And right now there is a bit of panic afoot in showbiz, that with a mere 138 days until showtime, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences still hasn't decided on a helmer for the trophy trot. Nikki Finke reported last week, that last year's host and producer, Hugh Jackman and Bill Condon, are planning not to return to the Kodak stage. The pair's up-market, olde-timey glamour version of the show, gave Oscar its first ratings uptick in seemingly forever; a dramatic break in its long slide into irrelevance. ("What an honor for the Aussie actor" grandma Nikki writes of the of the Academy's desire to bring Jackman back to the show.)

UPDATE: Since the writing of this item, the producers have been named...and they are...Hairspray director Adam Shankman and former Fox CEO Bill Mechanic.)

Every year, Hollywood debates the question of how to update an event that is inherently the stodgiest thing thing on Earth. For starters, the thing that Oscar was conceived to honor — big glitzy prestige films — don't exist anymore, so the show will from now until forever be torn between giving their statues to little independent films that no one saw (and hence, that no one wants to see an awards show celebrating) or trying to find ways to squeeze nods to Dark Knight into a show that will never actually honor such popular films.

And for that matter, what with the media attention span being half a second long these days, if you are talking about movies that came out last year, you might as well be giving a lesson in like, the Cold War or Vietnam or something.

Not to mention — three hours of people in tuxedoes getting trophies and making speeches?!? In the epoch of cat videos!? Is this some kinda of Twilight Zone episode? Is America being punk'd by Oscar?

So what the heck do you do with a still huge but dwindling monstrosity like Oscar? Basically you can embrace the future or deny it, and either route has its merits. Here's our suggestions for the roads Oscar could take:

EMBRACE THE KIWANIS WITHIN
Oscar is never, ever going to win over these kids today, so go with your strength. Lead with the stodgy; you'll play well to your base and once every decade and a half, catch a retro wave. These days the Hollywood establishment is the aging Baby Boom generation, who are bound to actually become cool one of these days.
Host: Billy Crystal
Producer: Jeffrey Katzenberg
Ideal Best Picture Winner: Braveheart
Opening Number: A Rockettes lead a musical tribute to the films of screenwriter Ron Bass, high-stepping to the greatest moments from Rain Man, Snow Falling on Cedars and Dangerous Minds.
Clips Reel: A complete recap of The Today Show reporting the weekend grosses every Monday morning of the past year.
Log Line: This IS your grandfather's Oscars.

DRINK THE GLOBES UNDER THE TABLE
The reason why the Golden Globes have held their own against the declining Oscars is liquor. The dinner setting of the Globes show has traditionally meant well-lubricated winners making some of the more free-wheeling, demented speeches of awards season. Well, two can play at that game. Mandatory tequilla shots and forced picks from the mystery wheel of amphetamines for all attendees.
Host: Jack Nicholson
Producer: Ben Silverman
Ideal Best Picture Winner: Couples Retreat
Opening Number: Stars careen to their seats on a giant Slip 'n Slide placed down the aisle.
Clips Reel: The best moments of buddy comedies, guys who love to laugh with each other.
Log Line: Come and Get It!

POST-MODERN OSCAR
Pander completely to Hoodie Nation with an all self-referential celebration of quirk.
Host: Michael Cera
Producer: Spike Jonze
Ideal Best Picture Winner: (500) Days of Summer
Opening Number: Michael Cera sits on the floor of the Kodak stage listening to the mix tape he has made for an impossibly cool girl featuring acoustic remixes of John Hughes soundtrack songs. As we watch, the audience travels inside a giant movie screen and from the perspective of the Oscar nominated films, we watch Cera go to the movies with the impossibly cool girl, but never get to first base.
Clips Reel: Great Moments in Mentioning Bands During Movies.
Log Line: Oscars? What?

LOGANS RUN
The tweens have taken over entertainment; how long does Oscar think it can hold out anyway? Show Oscar's commitment to staying relevant by terminating the careers of any actor over 35 on live TV.
Host: Vanessa Hudgins
Producer: The Kardashians
Ideal Best Picture Winner: New Moon
Opening Number: 50's style sockhop dance number as George Clooney, Angelina Jolie and all the old people in the audience are loaded onto the original Sputnik rocket and blasted into outer space.
Clips Reel: The progression of Taylor Lautner's abs, from flaccid to six pack.
Log Line: This is on, bitch.

GANGSTA OSCAH
When you get down to it, the Academy is the original original gangsta.
Host: 50 Cent
Producer: P Diddy
Ideal Best Picture Winner: Final Destination 3D
Opening Number: The Kodak Theater is transformed with gold plated chandeliers and stripper pole while a car chase screeches through the lobby, ending in a cataclysmic explosion on stage.
Clips Reel: The history of on-screen bling.
Log Line: Don't Forget Who Brung You.

THE REALITY ACADEMY
Turn the show into a real time competition with bug eating contests, relay races and back stage confessionals.
Host: Ryan Seacrest
Producer: Nigel Lythgoe
Ideal Best Picture Winner: Step Up 2: The Streets
Opening Number: Nominees forced to perform a Polish mazurka, with one catch; one mis-step and the plummet into a tub of a million centipedes — and lose their shot at taking home Oscar.
Clips Reel: Night vision cameras placed in the hotel rooms of the stars while on set reveal secret celebrity hook ups — and a few drunken nights with a key grip or two.
Log Line: Oscar Wild!

THE TMZ OSCARS
Why fight it anymore? Throw down the barricades; let the paparazzi hordes loot and sack the kingdom, enjoy the rush of attention that the train wreck will bring. And whomever is still alive after showbiz has been reduced to smoldering ruins — let them figure out what to do next.
Host: Perez Hilton
Producer: Harvey Levin
Ideal Best Picture Winner: One Night in Paris
Opening Number: Celebrities are vivisected before the audience's eyes, the last remnants of their souls are ripped out and and then eaten, buffet style by the nation as a whole.
Clips Reel: A million Tweets are simultaneously projected directly into viewers' frontal lobes.
Log Line: We're Here.

The Oscar best picture race has been dominated by tiny, often indie, films that not very many people see, i.e. The Reader. Widening the field could mean that they won't necessarily be the only ones competing for the top prize, and the studios and their big-budget "prestige" titles can finally play in the pool again. Ten nominees means more competition, which could net some eyeballs curious to see how the crazy It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World-style race ends up.

For example, had their been ten Best Picture nominees last year, The Dark Knight would surely have been among them, which would likely have brought in some curious fanboys. And if the studios have doubled chances of doing a blitz awards-tie-in marketing, then that's even better. More money for everyone means nicer, bigger parties and then everyone wins!

We think it's a fine idea, as more competition is more fun. Though we'll have to suffer through twice as many set-up clips, it ought to make the long, long, long evening slog to the final dance all the more put-up-withable. Because now TEN enter and only one leaves. Lots more carnage.

[Oscars.org]

Silver rose to prominence by forecasting the results of the last election year with eerie accuracy (he even had the amount of angry Bill Clinton finger wags down to the decimal point during the primaries!), yet his foray into Oscar prognosticating was torpedoed with the very first award given out, Best Supporting Actress. Not only did his misguided pick, Taraji P. Henson, lose to Cruz, but he also blew the Best Actor category, choosing Mickey Rourke over eventual winner Sean Penn.

How did Silver take the news? With liveblogged profanities ("7:47 PM. Penelope Cruz? F*ck. I demand a recount") and a painful Ram Jam onto an already defeated Rourke ("Perhaps we [should have] had some way to quantify someone's jackassedness: Days spent at the Betty Ford Center?"). Then, saddest of all, Silver disowned his model for predictions today in a regretful Oscar postmortem which reads like Mom (numbers-based prognosticating) and Dad (Silver) have decided to see other people. Nate Silver will soon be moving into a pre-furnished apartment by himself, and it is all the fault of a Latina spitfire we have taught to speak English. For shame, Hollywood.

• Some Post-Oscar Thoughts on Forecasting [FiveThirtyEight]

Thanks go to whiz Mike Byhoff for the video magic.

Press "watch now" to see the liveblog!

All images via Getty and AP

Miley Cyrus has 'Gone Green', and is thus wearing a dress made entirely of kale.

Emile Hirsh: Tiny nom nom nom snack.

TV Guide host Lisa Rinna has just returned from a vacation on the surface of the sun.

Virginia Madsen: Divine

Milk scribe Dustin Lance Black (with Cleve Jones) is just too good looking to be a writer. But he is!

Oh, Zac Efron

Zac's professional girlfriend, Vanessa Hudgens, wears John Galliano for the Glad Family of Products.

Slumdog Millionaire stars Dev Patel and Freida Pinto should be made into a stew, because they are delicious. Mulligatawny!

Benjamin Button nominee Taraji P. Henson looks like a black version of my dear friend from college, Jackie. Hi black Jackie!

Melissa Leo: Princess of Power!

"Halo! I am Heidi Klum! German noodle, kitten kaboodle! In Germany we have flamingos that we call Standy Birds. Halo Standy Bird, you are me! I'm German!"

Sarah Jessica Parker just wants someone to marry her. Someone, you know, real.

Some detailing on that dress. And on that relationship.

Viola Davis looks terrific. And like an Oscar. I hope she wins.

Sigh, Diane Lane. Unfaithful was a long time ago.

Amy Adams: The Devil's wife.

Marisa Tomei couldn't decide which white-ish dress to wear, so she wore all of them.

Amanda Seyfried: B'oh!

Ohhhh the vampire! Eat me Robert Pattinson! Eat meeee!!

Leslie Mann, funny wife of Judd Apatow, skinned a disco ball.

Beyoncé. My friend Kelly tells me she'd "put a ring on it." I'd put a bag over it.

Mickey Rourke will show you to your table.

Penelope Cruz ith Au'rey Hepburn. (That is how you type in a Spanish accent, btw.)

Angelina Jolie is wearing a black dress. Fascinating.

Jessica Biel goofed the floof.

Dark Knight fan Kate Winslet in her Harvey "Two Face" Dent costume.

Marion Cotillard will explode tonight.

Evan Rachel Wood is sad about being Evan Rachel Wood.

A teenage boy and his fifty-something-year-old father just fainted. Thanks, Meryl Streep.

Alicia Keys: Stunning.

Lovely old ladies being lovely and old together. I think I had Sophia Loren's dress for dessert last night.

Tilda Swinton's top half is full of raked leaves.

Anne Hathaway is too skinny. Her dates are too gold.

If you want the easy odds on the big categories, Intrade has the betting breakdown. But what about those forgotten, bastard Sound awards and Short Film flimflammery? How do you predict them? Well, unless you're an industry insider you really can't. But you can guess! Educatedly! Because there are certain small patterns.

Sound Editing and Mixing:
Since there are no musicals that could snatch the Mixing award, it's possible that the same film will win both categories. We'd say there are two films likely to do that: The Dark Knight and Wall-E. But both were beloved films that weren't invited to the big Best Picture dance, so voters will want to give them as many consolation prizes as possible. We say there will be a split. Editing often goes to animated films, so Wall-E takes that. TDK gets Mixing, whatever the hell that is.

Short Films, Animated & Live Action:
As Entertainment Weekly points out these are super hard, nay impossible!, to predict. Mostly because there are no lead up awards to go by and who the hell has ever seen a short film? No one except film student nerds and weirdos who wear berets in the middle of the afternoon to the West Newton cinemas and actually like the fact that their popcorn doesn't have butter on it. But anyway. EW is split on the animated. Either it goes to Pixar's Presto, about a magic rabbit, or to some Japanese thing with a French title, La Maison en Petites Cubes. Well, Pixar like never wins for their shorts, so we'll go and agree with La Frenchy's Japanese Fancy Talk About a Sad Old Man for the win there. As for Live Action, there's one about the Holocaust. Everyone knows those win. So put a check mark next to Spielzeugland.

Visual Effects:
There are only three nominees in this category: The Dark Knight, Iron Man, and The Curious Case of Brad Pitt's Face. Curious Case is nominated for 13 awards and stands to lose pretty much all the big ones, so look for voters to take pity on the poor, hugely-budgeted, CGI fable and give them tiny wins that don't actually mean anything. This is Benjamin Button's to lose. Plus there weren't really any special effects in TDK were there? It was mostly stuntery and stuff.

Makeup, Costumes, and Art Direction
So that's sets, clothes, and gay stuff. Benjamin Button is big in all three of these. It's probably a lock for its old age makeup and fancy, melancholy art direction. Costumes are a trickier game, what with The Duchess and Nicole Kidman's hats in Australia also vying for the trophy. We're going to go out on a limb here and give it to The Duchess, because there's no separate award for wigs and there should be.

Documentaries! Long Ones and Short Ones! And Foreign Films!:
No one cares. There are boring and for nerds. Waltz with Bashir and The Class are the two main contenders in the Foreign race. Bashir is violent and sorta animated, The Class is about a French Michelle Pfeiffer teaching poor kids that it's OK to be poor. Sentimentality often wins out at the Urskerz, so let's go ahead and say that The Class' late-game surge takes it over the finish line first. For the Docs, let's go with The Witness, about a man present at Martin Luther King's assassination, for the Shorts. You know, Obama and stuff. And Man On Wire for the full length, because it's like watching poetry.

So there you go! Small strange awards categories that no one but the nominees cares about. Glassy-eyed starlets will wander out and read the teleprompter introducing these things and hopefully when they lazily open the envelope, they'll say these movie titles. If not, don't blame me. What the hell do I know?

SURE LOCKS
Slumdog Millionaire
Milk
The Dark Knight
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

If you're as bored of reading about these four Best Picture contenders as we are of typing them, congratulations! They've been nom-nom-nommed for everything (thanks, TenTimesFiltered!), and they're not about to stop now.

LIKELY NOMINEES
Frost/Nixon

For as much as people have expected Frost/Nixon to win a Best Picture slot, we haven't talked to anyone who was personally touting it. This nomination would be the one of the five that people would struggle to remember next year; we'll see if people have already forgotten.

DARK HORSES
Wall-E
The Wrestler

Which means there's hope, Wall-E and Ram! Just, you know, not that much of it. Still, our fingers (both those that are mechanical claws, and those that are bound with wrestling tape) are crossed. Good luck!

SURE LOCKS
Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler
Sean Penn, Milk

Mickey Rourke and Sean Penn have been two of the biggest no-brainers (hey, take that however you want!) since this Oscar season began. Winner gets Bai Ling! Or is that what the loser gets?

LIKELY NOMINEES
Clint Eastwood, Gran Torino
Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon
Brad Pitt, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Old folks, plus old folks with Brad Pitt's face digitally superimposed on them. Pitt would be the likeliest to fall to a surging dark horse; some call this performance his best and most expansive yet, while others find it too recessive to reward.

DARK HORSES
Leonardo DiCaprio, Revolutionary Road
Richard Jenkins, The Visitor

Revolutionary Road's hopes at this point lay entirely on Kate Winslet, so Leonardo DiCaprio's as doomed as his character. Richard Jenkins could surge in for the inexplicably well-liked The Visitor, but his performance is about as subtle and reactive as Pitt's. If Jenkins could promise Angelina Jolie as his date, that would probably help.

SURE LOCKS
Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married
Kate Winslet, Revolutionary Road
Meryl Streep, Doubt

In a category that's never really crowned a frontrunner, Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep were always sure bets. Now, though, Kate Winslet comes charging in on the strength of her Golden Globe win for Revolutionary Road; it didn't affect her sure nomination, but suddenly this category seems like the one she'll campaign for.

LIKELY NOMINEES
Sally Hawkins, Happy-Go-Lucky
Cate Blanchett, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Amongst our Defamer predictions this season, Sally Hawkins and Cate Blanchett are the shakiest of the "likely" nominees. Sure, they'd seem to fit the Oscar profile: Hawkins has been a critics' favorite, while Blanchett ages an entire lifetime on-screen. So why do they still feel like vulnerable picks?

DARK HORSES
Angelina Jolie, Changeling
Melissa Leo, Frozen River
Kristin Scott Thomas, I've Loved You So Long

Winslet accurately summed up Angelina Jolie's buzz at the Golden Globes: "Who's the other one?" Despite her star power and showy (if one-note) performance, Jolie hasn't been able to crack the resistance some in the industry have to this movie. Thus, the dark horses with the best chances are Melissa Leo and Kristin Scott Thomas. We'll find out if anyone but us saw their films.

SURE LOCKS
Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight

For sheer ability to wrangle, Boyle and Nolan are way up there. The last few months have been kind to Nolan's direction; fewer people remember the incomprehensible third-act action sequences, instead recalling the clean, Heat-like set pieces early on.

LIKELY NOMINEES
Gus Van Sant, Milk
David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Darren Aronofsky, The Wrestler

Van Sant is in because Milk will be, while Fincher brought all his technological expertise to bear on Button (it's just too bad that the similarly CG-obsessed Robert Zemeckis stole his thunder by claiming this Gump-like territory first). The Director slot often subs in one nominee who's discordant with the Best Picture choices, and we have a feeling Ron Howard's work on Frost/Nixon will fall to the passion people feel for Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler.

DARK HORSES
Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon
Clint Eastwood, Gran Torino

Still, we'd never count Howard or Clint Eastwood out totally. Though we'd be happy to do it to Sam Mendes!

SURE LOCKS
Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
Josh Brolin, Milk

Pundits have spent the last few months wondering whether there's someone, anyone, who poses a threat to Heath Ledger in this category, and slowly, Josh Brolin has emerged as the best (yet still wildly unlikely) candidate. The Academy loves to reward a strong comeback and past snubs; unfortunately for Brolin, a vote for Ledger satisfies the same cravings, with the added element of a career benediction. Still, at least Brolin can one-up Ledger when it comes to campaigning!

LIKELY NOMINEES
Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Doubt
Robert Downey, Jr., Tropic Thunder
Dev Patel, Slumdog Millionaire

Robert Downey Jr. also offers one of the year's biggest comeback stories, and he's well-liked, but there's no way the Academy will give a trophy to someone playing black (instead of an actual black person—imagine the headlines!), so he'll have to accept that it's an honor to be nominated and cry himself to sleep on his bed of Marvel money. Hoffman is a gimme—if not one that anyone feels passionately about—and Patel will squeak in as the face of a movie stocked with unknowns.

DARK HORSES
Michael Sheen, Frost/Nixon
James Franco, Milk
Michael Shannon, Revolutionary Road
Tom Cruise, Tropic Thunder

If Patel falls, there are a host of hungry actors ready to claim the fifth spot. Michaels Sheen and Shannon were touted as early contenders, but they're low-profile actors (and their films aren't exactly overperforming). James Franco had a great year as well, but Brolin was the only supporting Milk performer with a real arc. As for Tom Cruise, HAHAHAHA. No. Enjoy your Golden Globe nomination, Tom!

SURE LOCKS
Kate Winslet, The Reader
Viola Davis, Doubt
Penélope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Penélope Cruz was the early favorite in this category, but she's since been usurped by two actresses who run the gamut of what can be defined as a supporting performance: Viola Davis, whose Doubt role is brief but ferociously focused, and Kate Winslet, whose Globe-winning Reader performance would almost certainly be slotted in the lead race any other year. Also, Davis cries (with a snot trickle, even!) and Winslet gets naked. This is how the Academy likes to see its actresses.

LIKELY NOMINEES
Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler
Taraji P. Henson, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Speaking of nudity, unlikely Oscar alumna Marisa Tomei had her third nomination in the bag as soon as she revealed that her Wrestler stripper wore nipple rings. Now that's Jumbo's Clown Room-worthy verisimilitude! The fifth slot is harder to fill, but we give it to Taraji P. Henson, the warmest thing in the often-Arctic Benjamin Button.

DARK HORSES
Rosemarie DeWitt, Rachel Getting Married
Debra Winger, Rachel Getting Married
Amy Adams, Doubt

The Academy has nominated Amy Adams once before for playing a naive young woman who wants to see the good in people. We have a feeling they'll decide "been there, done that"—especially since Davis might siphon votes from her costar in this category. If anyone is poised to upset, it's Rosemarie DeWitt for putting up with Anne Hathaway, the dishwasher sequence, and all those musicians in Rachel Getting Married. If not an Oscar, give the poor woman a medal!

Frost/Nixon: Nearly every list of the final five contenders for Best Picture this year includes Frost/Nixon, director Ron Howard's adaptation of the acclaimed play about British journalist David Frost (Michael Sheen), who goes one-on-one with Richard Nixon (Frank Langella) in a televised interview. Sounds appropriately Oscar bait-y, no? So why did we feel we were watching a gussied-up Mighty Ducks movie, with Sheen as Emilio Estevez and Langella as the bad, haughty coach of the opposing team? Two reasons. The first is that nearly every non-interview scene in the film strikes the exact same beat: Frost's team of kooky researchers and producers are the underdogs! They'll never stand a chance against Nixon! Why, they'll never have careers again after, probably, because they are so damn underdoggy! This is hard to swallow each time it occurs (which is always), since this movie would, y'know, not exist if Frost boffed the interview. The other Ducks-like demerit? Howard's relentless hand-holding. Even when the film finally reaches the interview portion (which is admittedly more interesting but also drawn from an actual, real-life transcript), it's constantly interrupted by cutaways to other people watching the interview, muttering "Bad question" when Frost tosses a softball or "Nailed it!" when he gets Nixon squirming. Just so you're aware of what you're supposed to be thinking!

The Visitor: This year's independent filmscape left few survivors yet The Visitor was an inexplicable word-of-mouth hit, perhaps because producers wisely changed its title from How Whitey Got His Groove Back. The film begins with stiff college professor Richard Jenkins attempting to play piano, but he simply can't summon enough inner soul to imbue the notes with any passion. Oh, but he will, reader, he will! Soon enough he meets some kindly immigrants who have little better to do than to teach this boring white man about their vibrant culture, which includes playing an exotic hand drum called the djembe (so much better than some stuffy piano). Also, when the hunky immigrant is thrown into a detention center, Jenkins meets the man's beautiful mother, who finds his terminal blandness irresistible. Thank God for the movies, otherwise white milquetoasts with little personality would never have anything (or anyone) to do! We loved Jenkins in Six Feet Under and Flirting with Disaster and, well, damn near everything he's ever been in. However, even our affections have limits.

I've Loved You So Long: In I've Loved You So Long, Kristin Scott Thomas does three things that Oscar voters will eat up: she speaks in a foreign language (French), she de-glams herself, and she suffers nobly over the film's entire running time. In that way, Scott Thomas's performance recalls Best Actress winner Marion Cotillard's from last year, and another similarity between I've Loved You So Long and Cotillard's La Vie En Rose is that (excepting the films' lead performances) they're not actually that good. The Loved plot — in which Scott Thomas plays a woman just released from prison after committing murder — includes more than a few hard-to-swallow scenes and plot devices, including a third act reveal of Scott Thomas's motivation to commit the crime that is both ludicrous (why she would have kept the reason for the murder secret for so long makes no sense) and ludicrously revealed (a long-ago written note just happens to fall on the floor in front of Scott Thomas's sister, explaining everything!). Each scene exists only to make Scott Thomas suffer quietly (in a way that would make Lars Von Trier tumescent) as characters constantly veer close to discovering her secret, culminating in an absurd dinner party sequence where a stranger ostentatiously bullies Scott Thomas into revealing all for close to ten minutes while family and friends feebly protest, but are unable to actually do anything because This is What the Plot Demands. For a similar storyline but a more honest take devoid of grinding plot gears, check out this summer's little-seen British import, Boy A. Oscar will never see it, but you should.

First, let's take Wall-E. The indomitable Pixar robot has collected some of the most glowing reviews of the year and many of those critics then called it the best American film of 2008 — in fact, Wall Street Journal scribe Joe Morgenstern was already talking Wall-E up for Best Picture in July. Still, the film has several things working against it: it opened early enough in the year to have been forgotten, it made a ton of money but not as much as much as, say, Cars (thereby falling into an Oscar trap where the movie is too successful, but not so successful that it can't be ignored), and it's animated. "Younger-skewing" films like Beauty and the Beast and Babe have been nominated before, but almost offhandedly, and not in a while.

Then, there's the Bat. The Dark Knight has one big thing going for it: Heath Ledger's performance is a mortal lock for a Supporting Actor slot, which may help grease the wheels for the film to grab a Best Pic nom. Also, its box office total, second only to Oscar favorite Titanic, is so massive that The Dark Knight has remained the biggest story in the industry all year. Yes, it's still just a comic book movie (and one that had a minor Bat-lash), but what isn't in Hollywood these days?

Thus, in the race for Best Picture, we're going to give the edge to The Dark Knight. With previous contenders like Frost/Nixon and Changeling losing steam among the chattering class, The Dark Knight's chances are certainly improved, and it has the best precedent: The Fugitive, a well-reviewed action blockbuster that rode a buzzworthy supporting performance to Oscar glory. We're going to hold out hope in our hearts for Wall-E, but we fear it'll take something stronger than a laser blast from EVE to bust this robot out of the Best Animated Film ghetto.

• Studios Are Pushing Box Office Winners as Oscar Contenders [NYT]

He’ll certainly be in good company, now that Dreamgirls director Bill Condon has been tapped to executive produce the upcoming Oscar telecast. This is the same dude who wrote the screenplay for Chicago, so he definitely knows how to razzle-dazzle ‘em. But he also directed Kinsey and Gods and Monsters, so which Bill Condon will show up? Will it be his glitzy, gaudy musical side or his frank-exploration-of-human-sexuality side? Either way, it should make for an interesting evening, and as long as five reality hosts aren’t involved, we’ll be watching.

[Photo Credits: Getty Images]

• Ricky Gervais Gets 2009 Oscar Buzz [EW]
• 'Dreamgirls' Duo Producing Oscars Telecast [Hollywood Reporter]

With the ceremony coming so soon after broadcasters switch off their analog signals, it’s possible that at least some viewers — who perhaps only tune in for big events like the Oscars — will discover they can’t watch the show. Others may miss the Oscars through sheer procrastination and inertia, after failing to replace their set, order cable or hook up a converter box in time.

That’s why, insiders confirm, the Alphabet web had been hoping to move the Academy Awards back into March, even though the awards season has been moving earlier and earlier in recent years. [...] Nielsen Media Research has already moved next February’s sweeps period to March in order to give stations time to iron out any digital transition problems.

Obviously, this is the last thing Hollywood needs. Burned a year ago by the equally inflexible WGA strike, the Golden Globes have already moved up to Jan. 11, 2009 — its earliest broadcast ever — but Academy sources suspect the awards potential of blockbusters including The Dark Knight and Iron Man will motivate the 18 remaining analog-loyalist Oscar fans against such "procrastination and inertia." Worst-case scenario, there's always Oscar's Future Stars of 1988 for the especially old-school who probably wouldn't know the difference anyway; a precocious Heath Ledger is probably featured in there somewhere.

• Oscars to suffer from Digital switch? [Variety]