I'm sitting here watching Volver for the second time, and both remembering how much I enjoyed it when I first saw it at the Toronto International Film Festival, and catching little things I'd missed before. Like how great the Hitchcockian feel of the film is in the scenes where Raimunda (Penélope Cruz) is getting rid of the body, how carefully thought-out the color palette is, and, most of all the brilliance of the acting. The ensemble as a whole -- Cruz, Lola Dueñas as Sole, Raimunda's sister, Yohana Cobo as Raimunda's daughter, Paula, and Carmen Maura as Irene, Raimunda and Sole's dead mother -- is one of the best ensemble performances I've ever seen.

Cruz, though, really shines in this film. Maybe there's just something about the magic of her working with Pedro Almodóvar (and my little film geek heart is all a-flutter over the news that the duo are pairing up for another film), or maybe she just really took a shine to this particular role, but her performance is just everything it should be: nuanced and funny, intense and passionate. This is Cruz at her best, and after watching Volver again, she's who I'm going to be rooting for to win Best Actress come Oscar night.

Helen Mirren had the early lead, and many still think she's a solid lock for her performance in The Queen, and yes, she was great in it -- but she's such an obvious choice, and maybe people are tired of hearing how everything she does is Oscar-worthy. Mirren and Judi Dench could end up canceling each other out, anyhow, leaving a path for one of the other nominees to slide up the middle for the win. There's buzz that Streep might just sneak in there for the win, but if she does I'll be pissed. She was good in The Devil Wears Prada, sure, but I wouldn't call it the performance of her career, and the film itself is very light to be Oscar-caliber.

Even if you consider Borat (full title not necessary) to be primarily a scripted work, it is still a film that works best in its unscripted sequences. This is debatable, sure, but I would like someone at the Writers Guild to tell me what was so great about the actual screenplay used. Personally, I think the scripted parts, as well as the adherence to the plot, are the weakest elements.

Nonetheless, Sacha Baron Cohen and his five collaborators are nominated for a Writers Guild Award for Adapted Screenplay. And despite my questioning of this recognition, I don't really prefer any of its competition. The other titles in the adapted category are Little Children, The Departed, The Devil Wears Prada and Thank You for Smoking. If I had to choose, I'd go with the last of these, but I think the prize will go to the overrated Little Children.

I also don't think the Original Screenplay category is that great, either. The nominees for that award are Little Miss Sunshine, Babel, United 93, Stranger Than Fiction and The Queen. Again, I'd have to go with the last of these, but predict the overrated first.

Hopefully, unlike with other guild awards, the WGA's honors will not reflect the Oscar nominations, which may recognize foreign films Volver and Pan's Labyrinth, which were ineligible here.

Tooling around online this morning, I came across a cutesy little story on Variety in which Robert Vernini tells us (with a wink and a nudge) which recent films will eventually be remade, who will star and how the whole thing will go down. He begins in the year 2012 where, according to Vernini, we will see a new version of Volver set in New Orleans, and starring Halle Berry. Ooohh, and Dakota Fanning takes over the Anne Hathaway role in a remake of The Devil Wears Prada (with John Travolta in drag as Miranda Priestley), while the Olsen twins attempt an updated version of The Holiday ... but the project gets canned when the girls keep forgetting who is playing who.

Having fun yet? Next up is the year 2017, where Steven Soderbergh remakes his own The Good German -- but this time, he finds a way to digitally add in performances by Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Berman and John Hodiak. After Happy Feet: The Musical hits Broadway, folks think it's time to bring that box office beast back to the big screen. Al Gore teams up with Aardman for An Inconvenient Truth: The Animated Musical, with Billy Crystal as the voice of Carbon Dioxide. And, whaddya know, Ms. Fanning is back -- this time as director -- for a remake of Dreamgirls, rewritten to follow the story of the Dixie Chicks.

It keeps going from there -- 2032 and 2057 make appearances -- and the remakes turn even more bizarre (Flags of Our Grandfathers?), but it poses an interesting question (one I shall ask you): Which of todays films have the potential to be remade in five, ten or twenty years from now?

Now that all the big festivals are wrapping up for the year, it's time to look at who is getting awards. The nominees for the 19th Annual European Film Awards were announced today at the Seville Film Festival. Previously, the awards have been held almost exclusively in Germany, and few other Western European locations including Glasgow and Paris. However this year, for a nice change of pace, the European Film Academy is going in a different direction. For the first time, the ceremony will enter Eastern Europe and air from Warsaw.

This is even more interesting considering one of the leaders in nominees is the wonderful German film by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, The Lives of Others, which chronicles East German Stasi in the 1980's. Perhaps its strong showing was enough to make the academy look to the east. Along with Almodóvar's Volver, the two have dominated the nominations with six nods each. Both are up not only for best film, but also a number of acting and technical awards.

Other films to make the list are Neil Jordan's quirky Breakfast on Pluto, Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross' The Road to Guantanamo, and Ken Loach's The Wind That Shakes the Barley. However, I'm surprised to see a list without any nominations for Andrea Arnold's Red Road; after a Cannes Jury Pricz and number of British Independent Film Award nominations, I thought she was a shoo-in.

If the great films on this list are any indication, this should be an interesting season of awards. What say you?

[Check out the full list of nominees at the European Film Academy's website.]

Not many directors could take a film built around the theme of death and make it as funny, thoughtful, and deeply meaningful as Pedro Almodóvar has with Volver, now officially Spain's nominee for the Oscar for Best Foreign Picture. The film revolves around three generations of women: Raimunda (Penélope Cruz) and her daughter Paula (Yohana Cobo) live with Raimunda's husband, an unemployed laborer who spends his spare time checking out his daughter's blossoming body. Raimunda's sister, Sole (Lola Dueñas) supports herself by running an unlicensed beauty shop out of her apartment. As we meet Raimunda, Sole and Paula, they are at the cemetery cleaning the graves of Raimunda and Sole's parents, who died in a fire.

In La Mancha, where Raimunda's parents lived, the east wind blows incessantly, driving people to the brink of insanity. This is a superstitious culture, where the dead are respected, graves are kept clean and tombstones well-polished, and the dead occasionally walk among the living -- especially if they have unfinished business. When Raimunda and Sole go to visit their elderly aunt, they are surprised to find that she refers to their dead mother, Irene, as though she has just seen her. It doesn't take long for Abuela Irene (Carmen Maura) to appear to Sole and Paula, though she conceals her presence from Raimunda. It is with Raimunda, and with Raimunda and Sole's friend Agustina (Blanca Portillo) that Abuela Irene has unfinished business to resolve.