There's no telling why these things happen, but as it turns out, my Oscar Eye predictions of the top six nominees turned out to be pretty solid. I was 9/10 on Best Picture, missing that Invictus would slip out of the top 10 to be replaced by The Blind Side, which I knew was a strong contender. I nailed the directors 5/5 (though that was a pretty easy one), along with Best Actor and Actress. The supporting categories were trickier, as pretty much none of my wild card predictions panned out. Matt Damon made it in for Invictus (leaving out Peter Sarsgaard), Stanley Tucci's nomination was for The Lovely Bones and not Julie & Julia, and Penelope Cruz was the nominee from Nine, not Marion Cotillard; how Maggie Gyllenhaal jumped in there over Julianne Moore I can only begin to guess.

The fact that I correctly guessed 9/10 of the Best Picture nominees could indicate that this was a very predictable year, but really, that was just blind luck. It felt all along like Crazy Heart, Nine, Invictus or Julie & Julia could jump into those last few slots, and there were plenty of other Ocsar watchers who convinced themselves that Up might not make it, or that A Serious Man was too weird for the Academy.

And anyway, we still don't really know who will win Best Picture. The next five weeks will surely be described as a battle between ex-spouses Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron, with their films The Hurt Locker and Avatar sharing the most nominations and sucking up all the buzz. Probably a few voices in the wilderness will be stumping for Inglourious Basterds-- and I don't just mean Harvey Weinstein-- and at this point it seems possible that any of the three could win.

As for the acting prizes, it looks like all the pieces are in place for Sandra Bullock to win her first Oscar, which is the last thing anyone saw coming when the season got started in September. Jeff Bridges seems like king of the mountain for Best Actor, while there's no reason whatsoever to expect Christoph Waltz and Mo'nique not to walk away with their respective prizes-- though five weeks can be long.

I'm almost more excited at this point about some of the smaller categories, like Best Original Score, where three truly excellent scores-- Alexandre Desplat's for The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Michael Giacchino's for Up and Hans Zimmer's for Sherlock Holmes-- will compete alongside elephants like James Horner's Avatar work and the mysteriously included Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders for the music in The Hurt Locker that I wasn't aware existed. And even though Avatar is guaranteed to walk away with the Best Visual Effects statue, the fact that its competition is Star Trek and District 9 and not Transformers 2 makes my heart swell with joy.

In the Loop got a screenplay nomination-- the best surprise of the morning. Michael Haneke may very well win his first Oscar for The White Ribbon in Best Foreign Language Film. Woody Harrelson is suddenly an Oscar nominee again. Despite the usual things to grumble and gripe about, I like these nominations a whole lot. Now let's move on to talking about the winners. We're still a long way from March 7. This is where the real fun begins.