The Envelope Please...

On Sunday night the motion picture academy will once again have their lavish ceremony to pick the best of the best. This year was so good in movies that they nominated 10 movies for best picture. Kidding...the MPAA just went back to their 1920's ways and instead of nominating 5 they now nominate 10 movies for best picture. Some deserving, others not so much. Things that make you go ummm? Do you think Something About Mary would have one if they had 10 nominees back in 1998?

To check out the full list of nominees click here.

Here are uneducated guesses, because for the most part, I haven't seen these movies. You know it costs as much as a steak dinner now to go see movie? Just get me the bootleg...

Best Picture: Avatar, The Blind Side, District 9, An Education, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Precious, A Serious Man, Up, Up in the Air
and the winner is...The Hurt Locker. A war movie wins every couple of years and people want a women director to win best picture.

Actor in a Leading Role: Jeff Bridges, George Clooney, Colin Firth, Morgan Freeman, Jeremy Renner
and the winner is...George Clooney. Bridges got his Golden Globe, but the Oscar voters are more mainstream, let the Globes honour the art house films.

Actress in a Leading Role: Sandra Bullock, Helen Mirren, Carey Mulligan, Gabourey Sidibe, Meryl Streep
and the winner is... Sandra Bullock. She is the hottest.

Directing: Avatar, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Up in the Air, Precious
and the winner is...Kathryn Bigelow for Hurt Locker. Once again, showing up the men. Bigelow gets the chocolate statue.

Best Animated Film: Coraline, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Princess and the Frog, The Secret of Kells, Up.
and the winner is...Up. If you were the only animated feature up for best picture, you should be shocked if you don't go home with this award.

Costume Design: Bright Star, Coco before Chanel, The Imagenarium of Dr. Puss, Nine, The Young Victoria
and the winner is...Coco before Chanel. If your film is about one of the fashion industries best known labels and doesn't win for costume design, are you really wearing Chanel?

Visual Effects: Avatar, District 9, Star Trek
and the winner is...Avatar. If you have gone somewhere where no man has gone before you deserve the Oscar. Although Star basically invented visual effects so they might get the sentimental vote.

Who To Cheer For This Weekend

This weekend is the calm before the storm. It is like the rogue wave hitting the cruise ship, not the 8.8 magnitude earthquake that lets loose the tsunami.

This weekend you again have a few choices of what to cheer for...you can go for the Oscars. When cheering for the Oscars you have sub-categories of what to cheer for. Best dressed, best speech (shortest or funniest), most drunk and dumbest comment to the ETalk! reporter are all good things to cheer for.

Check back tomorrow to get my picks for Oscar night.

Other stuff you can cheer for this weekend - small conference NCAA basketball championship games. These small conferences teams all fight for the one automatic bid into the March Madness tournament. They all fight till the death for the 13 to 16 seed only to be eliminated on Thursday by 3pm. Still fun to watch them celebrate and not sweat it out like Louisville, Notre Dame or Florida.

If basketball isn't your thing, you can always cheer for Spring Training baseball! Most of the country is experiencing unseasonably high temperatures this weekend (which means it is 5 degrees) so pretend it is April not March and watch some players you will never see in a Major League uniform again. Also,make sure you boo the new spring training hats - what were you thinking New Era?