Entertainment

Everyone wants the chance to dream, and if Sunday night's Oscar results are any indication, the people who work in the dream factory most of all. It takes away nothing from "The Hurt Locker," which really was the best film of the year, or the exceptional directing job done by Kathryn Bigelow, to speculate that more than the acknowledgment of excellence was behind that film's triumph in the hotly contested best picture race. It seems fair to say that an almost subconscious yearning in part motivated the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to vote the way they did. A yearning for a Hollywood that once existed but doesn't anymore, a Hollywood where films like "The Hurt Locker" were business as usual and not something that was such an aberration, so outside of current norms, that it very nearly didn't get made at all. But if you voted for "The Hurt Locker," you could pretend that wasn't so. You could vote for a dream of a better world where these films lived long and prospered.

One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small, and the pills Tim Burton gives you don't do very much at all. With apologies to Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit," that more or less sums up "Alice in Wonderland," the director's middling new version of the Lewis Carroll tale. It has its successful moments but it's surprisingly inert overall, more like a Burton derivative than something he actually did himself. Through no fault of its own, "Alice" also has the misfortune of being the first major 3-D release to come out after the "Avatar" revolution, and when you add in that Burton chose to shoot in 2-D and have the footage converted, it inevitably plays like one of the last gasps of the old-fashioned ways of doing things.

Sarah Palin, who recently joined Fox News as a commentator, is now shopping a series to the television networks. The former Alaska governor has been meeting with network executives this week to pitch them on a show about her home state. In a sign of her seriousness, Palin has teamed with "Survivor" producer Mark Burnett. After meetings this week with ABC, CBS and Fox, sources told The Times that the two visited the NBC suites in Burbank on Thursday. One person familiar with the pitch said the show sounded like a nature documentary similar to Discovery's "Planet Earth."

In "Shutter Island," director Martin Scorsese has created a divinely dark and devious brain tease of a movie in the best noir tradition with its smarter than you'd think cops, their tougher than you'd imagine cases to crack and enough nods to the classic genre for an all-night parlor game. It's 1954, the heart of the Cold War, with a conspiracy theory around every corner, when Leonardo DiCaprio's U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his new partner, played by Mark Ruffalo, are dispatched to an asylum for the criminally insane to investigate a dicey disappearance.

Aries (March 21-April 19): Choosing your battles is difficult for you because you like to win, always. However, the situation you're in might require backing down. Taurus (April 20-May 20): You have a "eureka!" moment about a problem that was more pressing a while ago. Don't dismiss it. Gemini (May 21-June 21): You woke up thinking about someone outside your circle of daily interactions. Reach out to that person. Cancer (June 22-July 22): Lately you've been wondering if anyone is listening.

Aries (March 21-April 19): It's easier to be generous with stuff than it is to be generous of spirit. That's why you value a certain person's heart and friendship. Taurus (April 20-May 20): Things weigh you down. Use what you have, and have only what you can use. Gemini (May 21-June 21): A family member may ask for money, but that's not the ideal thing to give. Helping someone learn how to make money will be far better. Cancer (June 22-July 22): Your thoughts radiate through your eyes.

Fans of the late Phil Harris, the salty, tattooed captain who starred in the Discovery Channel's "Deadliest Catch," will still be able to see him doing the work he loved when the show launches its new season in April. Harris suffered a stroke late last month as he offloaded snow crabs from the Cornelia Marie in the port town of St. Paul, Alaska. He had been in an Anchorage hospital since then, where he died Tuesday night. He was 53. The popular show, one of many macho job reality series that dot the TV dial, had filmed more than half the new season when Harris fell ill. It's still unclear how the death will be handled in later episodes, a Discovery Channel spokesman said.

A wealthy philanthropist has kicked in $5 million in seed money. A top management consultant has come up with a business plan. A renowned university will lend not only its students but research help. And the budding endeavor has a chief executive who will pull down $400,000 a year and one of the world's most prestigious newspapers ready to give its future news offerings a home. When the Bay Area News Project launches its website in late spring or early summer, it will be just the latest -- and perhaps the most ambitious -- nonprofit venture among a string of similar start-ups.

McQueen looms large The opening of London Fashion Week on Friday was darkened by the giant shadow cast by the death of Alexander McQueen, long the enigmatic toast of the London fashion world. McQueen, who died in an apparent suicide last week, was honored with a remembrance wall that quickly became the center of attention in the mammoth fashion tent pitched in the courtyard of Somerset House. Hundreds of messages were posted to the late superstar, regarded as the provocative enfant terrible of the once staid London design scene.

In his dressing room, Donny Osmond, at 52 with youthful if not teen features, is a relaxed man who converses seriously and likes to get into the technical aspects of his craft. He's explaining the surprising success he and his sister, Marie, have had with their reunion show that opened at the Flamingo in 2008. He answers like a man whose entire life has been spent reading his words in print: "It is a hard question to answer without sounding narcissistic. I don't want to sound arrogant," he says That night -- granted, Saturday on Super Bowl weekend -- his manager mentions that more than 50 people have been turned away who sought last-minute tickets to the sold-out show.

I loved the Oscar telecast. I thought the producers did an elegant and irreverent job with the whole show. And Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin were perfect. Judy Silk Pacific Palisades :: Who picked those two guys to host the Academy Awards? I was available. Bill Simpson :: The dyspeptic review that Mary McNamara wrote ["A Show With No Sense of Timing," March 8] left me wondering: How many antacid pills did she miss taking? My family and I were oohing and aahing over the opening scene that would have made Busby Berkeley envious!

Angelology A Novel Danielle Trussoni Viking: 452 pp., $27.95

Hilary Mantel's blockbuster "Wolf Hall" took the top fiction prize at the National Book Critics Circle Awards in New York on Thursday night. The novel about Thomas Cromwell, henchman to King Henry VIII, also won Britain's prestigious Man Booker prize and is a bestseller in both the U.K. and the United States. Mantel won over Southern California favorite Michelle Huneven, nominated for her novel "Blame." Another California writer, William T. Vollmann, also fell short of taking the prize; he was a finalist in the nonfiction category for "Imperial," his book about the state's border county.

Snow jumps to NBC ABC News anchor Kate Snow is defecting to NBC News, where she will be a correspondent for "Dateline," NBC announced Friday. Since 2004, Snow has co-anchored the weekend edition of ABC's "Good Morning America," a position viewed as a steppingstone to an assignment on the weekday edition of the morning show. But when "GMA" configured its team late last year after the departure of Diane Sawyer, the job of news anchor went to Juju Chang. "She's the whole package," "Dateline" executive producer David Corvo said of Snow in a statement.

SERIES Survivors: The arrival of a self-styled spiritual leader (Kieran O'Brien), at the survivors' home, with his followers in tow, arouses suspicions as to his actual motives, but Abby (Julie Graham) decides to let a pregnant follower (Claire Keelan) stay until the baby is born. Zoe Tapper, Max Beesley and Paterson Joseph also star in this new episode (5 and 8 p.m. BBC America). Raw Anatomy: A team of whale experts dissects a 65-foot-long fin whale that washed up on the beach to discover why it died and reveal secrets of its evolutionary path (6 and 9 p.m. National Geographic)

Monsters come in all shapes and guises in the cinematic universe of South Korean director Bong Joon-ho. In his 2003 film "Memories of Murder," the monster was a serial killer whose murders were never solved by the police. In his acclaimed 2006 "The Host," which holds the record for Korean box-office admissions, the demon was quite literally a savage monster that came from the Han River in the middle of Seoul to feast on the metropolis. And in his latest film, "Mother," which opened Friday, the monster is a single mother who goes to any lengths to prove that her mentally challenged 27-year-old son didn't murder a promiscuous teenage girl.

Danielle Trussoni is the latest author to sidle up to the dessert cart for a slice of the Dan Brown pie. What Brown ("The Da Vinci Code," etc.) has done with demons, Catholic and Masonic secret societies, symbols and long-buried scandals, Trussoni aims to do with the evil spawn of rebel angels who once mated with humans. These hybrid beings are 7 feet tall and lack belly buttons; some have wings. But they manage to live among us undetected, save for a semi-Catholic secret society of "angelologists" who keeps tabs on them.

FAMILY Charlotte S. Huck Children's Literature Festival Educators, scholars, authors, illustrators and the public are invited to participate in the 14th Annual Charlotte S. Huck Children's Literature Festival, a two-day conference that features speakers Pat Mora, Patricia Reilly Giff and Ashley Wolff, a book sale, signings, manuscript evaluation by literary agents and original artwork from the collection of Les and Zora Charles. University of Redlands, 1200 E. Colton Ave., Redlands.

"Sons of Tucson," which premieres Sunday on Fox, is a lesson in just how many old tropes, previously seen characters and stock situations one may hammer together into a television series and still arrive at something fresh and real. Created by TV newcomers Greg Bratman and Tommy Dewey, this story of three brothers and the slacker-hero who poses as their dad has been shepherded into life by a host of veterans of "Malcolm in the Middle," including "Tucson" executive producer Justin Berfield (who played oldest son Reese on "Malcolm")

TODAY Good Morning America Manny Pacquiao. (N) 7 a.m. KABC The Situation Room With Wolf Blitzer 3 p.m. CNN McLaughlin Group (N) 6:30 p.m. KCET SUNDAY Sunday Morning A profile of Wayne Newton. (N) 6 a.m. KCBS Today Wine personalities. (N) 6 a.m. KNBC Good Morning America (N) 6 a.m. KABC State of the Union With Candy Crowley Healthcare; the economy; politics: White House Advisor David Axelrod. Healthcare; the economy: Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio)