Nominees Announced

The road to the Academy Awards got a little clearer this morning as the pool of nominees was announced. Now we have just over a month before the ceremonies, which will be on Sunday, Feb. 26.

The real interesting part of this year's awards ceremony was guessing how many Best Picture contenders there would be. Back in the old days, five was the maximum. But after the travesty that saw "The Dark Knight" snubbed in 2008, the decision was made to expand the field to 10 films. After two years of that experiment, seeing some strange films ascend to the highest honors of Hollywood, the rules changed again. Now, based on votes, there could be anywhere from five to 10. Our answer regarding that came this morning, when nine films got the call.

The nine contenders are: "The Artist," "The Descendants," "Hugo," "The Help," "Moneyball," "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," "Midnight in Paris," "Tree of Life," and "War Horse."

There are some surprises in that group, including "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," which to this point hadn't gained much traction. With "The Artist" now finally coming wide, it will be great to see how this race shapes up. For my part, I still lean toward "The Descendants," but it will be interesting to see how the race shapes up.

Elsewhere, front-runners George Clooney ("The Descendants") and Jean Dujardin ("The Artist") lead the Best Actor race, while Rooney Mara will compete against Meryl Streep and Viola Davis in the Best Actress race.

The next few weeks — which feature the rest of the guild awards and the Spirit Awards — should provide some clues. But, as always, now that the nominees are out, the real race begins.