In the 11 years since the Oscars introduced an award for Best Animated Feature, the category has been dominated by children's movies, often with computer-animated pandas, penguins and ogres at their center. This year's a little different. Two of the animated films are subtitled, and one is definitely aimed at adults: the Spanish film Chico and Rita, an animated love story steeped in jazz.

Think Havana, 1946, rendered in pen and ink, vintage cars roaring down tropical streets that are all horizontals and a riot of color. A young jazz pianist named Chico hasn't got a gig tonight, so he's out on the town hitting the clubs. That's when he gets his first glimpse of Rita, sidling into a spotlight, closing her eyes and purring "Besame Mucho" into a mic.

It's one of the few politician-sponsored activities that should be free of controversy: a high school art contest.

But an annual citywide competition to design the stickers affixed to every windshield in Chicago has suddenly become a public relations nightmare.

The sticker, designed by 15-year-old Herbie Pulgar, depicts Chicago's famous skyline inside of a heart, with a backdrop of the city's blue and white flag. Extending up from the heart are four hands, and above them, symbols representing police officers, firefighters and paramedics.

"When you first look at the design, it's a beautiful design. It's recognizing Chicago's heroes," says former Chicago Police Superintendent Jody Weis.

But look a little more closely, and Weis sees something troubling.

The Mona Lisa is one of the most enigmatic and iconic pieces of Western art. It has inspired countless copies, but one replica at the Madrid's Museo del Prado is generating its own buzz: conservators say that it was painted at the same time as the original — and possibly by one of the master's pupils, perhaps even a lover.

Juxtaposing the two paintings — and using infrared technology which works like an x-ray, allowing one to see beneath the paint to see previous, obscured versions — conservators say that Leonardo and the painter of the replica made exactly the same changes at the same time.

Best journal article title of the week? "Accelerated ion beams for art forensics." Frankly, they had me at "accelerated ion beams" - the beams could have been for almost anything - but using it to stop art fakes is even that much cooler. (My first thought was that the title was referring to some kind of public awareness campaign, that ion beams were taking a stand on forgery, a la "People for Pizza" or "Citizens Against Evil.") And unlike chemical testing, it does so without damaging the original work.

Film critic Garen Daly rounds up the surprise picks and aggregious snubs from this year's Oscar noms.

Every year, thousands of video-game fans flock to the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area for a unique music festival called MAGFest. It's short for "Music and Gaming Festival," and it's designed to celebrate the music of video games.

The film Pina is Germany's official entry at the 84th Academy Awards — and a collaboration between two famous Germans of the postwar generation. The filmmaker Wim Wenders captures the groundbreaking modern-dance choreography of the late Pina Bausch, in what many critics are calling a groundbreaking use of 3-D film.

Wenders is best known in the U.S. for such 1980s dramas as Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire. He's also published several books of his art photographs, and Wenders' interest in music led him to make the much-loved 1999 documentary Buena Vista Social Club. But modern dance was never one of his particular interests.