The Oscars: Best Picture

And the nominees are:

Atonement

In 1935, 13-year-old fledgling writer Briony Tallis and her family live a life of wealth and privilege in their enormous mansion. On the warmest day of the year, the country estate takes on an unsettling hothouse atmosphere, stoking Briony's vivid imagination and hilarity ensues. Robbie Turner, the educated son of the family's housekeeper, carries a torch for Briony's headstrong older sister Cecilia. Cecilia, he hopes, has comparable feelings. All it will take is one spark for this relationship to combust. When it does, Briony, who has a crush on Robbie, is compelled to interfere, going so far as accusing Robbie of a crime he did not commit. Cecilia and Robbie declare their love for each other, but he is arrested, and with Briony bearing false witness, the course of three lives is changed forever. Robbie is offered the choice of prison or joining the Army to fight in World War II. Briony continues to seek forgiveness for her childhood misdeed. Through a terrible and courageous act of imagination, she finds the path to her uncertain atonement, and to an understanding of the power of enduring love.

Juno

Sixteen year-old Juno MacGuff is the type of girl that walks her own path, and doesn't really care what others may think of her. She learns that she's pregnant from a one-time sexual encounter with her best friend, Paulie Bleeker. Although she would rather not be pregnant, Juno is fairly pragmatic about her situation. Initially she decides that she will have an abortion, but that's something that she ultimately cannot go through with. So she decides to have the baby and give it up for adoption. But first she has to tell her father, Mac, and stepmother, Bren, that she is pregnant. The next step is to find prospective parents for the yet unborn child. In the Pennysaver ad section, Juno finds Mark and Vanessa Loring, a yuppie couple living in the suburbs and hilarity ensues. Juno likes the Lorings, and in some respects has found who looks to be a kindred spirit in Mark, with whom she shares a love of grunge music and horror films. Vanessa is a little more uptight and is the one in the relationship seemingly most eager to have a baby.

Michael Clayton

Michael Clayton is an in-house fixer at one of the largest corporate law firms in New York. A former criminal prosecutor, Clayton takes care of Kenner, Bach, & Ledeen's dirtiest work at the behest of the firm's co-founder, Marty Bach. Clayton is burned out and hardly content with his job as a fixer, but his divorce, a failed business venture, mounting debt and ensuing hilarity have left Clayton inextricably tied to the firm. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, umm, I mean at U/North the career of litigator Karen Crowder rests on the multi-million dollar settlement of a class-action suit that Clayton's firm is leading to a seemingly successful conclusion. But when Kenner Bach's brilliant and guilt-ridden attorney Arthur Edens sabotages the U/North case, Clayton faces the biggest challenge of his career and his life.

No Country For Old Men

Violence, mayhem, and hilarity ensue after a hunter stumbles upon some dead bodies, a stash of heroin and more than $2 million in cash near the Rio Grande. He is soon running from a psychotic killer that seems to be one step ahead of him.

There Will Be Blood

In the 1890s, Daniel Plainview, a struggling silver miner, finds his true wealth in petroleum extraction while taking the orphaned child, H.W., as his own for a valuable family man image. In 1911, Plainview gets a tip on a valuable supply of oil on the struggling Sunday family ranch in the impoverished Little Boston, California and hilarity ensues. In his quest to acquire the property, Plainview meets the sanctimonious Eli Sunday, the young reverend of the local church with his own ambitions for his diocese and the profit from the oil. As the oil wells begin, an escalating conflict arises between exploiters of many kinds while Plainview's ruthlessness gradually sinks into a slowly mounting malevolent madness. In doing so, it begins to drive every emotional bond he has away that all his wealth can never replace.

Well, there it is, tune in tomorrow for my predictions. So let me know your predictions or thoughts on this year's Oscars.