It's Oscar Nomination Day!

I feel like it's Christmas or something.

Anyway, here are the nominees. No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood lead the field with eight apiece, followed closely by Michael Clayton and Atonement with seven. The final Best Picture nominee is Juno, with four nominees total.

Dave and I both called four out of the big five (I had The Diving Bell and the Butterfly instead of Juno, he had Sweeney Todd instead of Michael Clayton), and did pretty well overall. A breakdown follows:

Dave:

Total: 56 out of 85 predictions correct, or 65.9%

Big eight categories (Actor/Actress, Supporting Actor/Actress, Picture, Director, both Screenplays): 28 out of 40, 70%

Technical categories: 23 out of 32, 71.9%

Miscellaneous (Animated Feature, Song, Score): 5 out of 13, 38.5%

Categories nailed: Supporting Actor, Cinematography, Visual Effects

One Wrong: Best Picture, Lead Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Animated Feature

Me:

Total: 63 out of 89, 70.8%

"Big eight": 35 out of 40, or 87.5%

Techs: 22 out of 36, 61.1%

Misc: 6 out of 13, 46.2%

Categories Nailed: Original Screenplay, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress

One Wrong: Best Picture, Best Director, Adapted Screenplay, Lead Actor, Lead Actress, Animated Feature, Cinematography, Editing, Visual Effects, Costume

Not too shabby, I'd say. In fact, since the news broke late last night that both Johnny Greenwood and the Into the Wild team were disqualified for score, and the Original song nominees were nut-bonkers (three songs from Enchanted? really?), I say we throw out those two categories and give us a boost to 75% and 71% correct in the categories that we could reasonably predict.

Hopefully before the ceremony itself we'll have time to catch up on everything- there's usually a print that comes through town of the nominated live and animated shorts, so everything but Documentary short (and usually most of foreign) has played in Milwaukee by late February.

In fact, since Into the Wild completely got the shaft (only 2 nominations? ouch.), this will be the first time I've seen all five Best picture candidates before they were even announced (and Dave, I trust, will see Michael Clayton soon). So look forward to Oscar Prediction columns even longer than the nominee ones.