To recap, for most of the season a troika of damaged contenders have been assumed to have a lock on nominations, with the assumption that one of them would take the top prize, despite the fact that each has big minuses. The top three have been Precious (too heavy-handed) Up In the Air (just not quite fantastic enough) and The Hurt Locker (too obscure, unseen by the public). And of those three, Up In the Air has remained the front runner with Hurt Locker taking a distant third at the back of the pack.

By weekend's end, however, the big three had been transformed into the big four, with Hurt Locker suddenly making a move on the outside.

The first piece of non-game changing news was the announcement of the slightly influential but important sounding American Film Institute's Top Ten list. The list reaffirmed the big three, giving them all slots. The one real possible game-changer was the stunning inclusion of The Hangover on the list, which has been mentioned as a dark horse contender for one of Oscar's ten best pic slots.

Next to weigh in was the LA Film Critics Association. The dwindling band of full time movie reviewers began what might prove to be a late surge for Hurt Locker, giving the little bomb-disposal movie that could the year's top honors.

A couple of other long-shots kept their dreams alive with the perhaps-not-all-that-influential Broadcast Film Critics nominations. The Weinstein Company's two dark horses, Inglorious Basterds and Nine, (the latter of which has met with very mixed, at best, critical response) led the pack with the most nominations as well as each scoring Best Picture nods.

And finally today, the New York Film Critics weighed in, seconding their LA brethren's support of Hurt Locker; naming the film as the best of the year and giving Kathryn Bigelow the best director nod.

However, the biggest news shaking up the race was not in the awards but in a flurry of reviews that emerged this weekend for James Cameron's long awaited Avatar. While widely assumed to be a stink-bomb in the making (by us at least) the film has met with rapturous, over-the-top hosannas, leading a stunned awards guru, David Poland, to write,"Avatar joins the 3 or 4 locks for an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture."

Here then are the current standings in the thrilling race to be Oscar's Best Picture of the Year, with a mere three months and a half months left to go; noting by the way, that the most important milestone on the Oscar trail, the Golden Globe nominations, happens tomorrow morning, potentially throwing the entire race in uproar once again.

THE STANDINGS:

1. UP IN THE AIR ↔
The Rap: Liked by almost everybody, head-over-heels loved by very few; a vulnerable front-runner. But who could knock it off its pedestal?
Favorable Winds: Continues to make best picture lists.
Negative Winds: Makes lists but leads very few. The "relevant" topicality, as pushed by Frank Rich, is a quality that generally fades in Oscar's mind as the season draws on and hype dies down.

2. THE HURT LOCKER ↑
The Rap: Little film with a lot of very very committed fans in the critical world.
Favorable Winds: Swept critics awards this weekend; possible Cameron vs. ex-wife director Bigelow storyline may be irresistible for Oscar.
Negative Winds: Bestowing the top trophy on a film no one has seen (grosses still total under ten million) is a potentially suicidal move for Oscar.

3. PRECIOUS ↓
The Rap: The little drama's power and messageyness still hits Oscar where it hurts, despite heavy-handedness.
Favorable Winds: Still riding its sweep of the Spirits.
Negative Winds: Hard hitting horror show story showing strong signs of looking less interesting as time passses.

4. AVATAR ↑
The Rap: James Cameron's 3D outer space epic exploded into the race with rapturous reviews this week, but remains unseen by Oscar voters.
Favorable Winds: The reviews have been strong enough that Avatar could potentially be that rare film Oscar prays for; the giant blockbuster with enough critical standing that it comes in and sweeps the table — and boosts ratings, like Titanic or Lord of the Rings.
Negative Winds: Question mark whether the 3D effects and 2D plotting will prove just too much for voters to swallow in a Best Picture.

5. INGLORIOUS BASTERDS↑
The Rap: Quirky war epic may be the Tarantino film with broad enough appeal to win him a seat at the table.
Favorable Winds: Led the Broadcast Film Critics nominations; retains a base of hardcore admirers.
Negative Winds: Remains a highly love-it-or-hate-it film, and with ultimately more post-modern fluff than weighty Oscar appeal.

6. AN EDUCATION ↔
The Rap: Charming little film that won't fade away.
Favorable Winds: Keeps making friends and wears perhaps the best of the Oscar dramas; should pick up lots of acting nominations.
Negative Winds: Too small and non-messagey a film to be a serious contender for the big prize.

7. UP! ↓
The Rap: Pixar cartoon is beloved by many, but Oscar remains no friend of the cartoon.
Favorable Winds: Shows up on almost every ten best of the year list.
Negative Winds: Has yet to show the sort of awards muscle with other prizes it would need to stampede over anti-cartoon prejudice and force its way into the top tier.

8. INVICTUS ↓
The Rap: The South African rugby picture is widely appreciated, but has few jumping with glee.
Favorable Winds: Oscar's love for Eastwood remains strong; Morgan Freeman's performance almost guaranteed nomination.
Negative Winds: Weak box-office performance has sapped what momentum the film have; Eastwood has been so celebrated by Oscar already that the bar has become very high for him to earn yet another.

9. NINE ↓
The Rap: Huge Oscar pedigree, but early response is very tepid.
Favorable Winds: Topped nominations in Broadcast Critics awards.
Negative Winds: Palpable lack of excitement about what should have been a shoo-in.

10. A SERIOUS MAN ↔
The Rap: What was thought to be the Coen's most obscure and personal film continues to win over fans.
Favorable Winds: Strong showings on ten best lists.
Negative Winds: Obscurity of topic and structure continue to keep it at arm's length from top tier.

11. THE MESSENGER ↑
The Rap: Almost entirely buried in its theatrical release, continues to impress those who have seen.
Favorable Winds: Should get acting nods for its strong performances by Ben Foster and Woody Harrelson.
Negative Winds: Could be the first film that failed to gross a million nominated for Best Picture in recent history.

Third tier contenders: White Ribbon, Lovely Bones, A Single Man, The Road, The Blind Side, In the Loop, Julie and Julia, The Hangover.

On paper, the film had everything an awards race could want; directed by Oscar winner Rob Marshall, revisiting the musical soil from which propelled Chicago to a million trophies; a cast filled with more Oscar bait than you can count including Judi Dench, Sophia Loren, Penelope Cruz, Kate Hudson and led by Oscar's golden boy himself Daniel Day Lewis; a story adapted from a cinema classic.

It should have been Nine's year, but the first indications are, it very much wont be.

Of the three reviews out on the streets, two are tepid at best. Although em>Variety's Todd McCarthy is very positive, this does not add up to the beginnings of a groundswell.

McCarthy called Nine a "savvy piece of musical filmmaking. Sophisticated, sexy and stylishly decked out, Rob Marshall's disciplined, tightly focused film impresses and amuses." He goes on to praise the handling of the adaptation of both the Broadway musical from whence it came and the Fellini film 8 1/2 on which the musical was loosely based.

So much for the nice. Over at the Hollywood Reporter, Kurt Honeycutt begins, "Nine marks the number of terrific acting and singing talents poorly used in this flat rendition of the Broadway musical...The disappointments are many here, from a starry cast the film ill uses to flat musical numbers that never fully integrate into the dramatic story. The only easy prediction is that Nine is not going to revive the slumbering musical film genre."

And over at The Hot Blog, David Poland can't slap enough hurt on the film to make it pay for his disappointment. He begins, Have you ever seen a singer with a great voice and no grasp of the lyrics? That's Rob Marshall. Nine is a movie with two memorable songs, performances that are routinely better than what the performers were given to perform, a problematically intense but not charming performance at the center, and most painfully, a lack of basic storytelling." And goes on in rich detail to count all the ways the film fails to live up to its promise, from a lifeless story construction to a charmless performance from Day Lewis.

So all that leaves us with an awards race right where it was last week, with the flawed campaigns of Precious, The Hurt Locker and Up in the Air keeping Oscar locked in their three-way death. Below is our end of the week check on the conventional wisdom of Oscar-land, with only three months and change to go:

↑ Up In the Air: Won the National Board of Review Best Film award which gives Air, dismissed by some as too lightweight, some needed gravitas.
↔ Precious: Strong showing at the Spirits nominations, but doubts persist about how well the heavy-handed story will wear in the long campaign. The National Board omitted the film from its top ten list altogether.
↓ The Hurt Locker: Was bizarrely ineligible for Spirits nominations as it was entered last year. Needing a break out win if its to maintain its place in the top three.
↓ The Lovely Bones: Met very mixed reviews in its London premiere, some saying the story is too Law And Order to make a serious contender.
↔ Invictus: Respectful but not jumping for joy buzz from early screenings. With Oscar having showered so many trophies on director Clint Eastwood already, will be likely reluctance to let him into the front of the race with a merely so so turn.
? Avatar: The last remaining question mark, unviewed by the critics. Despite a preponderance of early evidence to the contrary, some dare to hope for another Titanic to sweep the Oscar table clean.

Among the stations of the cross in America's long slog to Oscar night, the announcement of the Spirit Awards nominations is supposed to be a moment that redefines the race, until it is redefined again by the Globes nominations. With an absence of major attention-getting performances, the race long ago transformed itself from the Indy 500 into a hemmed-in wolfpack of a handful of jalopies slogging in formation through rush hour traffic down the New Jersey Turnpike.

For the past few months the pundits' assessment has been locked in that Precious, Hurt Locker and Up In the Air pretty much own the Best Picture category, despite the fact that no one is jumping for joy about any of their prospects. Each of the big three has its major drawbacks in the industry buzz; Up In the Air is said to be uneven and perhaps non-transcendent, Precious, heavy-handed and while The Hurt Locker is much respected, even beloved by many critics, industry watchers can't help but get a major case of shpilkes about what it would mean for Oscar's chances of ever reaching a broad audience again if they give the big trophy to a film that has only grossed $12 million domestic.

And as pundits lock down the list into the next tier, the reservations only grow. Invictus looks venerable but a bit pedantic. Nine and Lovely Bones are both attracting very mixed buzz in early screenings. An Education, A Serious Man and Julie and Julia; too small and limited. Nothing one has seen yet of Avatar suggests that the non-3D blue people getting blown up parts will be anything other than laughable. And Up is still in Academy minds, just a cartoon.

Which is why the world of Oscar punditry depends on game-changing events, like the Spirits to come along and knock over the chessboard and give them something fresh to say beyond, " Precious, Up In the Air and Hurt Locker are still looking strong."

The aforementioned, heavy-handed Precious was the big winner on the nominations list and becomes the instant favorite to win the awards. There had been some hope that A Serious Man might show huge on the Spirits list, fueling a late surge for the small but very well regarded Coen Brothers film, but the film failed to get a Best Feature nomination, landing only secondary nods. The other major contender, The Hurt Locker, was somehow nominated for last year's Spirits, so ineligible this time around.

None of the Spirit's other best pic nominees — 500 Days of Summer, Sin Nombre, Amreeka or The Last Station are seen as having any major Oscar prospects.

The announcement left Hollywood's awards punditry sputtering to grab straws of significance for the race at large. Anne Thompson proclaimed a boost to Helen Mirren's Best Actress campaign from The Last Station's nod.

The Envelope's Tom O'Neil bah-humbugged the Spirits and the Gotham awards (which gave Hurt Locker their top prize) both, writing "This year's clash between the two awards - bestowed by rival factions of an organization that split in 2006 - marks the height of absurdity in awards land. Each side is embracing one of the two top indies - The Hurt Locker or Precious - to the exclusion of the other. In the end, both awards look foolish and everybody loses."

David Poland, for his part, was left to daydream about what might have been if A Serious Man had broken Precious' stride.

And so, again, our contenders get back in formation, with a mere three months to go until Oscar night.

· Paris, Not France premiered Tuesday night, with its subject in attendance as promised and with a letter from its beleaguered sales agent reportedly making the rounds beforehand:

"With less than one hour to go and no restraining order in place, I feel comfortable now letting you all know that this film was the subject of legal threats and was almost not shown at all here at the festival. [...] I am hoping that Paris will see, with the audience tonight, that there is nothing to be afraid of here. And will eventually let the film be distributed. What was originally conceived to be a 20-minute puff piece extra on the DVD release for her album, has in fact become a fascinating examination of what it's like to be a star in our star-obsessed culture. I can guarantee you three things: you may be the only people to ever see this version, you will not be disappointed, and everyone will be asking you if you saw it."

A few trusted sources were there, one of whom seemed to like the film more in theory: "Paris Hilton didn’t create this system––she’s just amongst its most photogenic exploiters. Its lack of perspective on its subject is troubling in the present, but at the very least, Paris Not France may serve in the future as a valuable time capsule of that exploitation in action." Another was less convinced, lamenting a larger Hilton conspiracy against the fest as a whole. And like you, we sense ourselves forgetting about the whole imbroglio before we even finish this sentence.

· IFC Films announced this morning that it acquired Steven Soderbergh's polarizing, 262-minute biopic Che for Stateside distribution. Look for one-week NYC/LA runs in December (followed by a VOD run in January), thus qualifying star Benicio Del Toro for an Oscar nomination that will probably go to Mickey Rourke anyway.

· Speaking of Oscars, The Hollywood Reporter notes that this year's fest is relatively light on awards-season hopefuls. Come back, Diablo Cody, all is forgiven!

· Kathryn Bigelow's actioner The Hurt Locker — which even mortal enemies David Poland and Jeffrey Wells agree is the best Iraq War film to date — also found a buyer, with the upstarts at Summit Entertainment grabbing it for under $2 million.

· Kevin Smith has officially moved into the I-slew-Goliath phase of his predetermined ratings squabble over Zack and Miri Make a Porno, telling an interviewer at Premiere exactly how many frames of fecal matter you can get away with onscreen before the NC-17 ax falls.

· Just for the record, Noah Emmerich's starring-role streak in New Line films — his latest being a cop in Pride and Glory — has nothing to do with the fact his brother runs the studio. If you don't believe him, ask him — it worked for Anne Thompson!