My Reactions to the Nominees

Best Actor:

I got all five! Whoosh! Go Jeff Bridges.

Best Actress:

I got all five again! So now Meryl has a ridiculous 16 acting nominations, breaking the record held by herself the year before (which broke the record held by herself in 2006, which broke the record held by herself in 2002...)

Best Supporting Actor:

I got all five AGAIN! I'm on FIRE!

Best Supporting Actress:

Four out of five. Maggie Gyllenhaal for Crazy Heart? Meh. She was good, I just didn't think she was outstanding. (I certainly would have preferred Melanie Laurant.) Still, I think she's a terrific actress and certainly deserves to have the title "Academy Award Nominee" before her name. (Besides, her kid brother's got one; the score must be evened! Now if only her husband could be nominated...)

Best Adapted Screenplay:

Four out of five. A big wow for In the Loop. Maybe I'll have to see it.

Best Original Screenplay:

Four out of five; they picked The Messenger instead of 500 Days of Summer. Hey, as long as it wasn't The Hangover, I'm good. I noticed that the Academy included Thomas McCarthy on the nomination for Up, as he was credited on the story but not the screenplay. How strange that he was twice robbed in this category for his eloquent solo screenplays -- and The Station Agent and The Visitor -- and then he gets his first nod for a "treatment" credit.

Best Director:

All five again! Kick-ass! Thrilled for Kathryn Bigelow (though that was no surprise) and Lee Daniels (I was a little worried about that one.) Nice to see a Best Director lineup that isn't five white guys.

Best Picture:

Eight out of ten. I was afraid dipping down into sixth to tenth place would yield some looney results, but they ended up pretty straightforward. Here I missed on Invictus and The Messenger instead of A Serious Man and...The Blind Side? Really? Oh, man, now I'm really going to have to force myself to watch it.

Everything Else:

Let's see...I was primarily hoping for Fantastic Mr. Fox to be up for Animated Feature and for "The Weary Kind" to be up for Best Song, and both made it, so I'm pleased on both counts. Oh, and during the live announcement of the nominations, the title of one of the Foreign Language Film nominees made me guffaw aloud: The Milk of Sorrow. So I guess that's an actual movie and not a made-up foreign film within, say, a Ben Stiller movie?

Here's a bit of trivia: The last film to win Best Picture without nominations for writing OR acting was Grand Hotel in 1932. And the Oscars were exceptionally loony those first few years -- they were constantly changing the rules and still finding their voice as an award and as an institution -- so precedents from the 1930's almost don't count as precent at all. Not looking good, Avatar.

Finally, here's a fun activity you kids can do at home! (Ask your parents to help you with the scissors!) Here are the nominees in the top eight categories expressed in grid form; they get one block for each top-eight nomination. Print it out, and color in each movie as you see it. Try to get the whole thing filled in before Oscar night! (Even I am not going to try to fill the WHOLE thing in; I don't think I can force myself to see Invictus. It was hard enough getting to the end of Julie and Julia.)