Oscar Nominations Announced... Yawn

The nominations are out, and they are... boring. Sorry, hate to be that guy, but looking down the list of this year's nominees there's not a whole lot to really get excited about. Sure you've got the heart warming "Slumdog," but otherwise the Best Picture race comes down to Holocaust-based literary adaptation, a stage-screen Ron Howard affair, "Forrest Gump 2" (also based on an old literary source), and a biopic about a political activist.

Now I'm not trying to imply that these films are bad, because I'm sure they're not. They're just safe. Outside of the traditionally "edgy" Original Screenplay category, there's nary a controversial choice to be found among any of the major nominees. Critical and crowd pleasers like "The Dark Knight," "Gran Torino," and "Wall-E" were no shows at the top, and other potential award fodder, such as "Defiance" and "Revolutionary Road" were shut out almost entirely. And if you had any hope of any genre-love getting thrown around at the Oscar ceremony, well that was dead on arrival.

Maybe it's just me, but this feels like one of those years where there was a wealth of good cinema out there, but when we look back on the Oscar winners, they're going to be a reminder of how unimportant these awards really are.

Who's everyone pulling for here? Heath is an obvious pick and Mickey Rourke would be a lot of fun, but otherwise, I don't know who I'm going to be rooting for.