Academy Award nominations

Since there likely won't be a big Oscar show due to the writers' strike, I've been trying not to get excited about anything this Awards Season. But old habits die hard, so I dragged myself out of bed at 5:30am to watch the nomination announcements live. Read the full list of nominations here Nothing too surprising here: of course No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood did well, of course Daniel Day Lewis and Javier Bardem got nominated (and both will win), of course Diablo Cody will win Best Original Screenplay. There were a couple eyebrow raising moments, like Jason Reitman's nomination for directing Juno. It has rightly been called this year's Little Miss Sunshine, and like that film Juno received nominations for Original Screenplay, Best Picture and an acting award (Ellen "Shadowcat" Page for Best Actress, Alan Arkin won Best Supporting Actor last year for Sunshine). But Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris weren't nominated for directing Little Miss Sunshine, so Reitman's nomination somewhat strengthens Juno's chances to win Best Picture. I say "somewhat" because that would only happen if by some weird fluke No Country and There Will Be Blood end up splitting votes. I feel out of the loop with the nominations for Best Foreign Language Film--has anyone seen (or even heard of) these movies? My favorite foreign language film was The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (that's without having seen Persepolis) but that wasn't eligible. Here's hoping at least one of them will open in town before February 24th (or did I miss them already?). I was also surprised that Eddie Vedder's Golden Globe winning song "Guaranteed" from Into The Wild wasn't even nominated for Best Original Song. Hopefully the Dreamgirls rule will prevail and the three nominated songs from Enchanted will cancel each other out, delivering an Oscar to Marketa Irglova and Glen "Outspan" Hansard for their song "Falling Slowly" from Once. The film is amazing, the songs are fabulous, and they deserve it. It just makes me sad that we likely won't get to see them perform at the big show. Lastly, Norbit was nominated for Best Achievement in Makeup (up against Pirates and La Vie en Rose). I think it would be funny if the movie that damaged Eddie Murphy's chances of winning an Oscar actually won an Oscar. What does everyone else think?