OSCAR FRENZY!

Happy Oscar's Eve, everyone! If you're like me, you watch every year, regardless of your level of investment in the nominated films. Who wins Best Actor or what wins Best Picture is hardly the be-all end-all of the discussion of what is the best performance or film of the year. But you would be kidding yourself if you downplayed the significance of the Academy Awards. How often do you see "Golden Globe Winner" before an actor's name in a movie trailer? And even if you do see that, it just means that they didn't win the Academy Award.

Good thing our movie was distributed by The Weinstein Company!

There are nine nominees for Best Picture this year. No, you read that right, nine. Apparently there weren't enough good movies to have ten nominees and include a movie like "Drive", but there were enough good ones to include "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close".

Yeah, we know- we're not going to win.

This is the first year in a while that I didn't see all of the Best Picture nominees. I haven't seen "Extremely Loud" or "War Horse", and to be honest, I'm not particularly compelled to run out and watch them. There's only a couple films that could potentially win, and it's not either of those.

SNUBS-
"Drive" for Best Picture
"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" for Best Picture
Albert Brooks for Supporting Actor (Drive)
Alan Rickman for Supporting Actor (Harry Potter)

Hey, Academy- for the rest of your life, you're going to be looking over your shoulder.

PREDICTIONS-
Best Picture- The Artist
Best Director- Michel Hazanavicius
Best Actor- Jean Dujardin
Best Actress- Michelle Williams
Best Supporting Actor- Christopher Plummer
Best Supporting Actress- Octavia Spencer
Best Documentary- Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
Best Animated Feature- Rango
Best Editing- The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Best Original Screenplay- Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris
Best Adadpted Screenplay- John Logan, Hugo

Billy Crystal hosts this year, which should be refreshing after last year's fiaso. I'm not sure if he'll be able to live up to the high bar that he set in past Oscars, but honestly- anything would be better than James Franco and Anne Hathaway.

Stop. Just stop.