Above, you see James Franco in the latest batch of publicity stills from Sam Raimi’s Oz, The Great And Powerful, in which he plays a magician named Oz, who suddenly finds himself transported to the mythical land of, uh… Oz (Jesus, did Tyler Perry write this?) (whoops, apparently his character is named Oscar, that’s what I get for not fact-checking the source article). I don’t know how Franco managed to act like that monkey was really next to him like that without Andy Serkis there in a leotard acting like a monkey to illustrate it for him. The magic of acting!

On to more important matters, James, on a break from his much more interesting gigs as Invisible Art Collector, Brad Renfro fan, and dicknoser extraordinaire, has been bloggin’ up a storm for Huffington Post. As my classmate at Columbia (*buttons cravat*), I saw Franco read some legitimately great stuff, but I have to say, his movie reviews have been even more boring than most movie critics’ movie reviews. But luckily he’s not just reviewin’, he’s also dissin’! Namely, Gawker. Ooh, a Gawker fight? Tag in Hulk Hogan! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!

Hmmmm, what else? My first chapbook came out, Strongest of the Litter, but people seem to be more interested in who I’m dating than poetry.

Note: When have people ever been more interested in poetry than anything? The late Middle Ages, maybe? Of course, the choice then was poetry or dysentery.

Oh yeah, I got nominated for a National Entertainment Journalism award for these HuffPost blogs, but no other outlet is going to run that story, right? Hahaha — why would Gawker or the New York Post want to publicize that an actor/Yale doctoral candidate is nominated for an award for something that they are doing themselves? I’m pretty proud of it, but I can see why they must hate me. [HuffPo]

OH SNAP, WHERE’S YOUR AWARD, GAWKER HACKS?! In fact, where’s your doctoral candidate… uh… papers? Do they get papers? (I only have an MFA cravat and commemorative sword.). Anyway, I’m not usually one to give equal credence to both sides of a feud, especially to Gawker, but Gawker’s comeback on this one was particularly strong:

We at Gawker would like to congratulate James Franco, of Huffington Post Media Group, for his National Entertainment Journalism Award nomination for best entertainment blog by an individual. We would also like to congratulate Elizabeth Leonard of People Magazine on her National Entertainment Journalism Award nomination for best feature under 1,000 words for her piece “Kristie Alley’s 100 lb. Slimdown!” and the only nominee in the best tweet category, Dylan Howard of Celebuzz for his work live-tweeting the death of Whitney Houston, “Whitney Houston’s Death – Happening Right Now.” [Gawker]

Holy sh*t, those are real things? I checked, and not only are those awards real, guess who received a nomination in the critics category? You guessed it, Lights Camera Motherf*cking Jackson. So congrats, James Franco, you got nominated alongside a wild child raised in a vacuum by Entertainment Tonight hosts, have fun telling that to your friends at Yale.

I hope Gawker and Huffington Post fall into the ocean for making me aware of this.