MONDAY MORNING POINT GUARD

DVRs around the country were working overtime yesterday capturing Canada’s overtime win over the U.S. in the hockey gold medal game, the Lakers’ hard-fought victory over tattooed Western Conference rivals the Denver Nuggets, the closing ceremony of the Vancouver Winter Olympics and 60 Minutes’ profile of way-cool filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow… There’s a 20% chance of rain in L.A. Sunday, which means the designer gowns will be paired with umbrellas of the red carpet prior to the Academy Awards. Fortunately, and atypically, the Oscars telecast will not be delayed on the West Coast… Scorsese’s Shutter Island (Paramount) stayed on top of the weekend box office with $22.2 million, fending off WB’s debuting Cop Out ($18.6 million) and Overture Films’ The Crazies ($16.5). Meanwhile, another Hitchcock homage by a great director—Roman Polanski’s superior The Ghost Writer—expanded from five screens to 43, taking in $870k for an average of $22k a theater… Track we can’t get enough of: One EskimO’s “Kandi,” about which our own Lenny Beer says “Hit.” The female voice on the track belongs to ’70s soul singer Candi Staton, sampled from her recording of Harlan Howard’s “He Called Me Baby,” originally cut by Patsy Cline. We found those details and watched the salient video clips on Tommy Tomlinson’s blog entry, “In Search of Kandi.”… The same group’s “Given Up” is Today's Top Tune on KCRW… This week’s most intriguing debut is Almost Alice, Buena Vista’s “companion piece” to Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, which opens this Friday. The first single from the 18-track collection, which has been racking up heavy preorders at the iTunes Store, is “Follow Me Down” from 3OH!3 featuring Neon Hitch, but we’re quite taken with Grace Potter & the Nocturnals’ smokin’ cover of the Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit.” Hollywood Records has already sent out advances of GPN’s self-titled third album (produced by hip-hop-leaning Mark Batson), which doesn’t hit till June 8. You need to snag one—it rocks (“Paris,” “Medicine”) and rolls (“Oasis,” “Tiny Light”).