Well, I just checked out the list of movies nominated for Academy Awards, and my feelings on the films nominated are a bit mixed. On the plus side, this will be the first year that I've seen a lot of the films nominated. I'm just about overjoyed that "Juno" and "There Will Be Blood" were nominated for Best Picture, since both are amazing movies. Johnny Depp got nominated for "Sweeney Todd," a movie which picked up a few other good nominations. I personally think the other movies in the Best Costume category don't stand a chance.
I'm also excited about "Persepolis" getting nominated for best animated film (I've not seen the movie, but I loved the graphic novel series), and "Once" being nominated for best original song. If "Falling Slowly" wins, it will be the best thing to happen to Glen Hansard since The Frames started recording. I would love nothing more than to see this rocket him and the band to the fame they so deserve. Hansard and the band have been working hard for years putting out great music, and they're only now getting more mainstream attention.
One of the major disappointments, though, was seeing "King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters" not get a nomination for best documentary. I feel like the Academy almost exclusively recognizes docs about serious subjects, and while I realize it's important to call attention to stuff like the Iraq War or health insurance in America, I also think good documentaries are about more than super important subjects. Good documentaries are just as much about the importance of storytelling. "King of Kong" is an amazing example of documentary storytelling at work. Even after watching the great "Juno" and mind-blowingly-awesome "There Will Be Blood," "King of Kong" remains my top favorite movie of the 2007, simply because I was floored that the people depicted in the film were real. Stories on that level of entertainment don't come by very often, and the filmmakers behind "King of Kong" were lucky enough to catch the extraordinarly odd story of Steve Wiebe at just the right moment. I really feel like that deserves some recognition, and I don't get why the major Hollywood awards systems don't feel the same way.