Amelia looked good, as did Public Enemies.

I believe the media reaction and ratings for tonight's broadcast will have a direct effect on whether Avatar and UP get into the race in a serious way (taking into account quality, ratings, box office, etc).

We said the same damn thing last year about WALL-E and TDK.

So, no.

Not about TDK (I think)

there's a certain point where the show runs the risk of ending up on pay television and like anything, it's a business. Audiences rejected Frost/Nixon and the voting academy at large didn't even bother with it in their final ballots.

If the Best Foreign Film committee can now push commercial fare through simply to keep up appearances, who knows what's next.

there's a certain point where the show runs the risk of ending up on pay television and like anything, it's a business. Audiences rejected Frost/Nixon and the voting academy at large didn't even bother with it in their final ballots.

The Human Factor feels like the one nearly 100% sure bet for Best Picture/Director for 2009 for me. It's Clint Eastwood directing Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela. It's in. Quality doesn't matter when it comes to an Eastwood film, he is nominated even when his films aren't good. Basically, the pedigree and subject matter are up to standards, so it's in.

I don't think the voting members vote for the best film, not sure if they ever have.

Each week, as the fall weather grows colder, a new batch arrives, first in New York and Los Angeles (sometimes by way of Cannes or Toronto) and then in other cities, and every movie is greeted with the same question: Will it get any nominations? The early answer will depend on reviews and on initial grosses; if those auguries look promising, more money will be spent trying to generate momentum, to spin news coverage and to solicit the favor of the voters.

To what end? The phrase “Oscar campaign” has entered the lexicon, but it’s an odd kind of campaign, involving an office with neither symbolic nor actual power and a public that is constitutionally barred from voting. But perhaps the metaphor is military rather than political, since what is required is for one movie — or five of them, in the early phases — to wound, exhaust and ultimately kill the others.

The losers in this cultural blood sport are ambitious, idiosyncratic films that never get a fair chance at an audience, and filmgoers whose attention is distracted by endless, empty chatter about the state of the contest.

Or maybe not distracted. It seems just as likely that the vast, multifarious, unpredictable public is tuning out the Oscar noise and going to see, for example, Clint Eastwood’s “Gran Torino,” which has made more money so far than any of his academy-honored efforts. Or maybe they’re fanning out in search of DVDs of the interesting movies the academy overlooked, or taking comfort in the kind of entertainment the academy never seems to recognize. It may be that the more movies matter, the less the Oscars do. And vice versa.

The Human Factor feels like the one nearly 100% sure bet for Best Picture/Director for 2009 for me. It's Clint Eastwood directing Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela. It's in. Quality doesn't matter when it comes to an Eastwood film, he is nominated even when his films aren't good. Basically, the pedigree and subject matter are up to standards, so it's in.

I'm not going to challenge you on The Human Factor, but Clint's 2 films didn't exactly set the world on fire this year even though they obviously were targeted as contendors, so I'm not really sure what you are getting at here.

I don't know Mike. Iwo Jima was more left field as a nominee than Changling or Gran Torino in my view. And Flags of our Fathers lost out too.

Eastwood has had a good run this decade, but we shouldn't get caught up in the hyperbole that the he's some sort of sacred cow to the Academy. Every streak ends at some point.