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.

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.

Pixar owns the category - and for good reason. Up isn't the company's crowning achievement, but the film's first act appeared to be solid enough to grab this predictable win.

Ask me after having seen Basterds for the first time, if Christoph Waltz had a chance at he'd have a chance at an acting award and I would have said "he be lucky to make it in the top 5 noms". Of course he won at Cannes and every single supporting award since then. This win comes as no surprise - you can tell by this speech, which was rehearsed when he won the Golden Globe.

Mo’Nique still has one more trophy to pick up this weekend, but the good times for everyone involved in the making of Precious has pretty much come to a close. The film picked up the awards for best feature, best director (Lee Daniels), best actress, best supporting actress and the hard fought category for best first screenplay. The Best Foreign Film vote somehow got mangled up favoring An Education over A Prophet.

For the silver anniversary, the Indie Spirit awards (you can follow them tomorrow night) decided to do the gala thing without the tent and a full 12 hours in advance of their regular Saturday time slot. For the fun of it, I've decided to put my expertise to the test.

It's one of those years where the great Atom Egoyan's contribution to cinema is totally insignificant (Adoration received 2 noms) and where Denis Villeneuve's Polytechnique, in my books the best Canadian film of the year, grabbed the high count total of eleven nominations for the 30th Genie Awards.

No surprises at the 35th Cesars, as A Prophet cleaned up in all major categories it was nominated in: Best Film, Best Director (Audiard), Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography (Stephane Fontaine), Best Editing (Juliette Welfling), Best Art Direction (Michel Barthelemy) and last but not least, one of my top 5 performance of the year, Niels Arestrup won for Best Supporting...

Andrea Arnold, from Fish Tank, Red Road and Wasp fame, will be hitting Wuthering Heights next, but she might be following that up with another original piece called The Cleaner. Peter Strickland (see pic above) who made waves last year with his film Katalin Varga, will be going to Italy for his next project - a horror film called who is developing The Berberian Sound Studio.

No surprises at the WGA's - as Oscar front-runners The Hurt Locker and Up in the Air won in their respective categories for Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay. Mark Boal's work beat out "500 Days of Summer," "Avatar," "The Hangover" and my favorite original screenplay of the year in "A Serious Man" while Jason Reitman will have to consider getting an award speech strategy ready for Oscar night, as he and Sheldon Turner have even better odds in their category.

What do Central Station (1998), The Thin Red Line (1999) and Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia (2000) all have in common? They were awarded the top honor at the Berlin Film Festival and you can add Honey, the final leg in Semih Kaplanoglu's trilogy which commenced with Egg and last year's Milk, to that grouping.

We're only a little past the one week point the apres portion of the Sundance Film Festival so I'm expecting some keys deals to still come trickling in, however there are fivesome of high profile, critically well-received titles that have yet to find a U.S. distribution deal that I thought are worth mentioning.

The noms are in folks (see full list below) and apart from the love that The Blind Side has received (the backlash has officially began around 9 eastern this morning), there are very little surprises -- which only means status quo on films and people that officially received the cold shoulder months ago.