And the Nominees are...

So, we've come once again to the time of year in which initially inspired me to create this blog. Oscar season.

If you have forgotten the story, this blog stemmed from me viewing Julie & Julia in preparation for the Oscars, and one of the characters in the story, Julie, blogs as she works her way through Julia Stiles' cookbook.

The nominees were announced this past Tuesday, and last few years I've made the point to see every film that is nominated for Best Picture and all of the acting categories. Sometimes I will get lucky and have seen all the Screenplay nominees and the Animated Features and have a pretty good handle on what is out there. So just to quickly refresh the nominees I will be working on viewing over the next 4-5 weeks they are as follows:

BEST PICTURE
The Descendants
The Artist
Hugo
The Help
Extremely Loud & Inrcedibly Close
War Horse
Moneyball
Midnight in Paris
The Tree of Life

BEST ACTOR
George Clooney
Brad Pitt
Gary Oldman
Demian Bichir
Jean Dujardin

BEST ACTRESS
Glenn Close
Michelle Williams
Viola Davis
Meryl Streep
Rooney Mara

SUPPORTING ACTOR
Jonah Hill
Nick Nolte
Christopher Plummer
Max von Sydow
Kenneth Branagh

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Bernice Bejo
Melissa McCarthy
Octavia Spencer
Jessica Chastain
Janet McTeer

Okay, so I'm not at all excited to have to watch Warrior now to see Nick Nolte's performance. Not sure how I'm going to find a way to see Albert Nobbs for Glenn Close and Janet McTeer. I have Midnight in Paris, The Tree of Life at home from Netflix and only then will need to notch off War Horse, Hugo, and the Help. For some reason I just have no desire to see the Help. But with the Best Pic nom and three acting performances I guess it can't be thaaaat bad.

The favorites so far seem to be either The Artist or the Descendants for Best Picture, with Clooney from the latter leading the charge against the Artists Jean Dujardin for Actor. Supporting Actor is apparently a lock from Christopher Plummer, who was awesome in Beginners, I highly recommend, or Max von Sydow in EL&IC for being two old guys who have never won. Actress I feel is a little muddled, Meryl seems to be due every year but apparently the voters feel that two wins in the last 18 or 19 nominations is enough for her. I wouldn't mind seeing Michelle Williams take this one. Supporting Actress seems to always be the category with two women from the same film (The Help). Cheers to McCarthy getting the nod for Bridesmaids, but this one will likely go to Octavia Spencer. But who knows, an entire month is left.

I will keep you updated as I go, I have a football free weekend (who watches the Pro Bowl anyways) to take care of a few of these while I attempt to be productive.