Oscars

I've seen 2 of the 5 Best Picture nominees, Slumdog Millionaire and Milk (The others are Frost/Nixon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and in a bit of a surprise, The Reader). Slumdog's going to win, but I was more partial to Milk. Benjamin Button got 13 nominations, but that's mainly because it sits in that "Best Picture bait and Visual Effects bait" space, and ultimately it will probably be disappointed throughout the ceremony. Odds and ends on the nominees:

• Mickey Rourke should win Best Actor for The Wrestler, though that's a very strong category. Marisa Tomei, who was just not that good in that movie but somehow has cachet because she implausibly won an Oscar before, got nominated as well.

• That Best Animated Film category has ghetto-ized those movies, despite Wall-E probably being as good as any Best Picture nominee.

• Great to see the amazing Trouble The Water up for Best Documentary Film. I've actually only seen one of these five, which is bad for me. Man On Wire and Encounters At The End of the World (the second Werner Herzog film for the little studio I used to work at to be nominated) have had great reviews. Don't know anything about The Betrayal or The Garden.

• Waltz With Bashir is going to win Best Foreign Film. I have to go see that.

• No Best Song for Bruce Springsteen's original for The Wrestler, which is surprising, but Slumdog is likely to sweep the musical categories.

• A couple pleasant surprises in the writing categories. Irish playwright Martin McDonagh got a nomination for In Bruges, which I just saw over the weekend, and which I found extremely good. Wall-E got a writing nod as well.

...This is hilarious. I knew that Benjamin Button (or Forrest Gump II) looked familiar.