Usually it’s hype to say things are wide open, based off of the nominations though, it might be more true this year.

Let’s start with who the Gold Guy sent on the Walk of Shame this morning: DiCaprio (Django), Affleck (Argo), and Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty) were all considered locks.  No disrespect to those who were nominated, but frankly I’m as shocked as everyone else they didn’t get invited to the dance for Best Supporting Actor and Best Director respectively.  Their films are all recognized but damn; so that was the inspiration for this post’s title.  We do have a serious film geek collection of movies this year.  I hope the Academy isn’t putting all the pressure for ratings on Seth McFarlane…

That said, when I look at the ‘major’ awards, I see a ton of familiar names: Denzel, Spielberg, Hoffman, DeNiro and Day-Lewis.  Only one of those names I thought gave possibly their best career performance, but we’ll have that argument another day (reward for this year’s work vs. ‘lifetime achievement’).

Back to the film geek point, nine Best Picture nominees this year.  Again, speaks to this being a year without a ‘Titanic’; it also means things can get real interesting real fast when (theoretically) the vote can be split nine ways.  Not a math major obviously, but it seems like you could win Best Picture this year with a very small percentage of the overall vote.  So, could be looking at another ‘Crash’ type year when that last envelope is opened, just putting it out there…

Alright, as far as we’re concerned in this space…I’ve given you 3 reviews, 2 more for sure coming Sunday and Monday, so I owe you 4 more before the show.  That’s doable.  Don’t know yet if I’ll be doing previews with Mr. Thomas like we’ve done in the past, but we shall see.

Have a good weekend.  Mamba out.