Yes, after 9,000 months of campaigning and preliminary awards, today the Academy separated the contenders from the pretenders and announced who was up for Oscars. There were plenty of surprises, both pleasant and otherwise. Support for Terrance Malick’s masterpiece The Tree of Life was stronger than a lot of people expected, as the film garnered Best Picture and Director nods. Best Actor contained two surprises, as Gary Oldman’s soft spoken spy from Tinker Tailor Solider Spy and Demian Bashir’s illegal immigrant from A Better Life edged out expected frontrunners Leonardo DiCaprio and Michael Fassbender. Melissa McCarthy got a well-deserved nomination for Bridesmaids, but unfortunately Albert Brooks got ignored for his work in Drive. Oh and you guys will love this, 9/11 exploitation-fest Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close somehow got nominated for Best Picture. Predictions and analysis to come, but let’s all remember one thing: the Dean from Community is now an Oscar nominee.
Best Picture
The Artist
War Horse
Moneyball
The Descendants
Tree of Life
Midnight in Paris
The Help
Hugo
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Best Actress
Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady
Viola Davis, The Help
Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn
Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs
Rooney Mara, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Best Actor
Jean Dujardin, The Artist
Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy
George Clooney, The Descendants
Brad Pitt, Moneyball
Demian Bichir, A Better Life
Best Supporting Actress:
Octavia Spencer, The Help
Bérénice Bejo, The Artist
Jessica Chastain, The Help
Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids
Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs
Best Supporting Actor:
Christopher Plummer, Beginners
Kenneth Branagh, My Week With Marilyn
Nick Nolte, Warrior
Jonah Hill, Moneyball
Max Von Sydow, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Best Director
Alexander Payne, The Descendants
Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist
Martin Scorsese, Hugo
Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris
Terrence Malick, Tree of Life
Best Original Screenplay:
Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist
Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, Bridesmaids
J.C. Chandor, Margin Call
Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris
Asgar Farhadi, A Separation
Best Adapted Sceenplay
Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, The Descendants
John Logan, Hugo
Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian, Moneyball
George Clooney, Grant Heslov, Beau Willimon, Ides of March
Peter Straughan and Bridget O’Connor, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Best Foreign Language Film
Bullhead
Footnote
Monsieur Lazhar
A Separation
In Darkness
Best Animated Feature
Rango
A Cat in Paris
Puss in Boots
Kung Fu Panda 2
Chico and Rita
The complete list of nominees is up at Vulture.
Once again, TUiW is fortunate enough to go to the Savannah Film Festival and get a sneak peak of some of this year’s Oscar contenders before they hit wide release. Headline films include Roman Polanski’s Carnage and Cannes favorite The Artist, and this morning, the festival announced its competition films. Check out the list below and check back when the festival starts to read our thoughts on them.
After all the speculation, we finally have our nominees! The King’s Speech lead the nominations with twelve, with The Social Network also doing pretty darn good. The nominations are below, along with our suggestions of who was snubbed in the major categories. We’ll have some more insightful predictions to share before the February 27 ceremony.
Most of our coverage of the Golden Globes came 
It’s that magic time of year again where the Golden Globe nominations come out and get us excited for the Oscar race, and remind us of all that good TV we’ve been watching. The big guns movie wise got a plethora of nods in the categories that mattered, though True Grit was shut out, perhaps because no one has seen it yet, though it hasn’t stopped some other awards. Thanks to the odd Musical or Comedy category at the Globes, we get a nomination for The Tourist, the “thriller” that got nearly universal critical scorn which made nothing at the box office. Boy, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association sure are tastemakers! The TV nominations are also fairly predictable, but the results should be interesting. Ricky Gervais will host the ceremony January 16. The nominations:
As we inch closer and closer to movie awards season, and on the heels of the Independent Spirit Awards, the National Board of Review announced its annual list of winners, and this year, it was dominated by The Social Network. The David Fincher film grabbed awards for Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor for Jesse Eisenberg, and Best Adapted Screenplay. The National Board of Review is generally the first measuring stick for Oscar success, and it’s the second year in a row they’ve given the award to a film making a statement on our generation (last year’s winner, Up in the Air focused on the recession). Other notable winners include Best Actress to Leslie Manville for her terrific performance in Another Year, and Best Supporting Actor to Christian Bale for The Fighter. Toy Story 3 was an obvious winner for Best Animated Film, and Of Gods and Men took the award for Best Foreign Film. See the complete list of winners below.
After taking home the top prize at last night’s Gotham Awards, Winter’s Bone leads the pack in nominations for the 2011 Independent Spirit Awards, just announced a little bit ago. The dark story of a girl searching for her estranged, meth-addled father netted seven nominations, which combined with its Gotham win, could strongly bolster its chances with the Academy Awards. The comedy The Kids Are Alright mustered up five nominations itself, while Blue Valentine, which both 
A year after the tag team effort of Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, the Oscars are again turning to a pair of big names to host their annual ceremonies, this time with Anne Hathaway and James Franco. While there’s been no official word, the story is being widely reported, and originated from the always accurate (no sarcasm) Nikki Finke. What’s particularly interesting about this move is that Franco himself might be up for an Oscar for 127 Hours and lots of good things have been said about Hathaway in Love and Other Drugs. There is recent awards show precedence however, since Neil Patrick Harris hosted the Emmys the same year he was nominated. Of course, the Emmys are like Burger King to the Oscars’ Chili’s, so I guess it doesn’t really matter. Either way, it should be an interesting pairing to watch.
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