On the eve of the Oscar Nominations Announcement ...

Hard to believe it's finally here again, but we're only 4 short days away from knowing what the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences thinks about the 2002 Film Year. That's right, in the usual tradition, the Academy and the rest of Hollywood will wake up early on Tuesday morning for the announcement of the 75th Annual Academy Award nominations. Marisa Tomei will join Academy President Frank Piersen at 5:30 AM PST to announce the nominees in ten of the Oscar categories, with the complete lists made available on the web shortly thereafter. I'll have my predictions soon, but first, let's take a look at the last bits of precursor awards news that have occurred in the past week.

In what may be a good bellwether for which film will win the Best Animated Feature Oscar, the critically hailed Spirited Away won another major honor, winning the top prize and three other awards at the ANNIE Awards last weekend, basically the Oscars of animation. It won Best Feature Film, as well as Best writing, music, and direction. Some have wondered whether the film could actually go on to win the Animated Feature Oscar, particularly when the Academy may want to honor Disney with Lilo & Stitch or honor the more advanced computer animation of something like Ice Age. I think it's definitely a sure bet that Spirited Away will be nominated on Tuesday. Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron was another big winner at the ANNIE Awards, taking the honors for character design, effects animation, production design, and storyboarding.

Also this past week, the Cinema Audio Society announced their nominees for the Best Achievements in Sound for 2000. The films nominated for their Achievement in Sound award are Catch Me If You Can, Road to Perdition, Chicago, Spider-Man, and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. The winner will be announced at the 39th Annual Cinema Audio Society Awards banquet on March 9.

The biggest precursor awards announcement we had this past week was the announcement of the Writers Guild nominations, which are often good predictors of which screenplays will be nominated for the Academy's writing awards.

And the nominees are ...

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Antwone Fisher, Written by Antwone Fisher; Fox Searchlight

Bowling for Columbine, Written by Michael Moore; United Artists/Alliance Atlantis/Salter Street Films/Dog Eat Dog Films

Far From Heaven, Written by Todd Haynes; Focus Features

Gangs of New York, Screenplay by Jay Cocks and Steven Zaillian and Kenneth Lonergan, Story by Jay Cocks; Miramax Films

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