Oscar night is over, and everyone is basking in the glow of the winners. Or, excuse me, the "recipients" of the Oscars. Not too many years back, the politically-correct police changed the language from "and the winner is" to "and the Oscar goes to" because that made the losers sound less like losers. It's a joke now when someone says, "It's an honor just to be nominated," but I believe that's true. I think it would be unbelievably cool to be nominated, even if you were in the Best Documentary Short category and the bouncers tried to keep you from entering the theater. This week's column is dedicated to the losers that were honored just to be nominated.

My favorite film of the year, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, which is gone from theaters and available on DVD, received two nominations and lost both, which I expected. But this is a film that, like Anthony Mann's The Naked Spur and many other Westerns, will grow in stature despite its lack of Oscars. The year's other big Western, 3:10 to Yuma, also lost its twin nominations, but will probably endure as long as there remains a small, dedicated audience for Western adventures. On the other hand, I find that very few films in the "disease of the week" genre have much life after the Oscars. But The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (161 screens) will be different, for two reasons: 1) it was actually really, very good, and 2) it didn't win anything.

As my wife said, it's just not the Oscars if there's nothing to complain about. However, I was impressed that two of the year's toughest films, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (389 screens) and Joel and Ethan Coen's No Country for Old Men took the most nominations. Typically, the Academy is attracted to much less challenging and easy-to-categorize films (like Atonement). Both films are fairly bleak in their vision, but I suspect There Will Be Blood will sneak out ahead for two reasons: it's an epic, and epics almost always win. And, to quote a character from Sunset Boulevard, it "says a little something" about the current sociopolitical climate.

One of the biggest controversies cropped up over the foreign film category, which came up with five nominations that no one has ever heard of. (The Counterfeiters opens sometime next month and Mongol opens in June.) Not to mention that they ignored top contenders like 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (opening this week) and Persepolis (30 screens). Thankfully the outrage has begun discussions on changing the stupid, ancient rules for the category. Currently these rules require each country to submit one film, and multi-national films, such as The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (107 screens), to be disqualified. A small group of "specialists," rather than the Academy as a whole, votes on the small list of films. The documentary category was less obscure, and although I saw 19 documentaries in 2007, I only managed to see two of the five nominees, No End in Sight and Sicko. I have an Academy screener for Operation Homecoming that I hope to catch soon, and Taxi to the Dark Side (1 screen) is screening for Bay Area press next week.

He's one of the pens behind Keri Russell and Freddie Highmore's musical drama, August Rush. He's also helped write a feature called Speed Kills, which is looking like it will compete with Tony Scott's project about the inventor of the cigarette boat, Don Aronow. Now The Hollywood Reporter has posted that Paul Castro has signed a two-picture deal with producers Michael Wasserman and Amy Balsam's Unusual Suspects banner -- a deal that was made before the WGA strike, but hasn't been shared with the public until now. (Truth, or some sneaky fudging of deal dates?)

If variety is a virtue, these should work well for the scribe. One is a drama called Eileen's Ice. It's about "an unorthodox nun who is ordered to take in a troubled teen under house arrest and learns that the two unlikely companions have more in common than she thinks." Will they spy on creepy, serial killing neighbors, perchance? But religion and marriages to God are only the tip of the iceberg. The second feature Castro has penned is called Cupcake, which is not only another notch on his writing belt -- it will also be his directorial debut. This film is just a wee bit different than the other -- it "follows a teen's quest to find the father he never knew with the help of a prostitute named Cupcake." How a teen befriends a prostitute, and how she in turn helps him find a long-lost father, well, I have no idea. There's no further word on these projects, but in the meantime you can check out August Rush, which opens tomorrow.

• So let me get this straight: Hairspray, the movie, is released in 1988. Then they make a musical from it in 2002. And now New Line is again going to make a movie of it, this time with a budget of $50 million? Jeez, I know they say Hollywood is out of ideas, but this is ridiculous.
• The paper reviews some of the more weird horror flicks coming out from overseas, including Pray, about a punk teen and his druggie girlfriend who kidnap a girl, only to find out she's been dead for a year (Oooooooo!); Una Bianca, a long Italian TV movie about two cops tracking down a group of vicious crooks; and Don't Deliver Us From Evil, which is about two young girls who worship Satan and start killing males in their neighborhood. And in one of the more unintentionally funny segues, the Times then says, "Also out today ...Fun With Dick And Jane."

Keri Russell, just off a joyous reunion with Felicity creator J.J. Abrams on the set of Mission: Impossible III, has now signed on to co-star with Jonathan Rhys-Meyers in August Rush, a drama from Warner Brothers. The film is the story of its titular character, "a young musical prodigy performing on the streets of New York who uses his talent to seek his parents." Freddie Highmore - the kid from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - has been cast as August, and Russell and Meyers will play his parents; Russell's character is "a sheltered cellist," and music "plays an integral role in the story." And for those of you who love a good-hearted, hairy mentor, the news is fantastic: Robin Williams has been cast in the role. Woo hoo.

The film, which will be directed by Kirsten Sheridan (an Oscar nominee for In America's screenplay), starts shooting in New York this summer. Rhys-Meyers is so hot right now that anything with him attached has a chance at success. That said, though, the presence of Williams as "mentor" is undeniably scary - the man can be great when he manages to act in a way that fits into a film's tone, but otherwise he's a walking disaster.