Jake Gittes

Assassination of Jesse James? If I'm not mistaken WB fought long and hard with Dominik and Pitt about the film's length and pacing and when it couldn't have its way it pretty much dumped it. Although I'm not sure if they ever intended it to go wide right away, or were planning a platform roll-out with a later wide release from the beginning.

There may be no clear frontrunner, but TLJ has SAG, Waltz has a Globe and a BAFTA, and Hoffman has BFCA. De Niro has nothing except nominations. I'd be shocked if he won. And Haneke taking the screenplay from QT would be even more ridiculous than Boal doing it in '10. I actually think Django is one of Tarantino's two weakest films (Death Proof being the other), yet screenplay-wise it's still miles above all the other nominees as far as story, dialogue and characterization are concerned. The only one that rivals it is The Master and it's not in contention.

Same. Both are in my all-time top 5.

I have mixed feelings towards Hathaway. The character is pretty much an over-the-top melodramatic joke (just like the whole film), yet I couldn't help but admire her absolute devotion to the part.

After BFCA, Globes and now this, Tarantino is absolutely the frontrunner for Screenplay. Waltz is in a shakier position, but he's easily right behind TLJ and I wouldn't be surprised if he upset.

'Cause the Academy has a hard-on for both RR and 3D... perfect combination. Seriously, I'm no fan of Tree of Life, but its cinematography snub was last year's worst one. Maybe now that Lubezki has made a 3D film with Gravity they'll finally give it to him... it's about damn time.

The Academy has a serious hard-on for Robert Richardson. They've awarded him 3 Oscars already and still put him in competition practically every chance they get. What's funny is that he has like 10 ASC nominations (compared to 8 Oscar noms) to date, but he has yet to win there. What's also funny to me is that I think he did his best job ever on Shutter Island and never received any major nominations for that.

I loved him in The Departed too, but it was a pretty one-note part. In About Schmidt, he's on as high a level as he's ever been - subtle, layered and shedding a lot of his natural movie star charisma. And not that he doesn't deserve his unofficial retirement, but yeah, I'm pretty sad he's for the most part completely off the radar now. I'm sure he could find work if only he wanted to - I mean, Christopher Plummer is 8 years older and is doing great. Although he's definitely in a better physical shape, too.

Maybe Jack will get inspired to finally get up and really show 'em how it's done once again. I don't want his last performance to be How Do You Know, and his last great performance to be in a film that's 10 years old already. (that'd be About Schmidt).

Picture, Actress, Editing - Zero Dark Thirty Director, Adapted Screenplay - Lincoln Actor, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress - The Master Original Screenplay - Django Unchained Cinematography, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Song - Skyfall Animated Feature - ParaNorman Production Design, Costume Design, Original Score - Anna Karenina Visual Effects - Life of Pi Makeup - The Hobbit Documentary Feature - Searching for Sugar Man Foreign Film: don't find either Amour or A Royal Affair oscar-worthy, haven't seen the others.

1932 - Grand Hotel 1939 - Gone with the Wind 1943 - Casablanca 1950 - All About Eve 1959 - Ben-Hur 1961 - West Side Story 1962 - Lawrence of Arabia 1971 - The French Connection 1972 - The Godfather 1973 - The Sting 1974 - The Godfather Part II 1975 - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 1976 - Rocky 1977 - Annie Hall 1984 - Amadeus 1991 - The Silence of the Lambs 1992 - Unforgiven 1993 - Schindler's List 1994 - Forrest Gump 1995 - Braveheart 1997 - Titanic 1998 - Shakespeare in Love 1999 - American Beauty 2000 - Gladiator 2001 - A Beautiful Mind 2002 - Chicago 2003 - ROTK 2004 - Million Dollar Baby 2006 - The Departed 2007 - No Country for Old Men 2008 - Slumdog Millionaire 2009 - The Hurt Locker 2010 - The King's Speech 2011 - The Artist 34 in total. Well, you could already make it 35 considering I've seen this year's every nominee

Joaquin Phoenix standing next to Sally Field cracks me up. She is typically glowing, he's looking almost like a ghost

Mara is great, but I think she would have been too young. It might have worked if they had had the film take place in a span of a couple of years, but not almost a decade. They needed a 30-something actress for it and Chastain was perfect.

Sounds exactly like Natalie Portman.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CX-24Zm0bjk

Arkin actually getting it for Argo would be the most utterly ridiculous win since I don't know when.

"And while we're at it, we shall move The Dark Knight Rises all the way down to 10th place as well. That'll show them".

Nothing screams Philip Seymour Hoffman A Teen Heartthrob better than this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-3oeveop4o

Why not?

Also, having passed A Beautiful Mind, Lincoln is now the highest-grossing biopic domestically... that is, unless you consider The Passion of the Christ and The Blind Side to be ones, too.

Why even mention the first four? They all hopelessly pale in comparison to TLS' achievement.

They are already better than the Oscars will ever be.

And ironically, we didn't nominate our BP winner for Best Director either.

Cloud Atlas still won the most awards, right? Ensemble, director and score. (Plus, uh, most disappointing run.) Edit: no, Master won three as well

I wonder if it would have been different if we had ranked the nominees instead of just picking one