Overnight Briefing & General Reality Check - Feb 9, 2022

Let's talk nominations for the Oscars were announced Tuesday morning. There are 10 "Best picture" candidates:
--The Power of the Dog
--West Side Story
--Belfast
--Dune
--Licorice Pizza
--King Richard
--CODA
--Don't Look Up
--Drive My Car
--Nightmare Alley

As far as best actor and actress, each has five nominees:
--Olivia Colman - "The Lost Daughter"
--Nicole Kidman - "Being the Ricardos"
--Jessica Chastain - "The Eyes of Tammy Faye"
--Kristen Stewart - "Spencer"
--Penelope Cruz - "Parallel Mothers"

And for best actor
--Will Smith - King Richard
--Benedict Cumberbatch - The Power of the Dog
--Andrew Garfield - Tick, Tick... Boom!
--Denzel Washington - The Tragedy of Macbeth
--Javier Bardem - Being the Ricardos

And while we're on the Oscars, Lin-Manuel Miranda could get to EGOT status if he wins an Oscar for best original song. EGOT people have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and a Tony award during their careers (spelling out EGOT, of course). There's just a few stars who've made it --they include John Legend, Marvin Hamlisch and Andrew Lloyd Weber.

FYI: Full list: Composer Alan Menken, Richard Rodgers, Helen Hayes, Rita Moreno, John Gielgud, Audrey Hepburn, Marvin Hamlisch, Jonathan Tunick, Mel Brooks, Mike Nichols, Whoopi Goldberg, Scott Rudin, Robert Lopez, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Tim Rice and John Legend.

Look for a movie based on the claymation characters like Gumby and Pokey. Fox Entertainment has picked up all the rights to the characters Gumby, Pokey and all their friends. Gumby was created by Art Clokey in 1953. The rights to the characters were sold from the estate of his son, Joe. You may remember Eddie Murphy doing parodies of Gumby on "Saturday Night Live" back in the 1980s.

While we're on the subject, ABC is reportedly going to use Niecy Nash to star in a spinoff of “The Rookie.” Variety says she'd play a single mother and the oldest rookie in the FBI Academy.

See ya: The folks at Peloton have laid off 2,800 of their employees --20-percent of their workforce-- after the latest quarter in which the company had $439 million in losses. The pink slips included CEO and co-founder John Foley who said he's stepping down as CEO but will stay as the company's executive chairman of the board.

There's been 22 arrests made up in Canada from those truckers who've been snarling roadways in major Canadian cities in their protests over Covid-19 rules. Canadian-bound traffic was still shut down yesterday (Tuesday) morning, although there was some traffic getting by to head from Cnada to the U.S. On Monday, a judge in Ottawa ruled that the truckers have to quit honking their horns for 10 days, but that doesn't look like it's gonna happen. And the next stop for members of "The Freedom COnvoy" could be Washington D.C. and other cities in the U.S. We'll see.

Meanwhile, a survey from Monmouth University shows that support to combat the coronavirus pandemic is waning. Some 70 percent of Americans agreed that “it’s time we accept Covid is here to stay and we just need to get on with our lives.” The survey also found that support for vaccine mandates has dropped to just 43 percent from 53 percent in September, and support for masking and social distancing has also dropped 11 points to 52 percent as well.

Recall: The Red Pill Male is being recalled. The male enhancement pill sold on Amazon may contain Tadalafil, an unapproved drug for treatment of male erectile dysfunction. People with underlying medical conditions including diabetes, high blood pressure or heart disease could have serious health risks, if they take the pills.