy that followed a self-obsessed symbol of vice through a society that didn’t necessarily deserve better, but which at least offered the comfort and amusement of being hilariously consistent. Bruno immediately reminded me of Moliere — the French writer who brought us such Top 40 hits as The Hypocrite, The Misanthrope and The Imaginary Invalid.

And in thinking about the comedy of Moliere, where it sits in the tradition of comedy, and where Bruno sits among today’s comedy offers us some insight on one of the questions I think needs to be asked a lot more critically of our cultural arbiters:

When we laugh at our vices and failures, why must we insist they be fixed, or even be fixable?

Seriously, what is it with Sacha Baron Cohen, homosexuality, and the state of Alabama?

Exhibit A: Season 1, Episode 6 of Da Ali G show, in which Baron Cohen’s flamboyantly gay character Brüno attends a football game at the University of Alabama. Location: Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Original air date: March 28, 2003.

Exhibit B: The ending of Talladega Nights, in which Baron Cohen’s flamboyantly gay character Jean Girard gets a big kiss from Will Ferrel. Location: Talladega Speedway, Lincoln, Alabama. Theatrical release date: August 4, 2006.

Exhibit C: A large portion of the Bruno feature film, in which Baron Cohen’s flamboyantly gay character Brüno attempts to be cured of his homosexuality by visiting with pastors, training with the army, and learning martial arts. Location: Anniston, Alabama (at least for the army scene). Theatrical release date: July 10, 2009.

Granted, Baron Cohen has made satire hash out of other locations in the Deep South, but Alabama seems to be his go-to place for juxtaposing homosexuality against Middle America.

Male nudity is one of the last great taboos in movieland. Oh sure, female nudity still raises eyebrows, but people think of The Piano as A) a surreal anti-patriarchal love story, and B) “that film where you see Harvey Keitel naked – like, NAKED naked,” never mind about Holly Hunter. Yes, there’s something about the on-screen penis (the onscreenis, if you will), that our culture can’t process. It’s not an event that happens in a movie, it’s an event in its own right.

And that’s even more true when the nudity is combined with violence. Read on for a survey of cinema’s greatest Naked Manfights.

Warning: Spoilers ahead, natch.

Warning 2: While I haven’t included any images that you couldn’t broadcast on NYPD Blue, it miiiight be best to read this one on your home computer.