oscars have a few surprises yet...

Though Best Picture proved a pretty standard lineup (although not exactly with my predictions - more on that later) there were still a few surprises in this morning's announcement. For starters, Julia Roberts still must have some swing in Hollywood, as the man she held a torch for, Javier Bardem, came in and pushed Robert Duvall out of the competition for Best Actor. Beyond that, John Hawkes (hometown Minnesota hero - woo!) snuck in for Best Supporting Actor, but unfortunately at the expense of Andrew Garfield. But you still gotta love the fun of a few surprises. A successful Oscar morning again!

[UPDATE]
Well it seems that the nomination leader - by my possibly incorrect count - is The King's Speech with 12, True Grit managed 10, followed by The Social Network and Inception with eight each. The biggest surprises in the remaining category have got to be I Am Love in costume design (great choice, in my opinion) and the fact that 127 Hours went from "swiftly descending" to "six nominations." And also, my proudest moment in predictions has got to be picking out The Tempest for costume design. Here's how I did on predictions:

Best Picture (9/10)
Best Director (4/5)
Best Lead Actress (4/5)
Best Lead Actor (4/5)
Best Supporting Actress (4/5)
Best Supporting Actor (4/5)
Best Original Screenplay (5/5)
Best Adapted Screenplay (4/5)
Best Foreign Language Film (4/5)
Best Costume Design (4/5)
Best Cinematography (5/5)
Best Art Direction (4/5)
Best Film Editing (3/5)
Best Visual Effects (3/5)
Best Makeup (1/2)
Best Original Score (3/5)
Best Sound Mixing (4/5)
Best Sound Editing (3/5)
Best Original Song (3/4)
Best Animated Feature (2/3)
Best Documentary Feature (3/5)

...so all in all, better than last year's predictions I believe, but just missing one on practically every category. Bummer Academy!