Now that all the critics groups have voted, and we have less than three weeks until the Oscar nominations (January 22), it's time to consider who are the frontrunners in this year's Oscar race, in the various categories. Of the eight actresses on my list below, five stand a chance to be nominated for the Best Actress Oscar.  Read tomorrow my column about the Best Actor race.

December 29, 2008–Two hundred eighty-one feature films are eligible for the Academy Award for Best Picture of 2008, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced today.

Kazan's political melodrama “Viva Zapata!” was nominated for five Oscars, including Best Actor for Brando, winning one, for Supporting Actor Anthony Quinn.

As the calendar year has just ended, it may be instructive to look back at the achievements of 2008 in terms of the Best Picture Oscar contest.  For the prophets of gloom (occasionally I am one of them), who lament the inevitable artistic decline of Hollywood movies, I'd like to offer a comparison with the five Best Picture nominees in 1968, 40 years ago.

The musical Funny Face, a vehicle for Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn, was nominated for four Oscars, including Screenplay (Original) for Leonard Gershe and Cinematography (color) for Ray June.