Yes, the nominations for the Oscars have been announced. Woo?

I have to admit to a certain level of ambivalence towards the Academy Awards. Some years I find myself more excited than others, but for the most part the disappointment begins every year with the announcement of the nominees. Why wasn’t this film nominated? Or that director acknowledged? Is Titanic really going to win best picture?

I find the awards to be mostly silly, political, and self congratulatory.

And my favorites almost never win. I won’t even start in on this year cause it’s really not worth it. Different year, same story.

I think this year’s nominees are fairly predictable. I won’t venture to guess at odds because, as I just said, I’m pretty much always wrong. So I take the list of nominations to be a jumping off point to catch up on films I missed over the past year. The King’s Speech has 12 nominations? Cool, I should check that out.

Anyways, here they are, the ten up for best picture:

Black Swan
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
The King’s Speech
127 Hours
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter’s Bone

I’ve actually done alright this year with the watching. I mean, at least by my standards. I’ve seen 6 of the ten. Er, I made it to more than half? That’s better than I did in the Animation category where I’ve seen none of the three films nominated. Or Documentary where I’ve seen only one*. Geez, I failed at Foreign films this year too. None of those.

I guess I have a lot of catching up to do…

Anyway, the full list is here at the Oscar website. This is my industry so I’ll probably watch them.

*The one documentary I managed to catch was Exit Through The Gift Shop. Which, whatever else it is, I found to be highly entertaining. It’s currently streaming for free over on Hulu if you don’t mind a couple of commercial interruptions.