There might be a strike and no fancy Oscar ceremony this year, but the show will go on, in one form or another. It is the 80th annual Academy Awards, after all. Eighty years. That's a long time for cinema, and a pretty big anniversary to boot. As I sit here, wishing I was still in bed (yet thankful that I don't live on the west coast and have to be up even earlier), here are the list of this year's nominees:

Best Picture

Atonement
Juno
Michael Clayton
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood

Best Director

Julian Schnabel -- The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Jason Reitman -- Juno
Tony Gilroy -- Michael Clayton
Joel and Ethan Coen -- No Country for Old Men
Paul Thomas Anderson -- There Will Be Blood

Best Leading Actor

George Clooney -- Michael Clayton
Daniel Day Lewis -- There Will Be Blood
Johnny Depp -- Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Tommy Lee Jones - In the Valley of Elah
VIggo Mortensen -- Eastern Promises

Best Leading Actress

Cate Blanchett -- Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Julie Christie -- Away from Her
Marion Cotillard -- La vie en rose
Laura Linney -- The Savages
Ellen Page -- Juno

Best Adapted Screenplay

Christopher Hampton -- Atonement
Sarah Polley -- Away From Her
Ronald Harwood -- The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Joel and Ethan Coen -- No Country For Old Men
Paul Thomas Anderson -- There Will Be Blood

Best Original Screenplay

Diablo Cody -- Juno
Nancy Oliver -- Lars and the Real Girl
Tony Gilroy -- Michael Clayton
Brad Bird, Jim Capobianco, Jan Pinkava -- Ratatouille
Tamara Jenkins -- The Savages

Best Supporting Actor

Casey Affleck -- The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Javier Bardem -- No Country for Old Men
Phillip Seymour Hoffman -- Charlie Wilson's War
Hal Holbrook -- Into the Wild
Tom Wilkinson -- Michael Clayton

Best Supporting Actress

Cate Blanchett -- I'm Not There
Ruby Dee -- American Gangster
Saoirse Ronan -- Atonement
Amy Ryan -- Gone Baby Gone
Tilda Swinton -- Michael Clayton

Best Animated Feature

Persepolis
Ratatouille
Surf's Up

Best Foreign Language Film

Beaufort
The Counterfeiters
Katyn
Mongol
12

Go through the jump for the rest...

Remember my recent post about how the Oscars are still a go, no matter what happens with the WGA strike? The Academy was considering two options for the show, which will go on next month, February 24. Should the strike end, there would be the regular show that we've all grown accustomed to. However, should it continue, they were planning an alternative -- details of which were being kept secret.

Me, I was hoping for an entire Oscars ceremony mash-up. It would take a heck of a lot of time and effort, but it would be awesome to see the old, great hosts, the clips, and then faux acceptance speeches made from previously-recorded media. I doubt that will happen, but here is what will -- The Hollywood Reporter has posted that for the first time, Oscar nominations will screen live on their website, Oscar.com. This will be followed by expanded online coverage that will include "an Oscar prediction game and an Oscar widget that can be embedded on social networking sites." Hello, Facebook!

Sure, this isn't word on the actual ceremony, but I imagine we can look forward to more web content as the 24th moves ever closer. Stars won't be crossing the picket lines, but could the Academy be planning an event where stars and fans all sign onto the web? Me, I'd much rather see Johnny, Brad, Cate, and the rest of the folks via webcam from their homes than some outfit and jewelry that could feed a country for a year, but maybe that's just me.

There is life after childhood stardom and for some that life consists of Academy Award nominations. I may be revealing my youth when I say that I didn't know that Jackie Earle Haley was a child star (The Bad News Bears) until reading this fact in today's Hollywood Reporter article. What I did know was that his performance in Little Children was both human and chilling. Haley played a child molester just released from prison and still struggling with the demons of his disorder. Haley brings humor, disgust, and childlike anguish to the role; he's a bad guy who makes you feel sorry for him in the end -- definitely a role that is worth an Oscar nomination and a performance worthy of any award.

The nomination itself is award enough for Haley in fact, he would like to "give every Academy member a hug" for the validation. Haley has spent the last 13 years struggling between acting jobs -- a huge gap in work for any actor and enough to question one's abilities as a performer. He filled his bank account with various jobs including limo driving and pizza delivery; thankfully all of that has changed for him now.

Haley is currently trying to make a decision on which project to work on next; he has a few to choose from and with this nomination I'm positive he'll have many to choose from for awhile -- remember when Adrien Brody's career blew up after his Oscar nomination and win for best actor in The Pianist? Luckily, the role that Jackie Earle Haley definitely won't have to choose from is alongside fellow child actors Corey Feldman and Christopher Knight on the reality T.V. show The Surreal Life.

The Palm Springs Film Festival is one of the largest film festivals in the United States. As a result, it is an honor and great opportunity if your film is chosen to appear on their festival schedule. What I wasn't aware of, however, was Palm Springs' potential influence on Oscar's foreign film category.

Palm Springs was responsible this year for screening 55 foreign films (a large majority of those being Oscar submissions); this is up from the 48 in last year's competition. This abundance of foreign fare on American shores is important when it comes to the Oscars since the category for best foreign film is small, with a miniscule five possible nominees, and Variety states that Palm Springs Film Festival is the only venue which screens a large number of foreign language film nominee hopefuls.

This year, Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth won the Fipresci award (International Federation of Film Critics) for best foreign language film of the year. Pan's Labyrinth is definitely in the top running for an Oscar nod with incredible reviews from film's top critics. Does Labyrinth's critical acclaim and del Toro's new Fipresci honor guarantee his film a spot among the eventual five Oscar nominees? We can't tell for sure (though the Globes winner, Letters from Iwo Jima, does not qualify, nor does Mel Gibson's Apocalypto), but it's highly likely we'll see him there making the odds even smaller for the remaining slew of films fighting over those other four slots.

I shed a tear after the Golden Globe nominations were announced. I was thoroughly disappointed that Djmon Hounsou did not receive any acknowledgments for his performance in Blood Diamond. I became a devoted fan of Hounsou after watching his unbelievable portrayal of a recluse neighbor dying of AIDS in the 2002 indie hit In America. Luckily, Variety reminded me that just because he wasn't nominated for a Golden Globe, doesn't mean he won't get nominated for an Oscar.

I forget sometimes that the Golden Globes aren't always a prediction of who or what will appear on the ever-so-important Academy Awards nomination list. I remember thoroughly Jim Carrey's reaction in 1999 -- after winning the Golden Globe for best actor in The Truman Show; as well as Man on the Moon in 2000 -- it was like he never existed once the Oscars rolled around. The same holds true vice versa. Many who are completely overlooked during the Golden Globes are often times the dark horses that win the race during the Oscars.

Specific rules contribute to why the Golden Globes and Oscars tend to be so different. Variety pointed out that the Academy prohibits an actor from competing against oneself in the same category; therefore, Leonardo DiCaprio would have to choose just one film to be a contender for best actor.

This also means that foreign films will be left only to those made by foreign artists. Mel Gibson's Apocalypto and Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima will leave spaces open for (let's keep Pedro Almodovar's Volver all nice and cozy where it is in the best foreign film category) some other nice fellows who are deserving of the coveted final two slots. Personally, I'd love to see Catherine O'Hara get a nomination for her role in For Your Consideration -- maybe even a win. I think it would be a great honor -- not to mention a pivotal one -- for such a funny female to take home that little golden statue. Any Globe rejects who you'd like to see nominated for an Oscar?

I sincerely wish I could present you with an Oscar free column this week, but really – what else is there to talk about right now? I blame Steve Jobs. With his thoroughly underwhelming "Fun New Products" presentation on Tuesday – in which he unveiled not the iTunes Movie Store, but an overpriced "boom box" – he wrecked the entire week. It was gut-punch, for sure – the kind of extreme, unexpected disappointment that takes the fun out of everything for a while. And now we have the Oscars to "look forward" to? How depressing, especially considering that the only thing that makes the Oscars even remotely compelling this year is the possibility of the exact same kind of underwhelming surprise.

Last week in this space, I talked about how and why the buzz that Crash might surpass Brokeback Mountain for Best Picture has given both bloggers and critics a cause to unite behind. This is still going on, and as the days tick by and it seems more and more as if this Oscar season is never going to end, the possibility that the Academy is really going to screw this one up has now metastasized into an official panic. Matt Zoller Seitz, critic for the New York Press, is the latest to enter the ring. On Monday, he wrote on his blog: "If Haggis' movie wins, it won’t just take home a statuette, it’ll claim a new title: the most indefensible Best Picture winner since 1956’s tax shelter spectacle Around the World in 80 Days."

I guess there's two ways to react to a line like that. You either immediately pull up Oscars.com and start scanning the archives for an example to prove Matt wrong (this one immediately comes to mind), or you take the assertion at face value and take a long, hard look at your office pool ballot. Either way, there's something strange about the idea that Oscar winners are/can/should be "defensible" to begin with. Do you ask a little girl to "defend" her choice of ice cream flavor? Do we have any evidence that the bulk of the Academy employs a more sophisticated selection process? The only difference I can see, is that when lil'  Susie picks Chocolate Chip, Rocky Road doesn't worry about how it's going to make back its marketing budget on foreign DVD.

Believe me, I'd love to be able to entirely dismiss a body that declares Driving Miss Daisy to be qualitatively equal to The Apartment; that has nominated Warren Beatty four times for an award that Charlie Chaplin was considered for not once; and that, perhaps most egregiously, keeps trying to convince us that Billy Crystal is a funny guy. But the fact is, that Oscar logo is still a huge sales driver, both here and abroad, and an actual trophy has a funny/awful way of legitimizing the barely tolerable. What's insane about that is the element of chance involved. You hear a lot of people talk about how one single vote could have pushed Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan; when it comes to Goodfellas' now inexplicable loss to Dances with Wolves, you hear different, angrier people say the same. And that doesn't even begin to take into account Senior Syndrome – when aging stars are blamed for surprise winners, such as when Bette Davis blurted out Paul Newman's name when announcing the Best Actor winners in 1986, or when Jack Palance crowned Marisa Tomei Best Supporting Actress six years later. There's no real evidence that either presenter actually handed the trophy to the wrong star, but there's this common feeling that it would be pretty easy for the trophy to go home with the wrong man, despite the Academy's insistence that they station accountants in the wings (no, seriously) to prevent just such a surprise.

It's no longer surprising when the Academy picks the "wrong" film, but it may never cease to frustrate. After reading my last column, a friend and fellow film writer anticipated Seitz's declaration. "Crash would be the worst choice since Greatest Show on Earth, with Jimmy Stewart as the clown-who-turns-out-to-be-an-escaped-murderer," he wrote in an email. "I’m thinking maybe that category should be eliminated all together." Barring that happening before Sunday night, here are my picks for the night's potential upsets. Throw one of these onto your pool ballot, and send me 10% when you rake in the winnings.

 

Hey, here's something new - last night, James Rocchi and I bridged the 3,000 miles between San Francisco and Brooklyn via Gizmo Project and recorded a podcast. We started talking about Tyler Perry, whose latest film, Madea's Family Reunion, made $30 million this weeekend – proving that the studios' recent tactic of witholding their trash from critics is really working. We then make the logical leap to talking about the Oscars – specifically, this year's acting nominees. Admittedly, we're still working out some tech stuff, but give us a shot – we've got some exciting stuff planned for the weeks ahead. The show's about 17 minutes long, and you can check it out here.

For the second Super Bowl weekend in a row, Sony/Screen Gems scored big with an anonymous horror remake. When a Stranger Calls was only "courtesy screened" for online critics – meaning most of us couldn't get a review up early enough to get any kind of negative meme going – and most print pundits were unimpressed; Frank Scheck at the Hollywood Reporter speaks for many when he says the film "[is] designed to capitalize on the title and premise of the original but offers little to those who fondly remember it." But take a look at the competition: shrugworthy holdovers from earlier weeks dominated the top five, with Big Momma's House 2 and Nanny McPhee landing at number two and three. The biggest box office news of the weekend comes, once again, from Brokeback Mountain. Focus took the Best Picture frontrunner up to 2,000 screens, allowing the cowboy romance to ride its eight Oscar nominations all the way up to fourth place. The film has made (and this is not a typo) almost $60 million thus far. Full top ten after the jump.

As AMPAS only televises the announcement of the top tier awards, we only live blogged a fraction of the nominees this morning. Here, then, is the full list – click through the jump to see nominations for Batman Begins, Revenge of the Sith, and Razzie nominee War of the Worlds...

Best Adapted Screenplay
Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, Brokeback Mountain
Dan Futterman, Capote
Jeffrey Caine, The Constant Gardener
Josh Olson, A History of Violence
Tony Kushner and Eric Roth, Munich

Best Original Screenplay
Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco, Crash
George Clooney and Grant Heslov, Good Night, and Good Luck
Woody Allen, Match Point
Noah Baumbach, The Squid and the Whale
Stephen Gaghan, Syriana

Animated Feature
Howl's Moving Castle
Tim Burton's Corpse Bride
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Art Direction
Good Night, and Good Luck
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
King Kong
Memoirs of a Geisha
Pride & Prejudice

It's that time again – in roughly 15 minutes, a couple of sleepy-eyed actors will breeze through a list of names, and millions of dollars in advertising captial will thus be validated or negated. Oh, and a few talented artists will probably also get some recognition. Refresh this page, like, constantly, because as the names come in, I'll be typing them in. And don't forget to bitch and praise in the comments!

8:19 Predictions? Some lazier corners of the media, bored of the Brokeback hype, are using Crash's Sunday win at the SAG Awards as reason enough to declare the gay cowboys' reign to be over. I don't buy it – what do you think?

8:33 I'm watching the coverage on the TODAY show, and they're saying the announcement isn't happening until 8:40? WTF? Is it on E! yet?

8:39 Katie Couric – looking like a grandma in a giant blue ... thing – is sitting with Dave Karger from Entertainment Weekly. He says Walk the Line is gonna get cut out of everything but acting races. Katie throws to Matt in Washington, who she calls Mr. Hollywood.

8:40 Sid Gannett, president of AMPAS, is presenting with Mira Sorvino

8:41 Here they are:

Supporting Actresss - Amy Adams, Junebug; Catherine Keener, Capote; Frances McDormand, North Country; Rachel Weisz, The Constant Gardner; Michelle Williams, Brokeback Mountain

Supporting Actor – George Clooney, Syriana; Matt Dillon, Crash; Paul Giamatti, Cinderella Man; Jake Gyllenhaal, Brokeback Mountain; William Hurt, History of Violence

Actress - Judi Dench, Mrs. Henderson Presents; Felicity Huffman, Transamerica; Keira Knightley, Pride and Prejudice; Charlize Theron, North Country; Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line

Actor - Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote; Terrence Howard, Hustle and Flow; Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain; Joaquin Phoenix, Walk the Line; David Strathairn, GD&GL

Director - Ang Lee, Bennett Miller, Paul Haggis, George Clooney, Steven Spielberg

Original Screenplay - Crash, GNGL, Match Point, Squid and the Whale, Syriana

Adapted Screenplay - Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Constant Gardener, History of Violence, Munich

Foreigh - Don't Tell, Merry Christmas, Paradise Now, Sophie Scholl, Tsotsi

Animated - Howl's Moving Castle, Corpse Bride, Wallace and Gromit

Best Picture - Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Crash, Good Night and Good Luck, Munich

8:50 To paraphrase the legendary Robert Evans: Suprises? There were a few. Terrence Howard, hot off his stint on the Sundance 2006 dramatic jury, pimped his way to a nod. History of Violence came out stronger than expected, with 2 major nominations, and it's nice to see Jake Gyllenhaal finally get some recognition for his showier-than-Ledger's work in Brokeback Mountain. But most striking, is the resurrection of Steven Spielberg and Munich. Left-for-dead after its Golden Globes almost-shutout and that whole BAFTA snafu, it popped up here as a real contender. Capote is in a similar boat: a film previously thought to have little general support made an appearance this morning in virtually every major category.

Are you stunned? Pissed? Ecstatic? Let us know.