“Avatar” 9, “The Hurt Locker” 9, “Inglourious Basterds” 8, “Precious” 6, “Up in the Air” 6, “Up” 5, “District 9” 4, “Nine” 4, “Star Trek” 4, “Crazy Heart” 3, “An Education” 3, “The Princess and the Frog” 3, “The Young Victoria” 3, “The Blind Side” 2, “Fantastic Mr. Fox” 2, “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” 2, “Invictus” 2, “The Last Station” 2, “The Messenger” 2, “A Serious Man” 2, “Sherlock Holmes” 2, “The White Ribbon” 2.

Without going into a lengthy dissertation on what makes for high quality Oscar bait, let’s just say that in many prior Oscar races the fact that “Avatar” is an effects driven space opera and “The Hurt Locker” a rather grim, eye-level, and uncompromising look at men doing an unpleasant job, would have all but eliminated both films. Admittedly, both films, however, benefit from certain features which have helped numerous other films: a certain degree of social consciousness never hurts with Oscar. Of course, really strong political statements are more problematic, but “The Hurt Locker” is simply honest about the psychological effects of war and hard to argue with from any political position, I hope — it could have been made about any war and been equally valid. “Avatar” is considerably more pointed and arguably even partisan, as our conservative friends love to point out, but the protective coloration of science fiction makes it all go down a bit easier.

As for “Inglourious Basterds,” Quentin Tarantino‘s entire body of work is a poke in the eye to the earnest, highly digestible “socially positive” values and traditionalist presentation preferred by Oscar. The fact that he even gets nominated as much as he does is testament to his unquestionable talent and appeal. “Up in the Air,” which beat “Basterds” in the screenplay category at the Golden Globes, seems like much more like the kind of film that Oscar traditionally favors. It’s non-polarizing nature might also help it with this year’s odd voting system for Best Picture. (Voters rate the films by preference, rather than simply voting for one film.) Still, with ten nominations breaking up the usual demographic voting blocks — with younger voters and older voters sometimes having very different views of the award-worthy nature of genre films, for example — I really think that about half of the films in this category have a pretty serious shot at winning the award.

Now, let’s take a look at the this year’s expanded list of ten Best Picture nominees as provided by Indiewire, doubled to ten this year from the usual five:

“Avatar”, James Cameron and Jon Landau, Producers
“The Blind Side”, Nominees to be determined
“District 9”, Peter Jackson and Carolynne Cunningham, Producers
“An Education”, Finola Dwyer and Amanda Posey, Producers
“The Hurt Locker”, Nominees to be determined
“Inglourious Basterds”, Lawrence Bender, Producer
“Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”, Lee Daniels, Sarah Siegel-Magness and Gary Magness, Producers
“A Serious Man”, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, Producers
“Up”, Jonas Rivera, Producer
“Up in the Air”, Daniel Dubiecki, Ivan Reitman and Jason Reitman, Producers

Among the dark horses — the films I would be truly surprised to see win best picture — we have the very non-Oscar-baity “A Serious Man” which apparently beat out Tom Ford’s highly acclaimed “A Single Man” in the divisive sub-sub-sub category of minority-group driven movies whose title is “A (S-word) Man.” The Coen Brothers film is a scabrous comedy and also grim in a not obviously socially redeeming way. Disney/Pixar’s “Up”  and Neil Blomkamp’s science-fiction “District 9” are similar to “Avatar” in that they would be more Oscar friendly for certain of their elements (poignant comedy/smart political parable) if they were in non-animated and/or non-sci-fi but, unlike “Avatar,” they haven’t been sweeping up awards anyway.

Oddly enough, the two most traditionally Oscar-friendly films on the list, “The Blind Side” and “An Education,” are both fairly large dark horses in most categories simply because they haven’t won that many awards up to now, the exception being best actress where Sandra Bullock seems to be running neck and neck for Best Actress with Meryl Streep in “Julie and Julia.” “An Education” and “A Serious Man” have the further downside in what I see as fairly ridiculous charges of antisemitism against both films (covered really nicely in this piece from The Jewish Journal). As a person of Jewish ethnicity myself, I think people who feel this way are really missing the point. Still, some of them may be Academy voters.

And now, here’s the big movie news, assuming this half of the state doesn’t simply slide into the ocean or anything overnight.

* Jolly Carl DiOrio writes on THR’s Heat Vision blog that Warner Brothers is trying to decide whether or not to do a 3-D retrofit on Louis Leterrier’s upcoming version of “Clash of the Titans.” This 3-D madness for genre films has been spreading. Some months back, “The Cabin in the Woods,” a collaboration between TV cult king Joss Whedon and his one-time staff writer, Drew Goddard (“Cloverfield“), was delayed from February 2010 to January 2011 to three dimensionalize the meta-horror film — and perhaps help stabilize Universal’s depleted coffers by delaying the marketing costs for eleven months.

* Despite some of the setbacks the Weinstein Company has been suffering lately with a number of commercial disappointments and too few hits and some layoffs, they’re still bringing in new people for acquisitions prior to tomorrow’s Sundance kick-off, writes La Finke.

* Meanwhile, over at CinemaBlend, Josh Tyler contemplates the possible 3-D status of “Ghostbusters 3.”

* In case you haven’t heard it already, no, Johnny Depp will not be starring in Terry Gilliam’s upcoming second attempt at filming his “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.”

* The Oscar’s announced their nine film short list for the foreign language film category today. It’s basically a bunch of movies you have almost no chance of having seen, or even heard all that much about, if you’re not a pretty serious film festival goer — and Michael Haneke’s Golden Globe winning dark period drama, “The White Ribbon.” Even the folks at The Playlist had only seen “Ribbon” and were only familiar with a total of three of the films.

If an outstanding foreign film you’ve seen recently is not on the list and you’re wondering why, you can likely blame the extremely byzantine and highly politicized rules in this category, which involves countries selecting official entries, which often exclude seemingly obvious choices. Romania’s “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” was an extraordinary work that recently made it to the top of many Best Of lists for the entire past decade. It was not nominated last year, — along with two other widely acclaimed non-English-speaking movies of 2007, “Volver” and “Persepolis.” At least the latter film was nominated in the animation category.

My highly esteemed colleague Will Harris has been right on top of  the huge small screen stories that seem to be breaking right and left at the TCA conference this week. Still, it’s not like there hasn’t been any news in movieland. It’s almost hard to know where to start.

* The Hollywood Reporter as well as Nikki Finke and new stablemate Mike Fleming (more on that below) are carrying the news that, in the wake of ongoing script problems, the kibosh has been put on Sam Raimi’s “Spiderman IV” with Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst and a 2012 reboot, written by James Vanderbilt (“Zodiac“) announced. The new film will feature a once-again teenage Peter Parker, so Taylor Lautner is no doubt already in touch with his agent.

THR says the script problems had something to do with a disagreement over supervillains between Raimi and Sony and/or Marvel Studios. Finke also notes that the fourth installment would probably not have been in 3-D and it seems reasonable that that might have been a factor, given the current mania for the process.

* In another apparent scoop for new Deadline team member Mike Fleming, Tom Hanks is returning as a writer-director for the second time since making his 1996 charmer, “That Thing You Do!” A comedy, “Larry Crowne” will reteam him with his “Charlie Wilson’s War” co-star, Julia Roberts. Like “Up in the Air,” according to Fleming it’s somewhat topical in that’s it’s about a middle-aged guy forced to reinvent his career at a time when past generations where just starting to settle down.

While he’s at it, Fleming also has the word on Shia LaBeouf not going agentless after all and signing with CAA. Agents around the world can all breathe easier now.

* Stuart Townsend (“The Queen of the Damned”) appears to be going for a lifetime Pete Best non-achievement award. Like the percussionist who was drummed out of the Beatles in favor of Ringo Starr, Townsend was famously sacked a decade ago just prior to shooting “The Fellowship of the Ring. The highly unlikely story back then was that Peter Jackson suddenly realized that Townsend was just a bit young to be play Aragorn. Cut to yesterday when, one day before production of Kenneth Branagh’s “Thor” movie, Townsend suddenly developed a nasty case of creative differences and was ejected from his spot in the Warriors 3. His replacement is Joshua Dallas, mainly a theater performer until recently.

*89 year-old writer-director Erich Rohmer has passed on. A practicing Catholic, who Roger Ebert aptly describes as a “gentle and wise humanist of the movies,” he was a truly unique figure in the French New Wave of the 1960s and onward. No stylistic bomb-thrower, he made primarily what amounted to extremely literate, extremely low-key, philosophical sex comedies where eroticism was rampant but relatively little sex actually happened. You can get a taste of the great director, an obvious influence on American arthouser Whit Stillman and the provider of the classic source material for Chris Rock’s last comedy (!), over at my old digs and at the Auteurs.

* The American Society of Cinematographers has made its award nominations. Alongside such awards usual suspects as “Avatar” (director of photography Mario Fiore), “The Hurt Locker,” (dp Barry Ackroyd), and “Inglourious Basterds” (dp Robert Richardson) we have such newcomers as the minimalist black & white of the dark German drama, “The White Ribbon,” (dp Christian Berger), and the maximalist hoopla of “Nine” (dp Dione Beebe).

* The Writer’s Guild has made its selections, also. I’ve got to say that they’ve made some odd choices this year, like nominating “Avatar” at all. There seems to be near universal agreement that writing, at least in terms of dialogue, is definitely not the film’s strong suit.

A big part of the problem may be that several key films were disqualified because of Writer’s Guild rules. Still, I personally don’t mind seeing either “The Hangover” or “Star Trek” on the list.  Both are solid examples of witty old school storytelling of the least pretentious type. Considering how much I disliked both “Transformers” and the “Fringe” TV pilot, also credited to Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, I’m kind of shocking myself here.

* One great screenplay that did get a WGA nod was for the Coen Brothers’ “A Serious Man.” With the brother-auteur-act now gearing up for a new version of “True Grit,” an old script of theirs for another remake has been revived. Starring Shirley Maclaine and Michael Caine, “Gambit” was an enjoyable little 1966 caper comedy, cowritten by Alvin Sargent  — coincidentally the last writer charged with trying to save “Spiderman 4.” It’s story by Sidney Carroll involved more than one unusual twist and it’ll be interesting to see what the Coens made of it, if we ever get the chance.

* Speaking of awards, here’s something I’ve always kind of suspected thats revealed by the American Cinema Editors’ (A.C.E.) award nominations: film editors are big ol’ geeks. That’s a compliment where I come from. However, missing is “Inglourious Basterds,” probably because Tarantino’s preference for long scenes and long takes means that his films are less edited than most other contemporary films. Still, awards are supposed to be for quality, not quantity.

* Finally, Anne Thompson broke the story yesterday that NYC-based reporter Mike Fleming had left — or I should say “ankled” — Variety for a gig working with Nikki Finke, supplementing her Deadline|Hollywood blog with a new Deadline|New York site. This may be bad news for the venerable publication but is actually great news for online entertainment journalism as Fleming’s terrific work will not be hidden behind his ex-employer’s pay wall. Still, as she points out, there are some concerns — starting with the question of whether Ms. Finke is capable of getting along with someone else in a more or less co-equal role.

There is clearly no love lost between Finke and Thompson — my reference to her seems to have been the final straw that had Finke declaring me a “useless blogger” some time ago.  Still, as Thompson implies, there isn’t that much love lost between Finke and any other writer on the planet. I certainly wasn’t bothered by her diss. On the contrary, it’s fairly clear that you’re nobody in this town until you’re insulted by La Finke.

Nevertheless, I don’t personally know Finke, so when I saw this quote from her in the press release announcing Fleming’s hiring, I thought maybe there was a better chance for this upcoming partnership than I first imagined:

Few people know that Mike and I, while fierce competitors, also have been friends for close to 20 years. I was a devoted reader of his old ‘Buzz’ column for Weekly Variety, and then addicted to his former ‘Dish’ column for Daily Variety.

But then, in an update, Thompson found a delightful item in which she called her friendly rival a “hypocrite” and accused him of being desperate to get noticed. Hopefully, 3000 miles will serve as enough of a buffer between Fleming and his new coworker/employer. Personally, however, I can’t imagine six more frightening words than “Nikki Finke is my new boss.”

In fact, according to Box Office Mojo, there is only one Wednesday release slipping in under the 2009 wire for Oscar consideration tomorrow — and it’s Michael Haneke’s “The White Ribbon.” Since the acclaimed dark drama from noted feel-bad director Haneke is Germany’s official entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar anyhow, I’m not sure it even matters. (Some foreign film nominees are often not released in the U.S. until well after the Oscars.)

Also, it appears that the studios aren’t even bothering to release anything new on Friday/New Year’s Day.  A good weekend for catching up, which I certainly hope to be doing.

So, let’s make jokes poking fun at James Cameron and self-promoting DVD extras. Via Devin at CHUD.

*  The nominees are in for the Broadcast Film Critics Awards, which also includes some online writers as well, I understand. The event is better known as the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards, which airs annually on VH-1. The most nominations went to “Inglourious Basterds” and “Nine,” with few other surprises. “Avatar,” “The Hurt Locker,” and “Up in the Air” all got their share. Anne Thompson has the complete list and some good context.

* The Best Foreign Film Oscar is usually fairly unpredictable, and also has a somewhat screwed up eligibility process that I’m still figuring out after I don’t know how many years. (Individual nations get to submit exactly one film, a process that, as you might guess, is often highly politicized and sometimes eliminates highly charged films from consideration.) Nevertheless, Michael Haneke’s “The White Ribbon” is really starting to look like an early favorite. However, Haneke isn’t exactly the most audience friendly director.

* The American Film Institute (AFI) has put out their top 10 film and TV show list. It’s a bit different from some of the others. The most un-awardy inclusion is “The Hangover.” It might not be the most beautifully made example of the cinematic art I’ve ever seen, but it certainly provides exactly the movie you (or I, anyway) want to see when you/I want to see a movie about a bachelor party gone awry, so why not?