And The Nominees Are...

Some random Oscar nom thoughts:

-How did Cinderella Man merit a Best Makeup nom? Don't really see that one as being valid.

-The Academy has decided that only three songs would be nominated this year, instead of the usual five, which is good, because that's two fewer painful performances of said songs that I'll have to endure during the Awards ceremony. I wonder if Terrence Howard will actually perform "It's Hard Out Here To Be A Pimp," or they'll do like last year and have someone like Kanye West perform it, even though the original performer is at the ceremony.

-Memoirs of a Geisha gets nominated in both Sound categories. Interesting choice: a movie that is 99% dialogue.

-I can't help notice that Sin City and Star Wars 3 were passed over in the Visual Effects category. Considering both movies are almost entirely visual effects, you'd think the Academy would throw them a bone. I think it's a fairly impressive technical achievement to create worlds that exist solely on a computer, but apparently I'm an idiot.

-The most hotly contested categories this year will be the two Writing categories. There are at least two in each category that deserve to win. The only category that comes close to this race is Animated Feature, which has three equally deserving nominees.

-George Clooney will probably win some sort of Oscar this year, and will ascend into the upper echelons of assholery with his new sense of importance. I suspect he'll attempt to buy the United States if he wins.

-Munich got more noms than it did at the Golden Globes, even though it will win nothing, which is a shame, because it's great.

-I suspect Brokeback Mountain will be the big winner this year. On a tangential subject, has anyone actually seen Brokeback Mountain? I've asked everyone I know, and can't find anyone, through any degree of separation, who has seen it. That should be a category of its own: Best Picture No One Has Seen. Winner, hands down.

We'll see how it all pans out in a month or so.