Good Oscar, Bad Oscar

The Oscar nominations were announced this morning, and they don't provide much in the way of suspense. The long awards season has made several things clear as day: The acting winners will be Jeff Bridges, Sandra Bullock, Christoph Waltz and Mo'Nique. Best picture and best director will be a clash between James Cameron's "Avatar" and Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker."

There were few surprises, but plenty of annoyances. Let's look at the best and worst of Tuesday's Oscar announcement:

Pros

• The original score category might be the most satisfying of the year. Hollywood's composer of the moment, Michael Giacchino, was nominated for Pixar's "Up," an admittedly overrated film whose gorgeous music helped elevate it in the minds of its admirers. Also in the category: James Horner's "Avatar," another solid (if derivative) score from a stalwart; Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders' "The Hurt Locker"; Hans Zimmer's playful work for "Sherlock Holmes"; and, surprisingly, Alexander Desplat's quirky "Fantastic Mr. Fox."

• Jeff Bridges is going to win, but Jeremy Renner deserves the best actor statue. In fact, if anyone from "The Hurt Locker" deserves to win, it's Renner, who creates an authentic, multi-layered character amid a mostly plotless action film. "Hurt Locker," while very good, is vastly overrated; Renner's performance is not.

• Kudos to the animation branch for backing a truly unknown film: "The Secret of Kells." I had never heard of this Irish-made film before today, and I'm guessing you hadn't either. But I can't wait to see it after getting a peek at its intricate, idiosyncratic art style. Here's hoping for a theatrical release in the coming weeks ...

• More kudos to the visual effects branch for not including "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen." "District 9" achieved great things on a shoestring budget, "Star Trek" created the first totally seamless voyage of the Starship Enterprise, and the obvious winner "Avatar" reinvented the proverbial wheel.

• And finally, I must endorse the ten-nominee field for best picture. The intention of the experiment -- to include a wider variety of films, including fan favorites that don't traditionally get nominatons -- has worked, given the inclusion of "District 9," "Up" and the season's surprise smash, "The Blind Side."

Cons

• Of course, the best picture field now means I feel obligated to see "The Blind Side," the latest in a long line of white savior movies that appears to put the focus on the wrong person in the story. ("Avatar" and "District 9" could be called white savior movies too, albeit with aliens in place of humans.) "The Blind Side" appears to be the worst kind of crowd-pleasing sap appealing to the lowest common denominator. I hope it proves me wrong.

• Randy Newman has built a career out of writing bland songs that get nominated for Oscars, and he's done it again with two nominations for "The Princess and the Frog." Neither of those nominated songs were the best from the otherwise spectacular film. Newman's forgettable songs have now been nominated for 19 Academy Awards. (He has only one win: "If I Didn't Have You," from "Monsters, Inc.", which sounds almost identical to "You've Got a Friend In Me" from "Toy Story.")

• Really, Academy? Penelope Cruz?!? Really?!? "Nine" was the biggest critical and commercial flop of awards season; everyone had it pegged as a top Oscar contender until they actually saw it. Yet Cruz finds herself in the best supporting actress category instead of Diane Kruger or Melanie Laurent from "Inglourious Basterds," Jane Lynch from "Julie & Julia," or even Susan Sarandon from the otherwise execrable "The Lovely Bones." Heck, I would have preferred to see Mariah Carey's performance from "Precious" end up here.

• The best cinematography field is confusing. "Avatar" is nominated, despite the fact that most of its shots are entirely computer-generated. (So where was "WALL-E's" nomination last year, huh?) "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" is nominated, despite the fact that it looks like a movie that has been dragged through 20 miles of mud.

Nominations I was really hoping for

• "Star Trek" for best picture and cinematography, as well as Michael Giacchino's thunderous score, my favorite of the year

• Diane Kruger ("Inglourious Basterds") for best supporting actress

• Zoe Saldana ("Avatar") for best actress, if only to acknowledge that the "virtual performance" is a credible component of film acting

• Wes Anderson ("Fantastic Mr. Fox") for best director

The Oscars air March 7 on ABC, with Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin hosting. I hope the show has more surprises than the list of nominees.