As Sarah mentioned in Good Morning News, here they are. Let's talk about them.

• Les Miserables for Best Picture? Are you fucking kidding me?

• Silver Linings Playbook for Best Picture? Are you fucking kid—okay, fine, it wasn't nearly as horrid as Les Miserables, but still. Alison is right and Jamie is wrong, or at least Alison is closer to being right than Jamie is.

• Hugh Jackman in Les Miserables for Best Actor? ARE YOU FUCKING KID—

• Joaquin Phoenix spits on your bullshit nomination.

• Three cheers for Jessica Chastain! Three cheers for Robert De Niro, who was the best part about Silver Linings Playbook! A million cheers for Christoph Waltz, who is the best part of everything!

• Sally Field in Lincoln for Best Supporting Actress are you fucking....

• Hey, ParaNorman got nominated for Best Animated Picture! Congrats, local Laika people, even if you really, really hated our review.

• Best Picture stuff: Weird year. Argo is about as perfect of an Oscar movie as you can get—it's very good, it's a crowd-pleaser, you can take grandma to it—but Affleck not getting a Best Director nomination probably takes it out of serious contention for Best Picture, since 99.99 percent of the time, the film that wins Best Picture also wins Best Director. Zero Dark Thirty should win Best Picture, but won't, because—this seems weird—Kathryn Bigelow wasn't nominated for Best Director either. Same deal with Django Unchained, with Tarantino not getting a nomination (TRAVESTY) and Les Miserables, with Tom Hooper not getting a nomination (FINALLY, A MEAGER AMOUNT OF JUSTICE AND/OR COMMON SENSE). And The Master, bewilderingly, got totally shut out of the whole Best Picture race. So we're left with the likely winners of Best Picture being Amour, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Life of Pi, Lincoln, and Silver Linings Playbook. The only one I haven't seen is Amour (Marjorie did, and we'll have a review when it opens in Portland, but I seem to remember her being pretty nonplussed by it), but... man. All of those seem totally... fine, I guess? Predictable? While Beasts of the Southern Wild is too off-kilter to win, it's definitely the most deserving on that shorter list, and I have a similarly hard time seeing Life of Pi winning—which makes me think that this year, it's really a race between Silver Linings Playbook and Lincoln. Shrug. Whatever. I already had my say.

• Roger Deakins should totally win Best Cinematography for Skyfall.

• Speaking of Skyfall... NED BRING ME MY VODKA BRING ME MY VODKA

UPDATE: NED HAS BROUGHT ME MY VODKA

"A Gentleman's Wager"
A Play, in One Act

SCENE: Erik's desk at the august offices of the Portland Mercury. Ned approaches, a crystal skull full of vodka in one hand. He offers it to Erik.

ERIK: Ah, the crystal-filtered fruits of our wager! I thank you! Good bet, sir!
NED: Fuck you.

Ned leaves.

~ Fin. ~