Spinning Platters Predicts the 2012 Oscar Nominations: What Should — and Will — Be Nominated

Ellie Kemper, Oscar hopeful Melissa McCarthy, and Wendi McLendon-Covey in BRIDESMAIDS

The Academy Awards are commonly referred to as the gay Super Bowl, and for good reason: they each represent the culmination of months of grueling, bone-crunching competition, tend to feature misguided musical numbers, and are ultimately about impossibly wealthy people fighting over trophies while the rest of us cheer from the breadlines. In short: it’s the best thing that happens all year. My post-Oscar depression is far more devastating than even the worst case of post-Christmas blues. Such emptiness. The nominations for this year’s 84th Academy Awards will be announced in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, January 24. After the jump, check out my picks for what should be nominated and what we’re likely to read about on Tuesday.

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Spinning Platters Interview: Vera Farmiga on “Higher Ground”

Vera Farmiga in HIGHER GROUND

“This is challenging! This discourse is challenging! This is a campaign that is more rigorous than the Up in the Air Oscar campaign. Those questions were like, ‘What is it like to kiss George Clooney?'” But Vera Farmiga wouldn’t have it any other way. The Oscar-nominated actress, 38, is making her directorial debut with Higher Ground, adapted for the screen by Carolyn S. Briggs (and Tim Metcalfe) from her memoir, This Dark World. It is a finely observed, deeply felt spiritual character study about a woman named Corinne (Farmiga). Yes, this film dares to address religion, specifically evangelical Christianity. But it does so in a manner as completely disarming, sensitive, and uncompromising as Farmiga herself.

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