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In theaters Friday: 300 and The Ultimate Gift.

New on DVD: Borat, Confetti, Fast Food Nation and Let’s Go To Prison.

Celebrity birthday: Rob Reiner turns 60 today. Happy birthday Robert! I’m calling you Robert to show how good of friends we are. Ever notice how Martin Scorsese’s friends call him Marty, or Robert DiNero’s friends call him Bob, or how Clint Eastwood’s mates call him C-money? Okay, I’ll call you Rob, but you’ll always be a Meathead to me.

Welcome back everybody, the Filter took last week off, Oscar-style, but we’re rested and ready. And how did my Oscar predictions go? Well in the major categories, I only picked 3 out of 7 right. Babel really let me down in the Best Picture category, and I went out on two huge limbs in picking Winslet over Mirren and Kikuchi over Hudson. But that’s how I roll. I’m really glad Little Miss Sunshine won best original screenplay. It was my favorite of the nominees, but as I said here, I was too cynical to think the Academy would recognize a comedy from a relatively new writer/director. But I knew Alan Arkin and Forest Whitaker would win, and of course it’s hard to complain about Scorsese getting his.

Are you wondering/worrying what this year’s Oscar winners will choose as their next project now that they have serious cache? Yeah, you’re worrying about it, but many Oscar winners don’t have the time apparently. Here are the 20 worst post-Oscar winning career decisions courtesy of Premier magazine. Mira Sorvino, where are you?

300 finally opens this Friday. You can check out 300 seconds of Spartan spirit right here. That’s an intense clip. Looks like the Persians haven’t invented shields yet. The more I see of this film, the more I am repulsed and intrigued at the same time. On one hand, this looks like nothing else that’s ever been committed to the screen. On the other hand, after 2 hours of slow-mo fight sequences, I’ll probably be ready to tear my eyes out.

This is one of the funniest things I’ve seen since the 30 Second Bunnies. They’re called Five Second Movies and you can see a bunch of them right here. Make sure the watch the Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and Back to the Future clips in sequence.

Turns out Half Nelson isn’t half bad. No, I really liked this film. Ryan Gosling earns his stripes as a drug addicted teacher at a Brooklyn public school trying to keep his life together while struggling to inspire his students and keep them from the kind of people he falls in with at the same time. At first Gosling’s Dan Dunne is able to compartmentalize his habit and his career pretty effectively. But when an underprivileged student catches him using, they form a complicated relationship, and Dunne feels even more responsibility for protecting her from a life of drugs and crime. Gosling is scary good in this role. I mean, are you kidding me, this guy was in the Mickey Mouse Club? But it’s a good thing Gosling is so effective, otherwise the slowly paced middle section might not have worked. Andrij Parekh’s cinematography, an unusual mix of daring close-ups and arty hand-held nostalgia, also piqued my interest. Most impressive is that the film is not tied up pretty with a bow at the end. The easiest thing in the world is to tag a Mr. Holland’s Opus ending onto a movie like this to register smiles and tears with audiences. But there are very few Mr. Holland’s Opus endings in real life. Because in real life Glenn Holland would have had to get up the next morning and figure out what he is going to do with the rest of his life. And that’s were we are left by the end of Half Nelson. And the story resonates all the more for it.

If Seinfeld puts out one or two more trailers like this, I’m going to lobby for a live action movie about the sitcom star trying to get Bee Movie made. I’m sure the real animated feature will be well done, but these trailers have it all: Jerry, Eddie Izzard, Stephen Spielberg, and plenty of sly self-deprecation. Who wouldn’t pay to see that? Check out the new trailer here and learn something. Did you know the ET costume was made out of brown Playdough and chicken wire? Hilarious.

TIME magazine, which Dylan trashes in Don’t Look Back does a Q & A with the documentary’s director D.A. Pennebaker about the deluxe, restored 2-disc reissue of the film. Do yourself a favor and rent Don’t Look Back for a fly-on-the-wall look at one of the greatest artists and voices of the 20th Century. You’ll laugh (at Donovan’s Dylan nicking), you’ll cry (for Joan Baez’s unrequited love), you’ll wonder who threw that dang glass off the balcony.