Here’s an interesting bit of trivia: Composer John Williams has now had his longest dry spell without a nomination (4 years) since his first in 1968.

36/45 (80%) in the top categories.

The Blind Side for Best Picture? Really? District 9? Really? This is the result of opening it to 10 nominees. Well, the Academy will achieve its desire result. Popular films nominated in top categories (Avatar, Blind Side, District 9) will turn into bigger TV audience. Unfortunate side effect: less prestige to be nominated for best picture.

Up is the second animated film nominated for Best Picture. But as the Beauty and the Beast was nominated in a field of 5 contenders, we’ll call this the “Roger Maris Record”.

Kathryn Bigelow is only the 4th woman ever nominated for Best Director and has a very strong chance of being the first to win it.

Lee Daniels: After John Singleton, second black person nominated for Director.

Best Actor and Best Actress: as predicted. Meryl Streep (now with 16 nods including 3 for supporting actress) has now bested Kathrine Hepburn’s 12 nominations for lead actress.

Supporting Actress: no big surprises, but Maggie Gyllenhaal wasn’t as expected. Penelope Cruz? Really?

Supporting Actor: no big surprises again. It could have gone several ways.

Adapted Screenplay: In the Loop is a nice surprise here.

Animated Feature: The Secret of Kells? Where’d that come from?

Song: Sorry, but Randy Newman’s music for The Princess and the Frog was mostly forgettable.
Certainly not worthy of the two nominations he’s got.

Overall 68/96 or about 71%. Not bad. And if you combine the two sound categories (because it’s not as if my untrained ears can really understand the difference) then you can mark me a little higher. I had Transformers in Sound Editing but it was nominated for Sound Mixing. Vice Versa for Up.

More to follow.