Nominations

Well, the Oscar nominations are out-outside of the Triple Crown or the Breeders Cup they are my favorite event to handicap. Hours of careful consideration every year have made me somewhat of a player in the Oscar party pool. Here are my thoughts so far:

-Too much "Munich"! I know we're all supposed to bow down to Mr Spielberg since he started making serious films but this one missed the mark in my book. Like lots of other movies lately ("King Kong" for example) it was overlong. When you start rooting for your killer protaganists to get killed themselves you know something is amiss. It also had a really bad sex scene dismount (no pun intended there).

-I think "Wallace & Gromit" (and probably Rachel Weisz) are the closest thing to a lock. I cannot wait to hear Wallace's acceptance speech!

-I'm disappointed that Jeff Daniels did not get nominated for playing that bastard Barnard in "The Squid & the Whale" but having he and David Straitharn in the same category might have disrupted the character actor universe.

-Boy, there were not a lot of great roles for women this year. I mean Judi Dench? Really?

-How can "Mrs Henderson Presents" be nominated for Best Costume when most of the people in it are naked?

-How exactly is this Best Original Song going to work? Will Terrence Howard do "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" himself? And will that be before or after Dolly Parton does "Travelin Thru" from "Transamerica"? (Doesn't it crack you up that Dolly is doing the theme song for a movie about a transexual? She must be some sort of overcompensating hero to them.)

-It's a bummer that "Grizzly Man" was not nominated for best documentary. I thought Werner Herzog did a great job getting inside Timothy Treadwell's head. Maybe it takes a let's-push-the-boat-over-the-mountain crazy to capture a let's go-live-with-grizzlies-crazy.

-I don't think "Match Point" was good enough for a writing nod. To me it was like "Crimes and Misdemeanors" without the misdemeanors. Return to form my foot.

My predictions to come.