I think the Best Supporting categories are the toughest nuts to crack, often a fine performance counts as a rare sympathy vote for a film that isn't nominated in any other category. This year's real wild card are the actresses involved in Woody Allen's latest which employs a trio of supporting ladies in Freida Pinto, Anna Friel and Lucy Punch - but at this point its anyone's guess on how pivotal they become to the assigned male characters.

Recent winner for Best Documentary at the Césars (the French Oscars), Serge Bromberg's and Ruxandra Medrea's Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno has been picked up theatrically for the play in the U.S. (via The Flicker Alley - I never heard of you guys) - I'm imagining a traveling, art-house circuit release for the doc.

Zeitgeist Films are partnering once again with the folks that produced Up the Yangtze - returning to the same country but instead of the brown waters of the Yangtze, this journey takes place in and on the sides of the train tracks.

Part of a double docu Sundance and New Directors/New Films selected pick-up, Zeitgeist have acquired The Oath from helmer Laura Poitras and have pegged it with a release sometime this May. This makes it two for two between the distributor and Poitras - they last paired on the release of My Country, My Country in 2006.

I guess this means that the adaptation of Jack Kerouac's On the Road is proving to be more of a perilous project, as Walter Salles appears to be moving onto a Hollywood biopic in the interim.

I wanted to change my body. I wanted to be a little bit more masculine and get rid of my female body. I wanted to be more like a boy. I wanted to be able to do all the fighting scenes, so I wanted to go into martial arts training. I trained a lot in Thai boxing and kickboxing with this crazy Serbian guy five days a week. I did a lot of preparation, and I also took motorcycle driving lessons, and I cut my hair and pierced myself.

Now he returns to Zodiac-lite territory with a script that goes the direction of the mystery comedy sub-genre. Aptly titled Murder Mystery, this project reminds me of how much I hated the Clue film. Screen Daily reports that free-range director Kevin MacDonald will direct.

Now, almost a decade later, those films might have crossed paths, as Despentes has cast Beatrice Dalle (she starred in Trouble Every Day) in the lead role for Bye Bye Blondie.

Christoph Waltz will want to make sure that his next moves are the goods ones, or else the good fortune of Inglourious Basterds will wash away. The Austrian actor has according to Deadline.com, dropped out on a chance to play with David Cronenberg’s The Talking Cure for an antagonist role in Francis Lawrence's Water For Elephants.

That's right folks. The gold dust for the 2010 Oscar winner list has barely settled, and I'm already attempting to figure out the 2011 Oscar nominations might look like. Why? It's more of a curiosity factor than anything else, seeing what's out there, what we can look forward to - so for the next nine days, I'll unveil my predictions in nine categories, beginning with the category for Best Cinematography.

After a moment of reprieve in 2009's Hadewijch, it looks as if Bruno Dumont will was again explore the nastier side of the human species with a film that will be featured in the backdrop of the sand dunes of Pas de Calais, France -- which appears to be the northern region above Normandy.

The Berlin Film Festival which took place early last month had a pair of in competition for the Golden Bear entries in Der Rauber (The Robber) and Jud Suss - Film ohne Gewissen (Film without Conscience). Neither films won, but there was some controversy surrounding Jud Suss - Film ohne Gewissen which is Oskar Roehler's latest venture.

School is now in session. Cannes' La Residence de la Cinefondation, is celebrating its 20th session and this year's lucky "students" well representing South America include the feature debut projects from Yaelle Kayam, Dominga Sotomayor, Franco Lolli and Daniel Joseph Borgman with sophomore projects from Cristian Jimenez and Michel Franco.

I remember when The Hurt Locker played at TIFF -- the first screening received little fanfare - that some film distributors didn't even bother showing up. Summit Entertainment did - and took their time with a release strategy and the rest is history. I'm curious to know what kind of exposure did the 10 noms do for the other smaller films, including my favorite of the pack in A Serious Man; this win should make plenty of foreign distributors extremely happy. Indie film triumphs once again!

Weird that the presenters somehow foreshadow the eventual winners. Round one of indiewood versus hollywood goes to the indiewood. Smells like a Best Picture win for The Hurt Locker...?

Despite the logic and previous award wins, every sign pointed to a Bullock win and yet I've been cringing this moment for about three months now. So glad that Gabbie won on Friday and that Streep has both won and lost before.

Love these speeches - thank god they didn't get rid of these presentations from acting peers. Fox Searchlight end up looking like geniuses once again. The Dude abides.

Sony Pictures Classics wins! Wrong film though.

Bob Murawski and Chris Innis' skill-set was one of the reasons why The Hurt Locker felt like such an edge-of-your-seat film. Well-deserved award.

Zero surprises here, and though I disliked this doc, I'm peeved that Psihoyos got shafted and didn't even get to speak. What's with all this time allocated to butt end jokes opening a category over the actual award winning speeches. Ben Stiller's Na'vi thing could have lengthened three winner speeches, including this one.

It was in my post-screening thinking of the film that I deemed that among the things that Up got right was the film's score, which I normally don't cue on in in my first viewing of a film. Going up against names such as Horner, Desplat and Zimmer, I think the Academy chose Michael Giacchino because he hasn't won before and that the score was one of the more "obvious strengths" for Up.

I wasn't expecting the green-screen giant to win for Cinematography - I guess it just goes to show that complex shots can still be effective with make-believe and beat out pristine B&W in Haneke's Palme D'or winner and the gritty realism via the frames in the low budget The Hurt Locker.

The Hurt Locker logically wins in both of these sound categories, it should carry over onto cinematography, and if it does - this mean a sweep of the blue man group.

I was thinking - life of a fashion icon would be a lock for the category, but corsets, multiple noms for The Young Victoria and previous wins for Sandy Powell always seems to be the go-to choice.

Money well spent, means most technical awards will go the Avatar way, but I'm still wondering if The Hurt Locker has a shot at the Best Sound category?

I caught Precious at the Racquet Club theater in Park City. I'm pretty sure everyone in that audience had the same impression I did - Mo’Nique's character is so ugly, and the performance was so raw that it would easily spread its wings beyond the indie fest - it had gold dust sweat stains spilling out of her pores.

I was so sure that this was Up in the Air's win, but this crazy category also included a dark horse picture in my books with first-timer Geoffrey Fletcher and his reaction at winning pretty much tells me that this was far from being in the bag.

I thought they did some great work on aging Toni Servillo's character in this mysterious nomination for Il Divo, but the Academy want to promote the blockbuster film in some fashion. Trekkies all over are high-fiving one another.

Caught Logorama at Sundance and when I heard the noms I thought there is no way that this could win - the expletive language is simply too harsh for sensitive ears. Wallace & Gromit felt like an accomplished, polished production - but Logorama gets great grades for originality.

When I look at this category I think to myself - weren't War-themed pictures of the military supposed to be box office poison. Matter of the fact is neither The Hurt Locker or The Messenger will rack up the dough, but it shot down the theory that you can't make a such a pic in such times. I thought Basterds was a more lavish screenplay - and that the dialogue would win out on technical details in Boal's screenplay.

Whenever you have a music-based feature that fully embeds original song content in the lead character and storyline, then I don't think there are that many more options to look elsewhere in the category. This and the other songs gave Crazy Heart its backbone and charm. Looking good for the certified win for Bridges.