"Bi-Curious George" (Tomhanksy.tumblr.com)

With tongue placed firmly in cheek, New York's street artist Hanksy has built a career out of poking fun at the self-serious subversives in the gallery graffiti circuit. Even his name is a satirical homage to the British Banksy, with Hanksy being a shortened tag for "Tom Hanksy."

Picking subjects more pop than political, Hanksy has focused his art on animals and celebrity mash-ups: like the hilarious Ferrell Cats, or the pun-y "Pie Hard" stencil in Bushwick.

If Banksy's monkeys are telling us, "Laugh now, because one day we'll be in charge," than Hanksy's message might be better summarized as, "Laugh now, because this is funny."

His latest work uploaded several hours ago on his Tumblr, might not have everyone chuckling. Found on the corner of Orchard and Ludlow, Hanksy's new piece shows a monkey with the face of George Clooney eating a banana. Above the graffiti is the phrase "Bi-Curious George."

Word travels fast: the photo has already been picked up by The Huffington Post, which is quick to point out that Hanksy (who is represented by the Krause Gallery) has already clarified on Twitter that his piece was not meant as a homophobic knock against the perennial bachelor.
(The Inception layers of word play don't stop there: Hanksy's listed alias on Twitter--"Christopher Lee Rios"--was the real name of Puerto-Rican rapper "Big Pun," who died in 2000.)

Plus, we all know how much George Clooney loves a good prank(sy) himself.

Lawrence of The Hunger Games. (Jason Merritt/Getty Images)

We love this time of year. Spring is in the air, we get an extra hour of daylight, and people are placing bets in offices across the country on who they think will win in their favorite division brackets.

No, we’re not talking about March Madness. We’re talking about The Hunger Games, the latest YA book-to-screen sensation that had its premiere in New York and L.A. this week. (For the over-18 crowd, we’re still waiting on Harvey Weinstein to buy the rights to  E L James’ Fifty Shades of Grey.)

If you don’t want to pay $20 for an IMAX ticket (including the price of the KitKat bar and the Nalgene of merlot that you slipped into the theater), you can watch your own version of The Hunger Games play out down at Zuccotti Park. That’s right: Occupy Wall Street has come out of its winter hibernation to clash with the police once more. Over 70 people were arrested over the weekend during a protest held for the six-month anniversary of the first Occupation.

We have a different take on why the movement started up again: the protesters wanted to make sure they got a head start on Game of Thrones comparisons once the HBO show about warring states and magical dragons premieres its second season on April 1. “War is coming” is pretty catchy. Maybe the General Assembly can make it their official motto.

We had begun to think the whole OWS movement was over, but apparently it’s just a fair-weather fusillade. Pretty soon, the money could start pouring into the Occupy Wall Street coffers again, as people donate. It’s a better option than donating to the Invisible Children campaign against Uganda’s Leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army Joseph Kony. The 20-minute video made by the group had such a rush of viral popularity that the nonprofit’s cofounder Jason Russell went bonkers and started showering the streets of San Diego with his own invisible children.

And if you like a little more celebrity with your morning March, go down to D.C. and stand outside the Sudanese Embassy, where George Clooney was arrested during a demonstration to raise awareness of the tempestuous relationship between the country and South Sudan. As he was led away in handcuffs, Mr. Clooney channeled his inner Fight Club and told the police he was Brad Pitt.

We hope the cops bought it, but we’re not gonna bet on it.

Jean DuJardin, your Best Actor winner (Getty Images)

The Academy Awards are this Sunday--and we'll be liveblogging away at observer.com. So as to be optimally prepared for these mythical "Oscar pools" that exist only in the minds of entertainment writers, or at least to shout the winner a second before it happens, we've held the hive-mind of the Internet to our ear so as to decipher the buzz.

Here are your Oscar winners!

Best Picture: The Artist

We're not ruling out a more conventional win from the more-traditional and higher-grossing The Descendants, but it'd be a surprise given the success The Artist has enjoyed among critics and different guild awards so far.

Best Director: Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist

It's not as though they're rushing to award this relative newcomer, but his opposition doesn't look credible enough to split Best Picture and Best Director. His toughest competition is Martin Scorsese, who already won this award recently and whose film is thematically similar to The Artist, if less well-loved.

Best Actor: Jean DuJardin, The Artist

Be real. Do you honestly think we live in a world where George Clooney will have won two Oscars for acting as early as this year? While his work in The Descendants was praised early on, we suspect some voters may be attracted to the fresh, new thing in this category.

Best Actress: Viola Davis, The Help

While Meryl Streep really will win in this category one of these years, Viola Davis's movie was an actual hit with audiences and with the Academy--and the weird, hinky truth is that an Academy member will likely feel more virtuous for rewarding a portrayal of a noble, suffering maid than a performance as a controversial political figure.

Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer, Beginners

One of two utterly dull supporting contests whose frontrunners have been ensconced since, like, November.

Best Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer, The Help

The other.

Best Original Screenplay: Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris

The perpetual notion that, if one wills it hard enough, a standard-issue Woody Allen film can be a true comeback picture, became a fixed idea this year. Everyone loves Woody again! This is where this movie gets rewarded.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Alexander Payne and Nat Faxon & Jim Rash, The Descendants

And this is where The Descendants, a popular movie with no real chance at other honors besides Actor, gets rewarded.

All the rest:

Best Animated Feature: Rango

Best Cinematography: The Tree of Life

Best Art Direction: Hugo

Best Costume Design: W.E. [we know, it's weird, but the Oscars really love films about the royals in this category]

Best Documentary Feature: Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory

Best Documentary Short: Incident in New Baghdad [on the shorts categories, one chooses the most portentous-sounding title, except for Best Animated Short, wherein one chooses the loopiest title]

Best Film Editing: The Artist

Best Foreign Language Film: A Separation (Iran)

Best Makeup: The Iron Lady [the fact that the makeup that turned Meryl Streep into Margaret Thatcher is likely to get its own award would seem to take away from the performance that did the same, no?]

Best Original Score: The Artist [the tempest-in-a-teapot over whether this film stole unduly from the score for Vertigo shall likely matter little, as the score blares through the entire running time]

Best Original Song: "Man or Muppet," The Muppets

Best Short Film (Animated): The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore [see the rationale for Documentary Short]

Best Short Film (Live-Action): Pentecost [see above]

Best Sound Editing: War Horse

Best Sound Mixing: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Best Visual Effects: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

1. Jeopardy!

2-5. The NBC Thursday night comedy block.

This has been Programs Whose Excessive, Multiple-Times-A-Break Ads for The Descendants Will Make Viewers Wonder If They Became Oscar Voters and Didn't Know It.

Viola Davis at the SAG Awards (Getty Images)

Last night's Screen Actors Guild Awards shook up the Oscar race insofar as it was able to be shaken up. Sure bets in the supporting categories Octavia Spencer (The Help) and Christopher Plummer (Beginners) cleaned up again, while frontrunning lead actors George Clooney (The Descendants) and Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady) were dethroned.

The beneficiaries were Jean DuJardin, star of The Artist, and Viola Davis of The Help. Both Best Actor and Best Actress races remain occluded going into the Oscars. Mr. DuJardin's speech was charming but Benignivian in its loose grip on the English language, making him an uncompelling threat for the biggest trophy despite the fact that he's already won a Golden Globe. Ms. Davis's speech was brief and moving--dealing with her lifelong dream of acting and her late-in-life breakthrough--but may not be enough to push her ahead of Meryl Streep. (Ms. Davis, a friend and former castmate of Ms. Streep, paid her particular homage--she was inescapable even in her defeat.)

At the moment, Ms. Davis appears to be leading Harvey Weinstein's two candidates in the Best Actress field--Ms. Streep and Michelle Williams in My Week With Marilyn. Mr. Weinstein has little about which to worry--Mr. DuJardin's victory means that even if he can't top George Clooney, the Weinstein Company film in which he stars, The Artist, is stronger than can be fathomed. The Help's win for Best Ensemble poses little threat there.

Academy Award Nominee Rooney Mara

This morning, thousands upon tens of New Yorkers are realizing they have to go see Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, as that film was announced as one of nine Oscar Best Picture nominees.

Big surprises of the morning included that film's nomination for Best Picture, the inclusion of Best Actor nominees Demian Bichir and Gary Oldman, and the breadth of the Best Picture category, which found room for movies as different as War Horse and The Tree of Life after speculation tended towards the notion that there would be fewer nominees about which voters felt more strongly.

The predictions we got right? That Rooney Mara would take the place of Tilda Swinton in the Best Actress race, and that Albert Brooks would fall out of Best Supporting Actor--as well as the first five of those nine nominees. We didn't speculate on Best Animated Feature, speculating to ourselves that the field was a bit fallow, and with nominees including Chico and Rita and A Cat in Paris, we may have been right.

Hugo leads the race with 11 overall nominations, followed by heretofore perceived frontrunner The Artist with 10.

The nominations in top categories are below, and the full list of nominations is here.

Best Picture

The Artist; The Descendants; Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; The Help; Hugo; Midnight in Paris; Moneyball; The Tree of Life; War Horse

Best Director

Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris; Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist; Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life; Alexander Payne, The Descendants; Martin Scorsese, Hugo;

Best Actor:

Demian Bichir, A Better Life; George Clooney, The Descendants, Jean DuJardin, The Artist; Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy; Brad Pitt, Moneyball

Best Actress:

Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs; Viola Davis, The Help; Rooney Mara, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo; Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady; Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn

Best Supporting Actor:

Kenneth Branagh, My Week With Marilyn; Jonah Hill, Moneyball; Nick Nolte, Warrior; Christopher Plummer, Beginners; Max Von Sydow, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Best Supporting Actress:

Bérénice Bejo, The Artist; Jessica Chastain, The Help; Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids; Octavia Spencer, The Help; Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs

Best Original Screenplay

The Artist; Bridesmaids; Margin Call; Midnight in Paris; A Separation

Best Adapted Screenplay

The Descendants; Hugo; The Ides of March; Moneyball; Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Best Animated Feature

A Cat In Paris; Chico and Rita; Kung Fu Panda 2; Puss in Boots; Rango

Charlize Theron (Getty Images)

Newsweek's current issue features its annual pre-nominations "Oscar roundtable"--and either it'll look dated when nominations are announced tomorrow, or we need to adjust our predictions! The panelists are likely nominees George Clooney and Viola Davis (the working-it pair both recently appeared together on an Entertainment Weekly cover, too), as well as Christopher Plummer, Tilda Swinton, Michael Fassbender, and Charlize Theron.

How good is Newsweek at choosing panelists who will be Oscar-nominated? Some years are great--last year's panel featured six eventual nominees and both the Best Actor and Best Actress--and others less predictive. In the past ten Oscar panels (discounting the two panels speaking to five directors apiece, of whose number eight ended up nominated), 48 actors have been interviewed about their Oscar hopeful performances, with eight missing the mark. These "losers" include Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, and Naomi Watts, so their inclusion isn't exactly surprising.

The rate of an Oscar roundtabler getting an Oscar nomination, 40 of 48, is exactly a 5/6 probability--so one of the current panelists (sorry, Charlize! We really loved Young Adult) will probably have talked about the Oscars a bit presumptively.

Michelle Williams--who will be nominated. Who else will join her? (Getty Images)

Tomorrow morning will bring that early-morning announcement of this year's Oscar nominees--with the attention-desperate wrinkle that no one knows how many nominees there will be. Herewith, our predictions, for last-minute entries into your office pool (if yours is the sort of office at which Oscar nominations are the subject of a pool. Ours is not, which is why we're writing a blog post).

Best Picture

The Artist

The Descendants

The Help

Hugo

Midnight in Paris

We know any number of films between five and ten can be nominated for Best Picture, but with The Artist and The Descendants sucking up so much oxygen and so many first-place votes, it's easy to imagine no sixth choice gathering enough steam. The likely sixth entry, if there is one, would be Moneyball--but aren't many of those voters who love "adult dramas" more likely to vote in the buzzier Descendants first?

Best Director

Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris

David Fincher, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist

Alexander Payne, The Descendants

Martin Scorsese, Hugo

Mr. Allen, Mr. Scorsese, and Mr. Hazanavicius are clear locks, and Mr. Payne will get in on the strength of his film's reputation. For the fifth spot, Mr. Fincher and Steven Spielberg seem the likeliest (The Help's debut director, Tate Taylor, did not particularly distinguish himself), but the total fade of War Horse's repute gives the advantage to Mr. Fincher for what would be his third nomination in four years.

Best Actor

George Clooney, The Descendants

Jean DuJardin, The Artist

Michael Fassbender, Shame

Ryan Gosling, The Ides of March

Brad Pitt, Moneyball

Leonardo DiCaprio has been nominated for all manner of precursor awards for his role in J. Edgar, but that movie's disappeared from theaters and from the minds of viewers who've seen many, many better movies by now (J. Edgar really is uniquely terrible). Anyone who loves biographical films about controversial figures gets to vote one in with Meryl Streep in Best Actress--and the surprise nominee might be Ryan Gosling, who does nothing too special in The Ides of March but who'd be a big enough star to stand alongside Mr. Clooney and Mr. Pitt.

Best Actress

Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs

Viola Davis, The Help

Rooney Mara, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady

Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn

Ms. Streep, Ms. Davis, and Ms. Williams have all won early awards, and Ms. Close helped produce her own movie, in which she plays a traditionally bait-y role as a female impersonating a male. The notion that four people in Oscar-bait roles would be joined by Tilda Swinton in the avant-garde We Need to Talk About Kevin stretches credulity--silent for long stretches and chronologically disjointed, this doesn't seem like the sort of role that gets an actress to the Kodak. The narrative around Rooney Mara--plucked out of nowhere in the most extensive casting search since Scarlett O'Hara--seems to coalesce towards a surprise nomination.

Best Supporting Actor

Kenneth Branagh, My Week With Marilyn

Armie Hammer, J. Edgar

Jonah Hill, Moneyball

Nick Nolte, Warrior

Christopher Plummer, Beginners

Mr. Plummer is so far ahead here that the rest of the nominees seem plucked from thin air--an impersonation of Lawrence Olivier? Sure! A fairly quiet turn by a popular comic? Definitely! An attempt at a comeback in a movie no one saw? Okay! Armie Hammer's nomination seems the least likely, but the energy he brought to J. Edgar could make him the one element of the film they nominate.

Best Supporting Actress

Bérénice Bejo, The Artist

Jessica Chastain, The Help

Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids

Octavia Spencer, The Help

Shailene Woodley, The Descendants

Three movies with huge amounts of apparent support carry their supporting stars towards a nomination, with the addition of Melissa McCarthy, taking the spot that some believe might have gone to Janet McTeer in the little-seen Albert Nobbs.

Best Original Screenplay

50/50

The Artist

Bridesmaids

Midnight in Paris

Young Adult

This category seems fairly open--besides the two Best Picture nominees, the three other top entries are not traditionally Oscar-y comedies. The Writers' Guild of America nominated Win Win, a sort-of comedy also, here, but that movie seems even less up Oscar's alley than Young Adult, a movie in which past winner Diablo Cody deals with her relationship with fame.

Best Adapted Screenplay

The Descendants

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

The Help

Hugo

Moneyball

This category, on the other hand, has the real heat--it's hard to imagine anything sneaking into a set of screenplays this popular. It's also one of the few categories with true suspense as to the winner--because the real speculation only begins on Tuesday.