Scenes from Academy Award-nominated movies, clockwise from left: Doubt, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Slumdog Millionaire, Milk and Rachel Getting Married. (Associated Press)

This year’s Academy Award nominations have just been announced, and it’s official: if your name is Josh Brolin, Robert Downey Jr., Philip Seymour Hoffman or Michael Shannon, don’t bother to rent a tux. In fact, you guys might as well spend Oscar night at home, watching the show on TV while eating snickerdoodles. As Best Supporting Actor nominees, you’re up against the late Heath Ledger and his already iconic performance as The Joker in Batman: The Dark Knight.

Not to be insensitive, but Ledger — who was found dead exactly a year ago today of an accidental drug overdose — has an unbeatable combination going for him: 1) His scary-mad Joker took comic-book movies to the Method acting level, and 2) He died young, at the top of his game. His posthumous Golden Globe win only confirmed the obvious, and they might as well just ship the Oscar to his family right now.

Ledger is one of two nominees in the top Oscar categories that, as far as I’m concerned, are guaranteed to take home the statue at the Feb. 22 ceremony. The other is WALL*E, Disney and Pixar’s futuristic eco-fable, which is a shoo-in for Best Animated Feature. (Its competitors, Kung Fu Panda and Bolt, may be charming kids’ fare, but they haven't got a prayer.)

Those who think the Oscars need to be more populist/commercial — after viewership sank to a record low in 2008 — will have to content themselves with those likely wins. Even as I write, the fan boys are rending their T-shirts at the news that box-office champion The Dark Knight has been snubbed for a Best Picture nomination.

That was hardly a surprise — for one thing, Ledger aside, the movie is too sombre and pretentious for its own good. But there are a number of unexpected nominees and shutouts in the nomination list. Here’s a look at the main categories.

Director Danny Boyle and his Indian film Slumdog Millionaire have grabbed 10 Academy Award nominations. (Gautam Singh/Associated Press)

Best Picture

After Slumdog Millionaire‘s Golden Globes sweep, fans of the film (including yours truly) have their fingers crossed that it repeats its success at the Oscars. With 10 nominations, it stands a great chance. Danny Boyle’s Indian film is a glorious masala of gritty realism, storybook romance and social commentary, shot with the exhilaration and inventiveness of his 1990s classic, Trainspotting. It is also a resolutely populist movie, as crowd-pleasing as The Dark Knight — even if it has yet to sell even a fraction of the tickets.

So is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which has the most nominations, at 13. However, director David Fincher’s fantasy about a man (Brad Pitt) who ages backwards is gimmicky, overlong and relies too much on the built-in poignancy of aging and the passage of time. And its simple, life-is-like-a-box-of-buttons philosophy brings to mind that unctuous 1994 Oscar winner Forrest Gump. I can't see it beating Slumdog. Voters on the technical side of the movie industry may favour it though, if only for the eye-rubbing achievement of Digital Domain, the company responsible for Pitt’s grave-to-cradle transformation.

Then again, maybe this is the year that Academy voters go for the political. Milk and Frost/Nixon are both historical films with resonance right now. Gus Van Sant’s Milk, tracing the rise of gay activism in 1970s San Francisco, arrived just as Californians voted to overturn gay-marriage rights, reminding us that the struggles of Harvey Milk and his colleagues are far from over. And Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon gave the world the satisfying sight of a shifty U.S. president cornered and contrite, which couldn't help but draw parallels as George W. Bush wound up his disastrous eight-year reign.

The Reader, one of several Holocaust-themed pictures to be released in the last few months, seems the least likely winner here. Not that Stephen Daldry’s intricate drama isn’t a top-quality film, but Academy members will acknowledge it in other categories — particularly in the Best Actress slot, where Kate Winslet will no doubt get her long-awaited statuette.

The surprise: Revolutionary Road seemed a sure bet in this category. It was also snubbed for all the other big awards, apart from a Supporting Actor nod for Michael Shannon. Maybe the Academy was bummed out by its depressing vision of 1950s suburbia, or realized that director Sam Mendes had trod this ground before, and with more pizzazz, in his Oscar-winning American Beauty.

Mickey Rourke grabbed a Best Actor nomination for his musclebound showman in Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler. (Niko Tavernise/Fox Searchlight)

Best Actor

By rights, The Wrestler’s Mickey Rourke ought to have a hammerlock on the Oscar for his visceral embodiment of a battered pro wrestler undergoing health and career crises. Not only does he give a stunning performance, but Hollywood loves comeback stories, and Rourke’s triumphant return after a slew of crap movies and a stint as a real-life boxer plays in his favour.

However, he faces some tough competition from Sean Penn in Milk. The word “lovable” has seldom applied to Penn since his breakout performance as a surfer dude in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, but it fits here. His portrait of 1970s gay-rights activist Harvey Milk is both heroic and disarmingly sweet. But Penn is a frequent nominee and previous winner (in 2004 for Mystic River ), which gives the never-nominated Rourke an edge.

Then there’s Frank Langella, who works nothing short of a miracle in Frost/Nixon: he makes the audience sympathize with one of America’s most morally and physically repellent presidents. He’s never been nominated, either. He’d stand a good chance of winning this year if Rourke wasn’t in the running.

Richard Jenkins in The Visitor is the dark horse in this race. Not a lot of people saw his dramatic role as a drab college professor whose life gains colour and purpose thanks to a pair of illegal immigrants; they’re more likely to have seen his comic turns in Step Brothers and Burn After Reading. Like Langella, Jenkins is a veteran actor worthy of recognition, but Langella gives the more riveting performance.

As for Brad Pitt — are they kidding? His role as the eponymous hero of Benjamin Button was almost entirely a special effects stunt. The best that can be said of it is that he pulled off a half-decent Louisiana accent. Instead, he should have been nominated in the supporting category for his goofy blackmailer in Burn After Reading.

The surprise, at least for those of us who think the Academy picks sentimental favourites, is the exclusion of Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino. The elderly Eastwood has never won in the acting category, which isn’t exactly shocking given that he’s the Man With No Range. But if he ever had a chance, it was with this movie, where he slyly subverts his old vigilante image to play a racist, gun-toting grandpa who takes an Asian kid under his wing.

Kate Winslet, left, is nominated for Best Actress for her work in Stephen Daldry's film adaptation of the best-selling novel The Reader. (Melinda Sue Gordon/Weinstein Company)

Best Actress

There’s a feeling out there that this has got to be Kate Winslet’s year at the Oscars. She’s been nominated five times before and in 2008 she gave, not one, but two powerhouse performances, in The Reader and Revolutionary Road. She’s hungry for the award, too, judging from her interview in the December issue of Vanity Fair, (“Do I want it? You bet your f---ing ass I do!”) She’s nominated in this category for The Reader, in which she plays an age-spanning role as a working-class woman hiding shameful secrets in postwar Germany.

If there’s a nominee who might just beat her, it’s Meryl Streep in Doubt. The 59-year-old actress can’t seem to make a movie without getting an Oscar nod — she’s been nominated 14 times and has picked up the award twice. Her last win, however, was way back in 1983, for Sophie’s Choice. And she, too, showed her diversity this year: not only did she give a breathtakingly complex performance (complete with Bronx accent) as the morally certain nun in Doubt, she also proved a credible musical star with Mamma Mia!

Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married doesn’t stand much of a chance, although her part as the black-sheep sister in Jonathan Demme’s tragicomedy was a big step in her metamorphosis from teen princess to serious actor. The dark horse to root for is Melissa Leo in Frozen River.The former cast member of Homicide: Life on the Street emerged from TV oblivion to win raves on the festival circuit as a struggling single mother who becomes involved in immigrant smuggling on the Quebec-New York border.

Angelina Jolie is also in the running as another single mom — this one in 1920s Los Angeles — in the Clint Eastwood mystery Changeling. Her nomination seems so Hollywood-centric, considering there were a couple of much better choices: Sally Hawkins as the ebullient heroine of the Brit comedy Happy-Go-Lucky, and Kristin Scott Thomas as the alienated ex-convict in the French drama I’ve Loved You So Long.

The late Heath Ledger has a lock on the Best Supporting Actor prize for his role as the psychotic Joker in The Dark Knight. (Warner Bros. Pictures)

Best Supporting Actor

A done deal. Although, in a Ledger-less year, Robert Downey Jr. might’ve got the award for his outrageous blackface gambit as an overheated Method actor in the Hollywood-in-the-jungle satire Tropic Thunder. Downey’s star is on the rise again — his wry performance last summer in Iron Man was a hit even with non-comic-book-movie-loving viewers. Maybe he’ll have a shot at an Oscar next year with his upcoming drama, The Soloist.

The other likely also-rans: Phillip Seymour Hoffman was superb as usual in Doubt, playing a gentle, possibly pedophilic priest, but it wasn’t in the same chameleonic league as his Oscar-winning lead in Capote. Josh Brolin was also superb as councilman-turned-killer Dan White in Milk — and he also sported the worst haircut since Javier Bardem in last year’s No Country for Old Men. But his nomination here feels like a consolation prize for not getting a Best Actor nod for W. Michael Shannon has the fifth slot as the truth-telling schizophrenic in Revolutionary Road, maybe just so the makers of that slighted film will have someone to cheer for on Oscar night.

No real surprises in this category, but I was secretly hoping James Franco might nab a nomination for his blissfully silly dope peddler in Pineapple Express.

Penelope Cruz is nominated for her role as a wild and crazy Spanish artist in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. (Victor Bello/Alliance Films)

Best Supporting Actress

It’s a tribute to the strong acting in Doubt that not one, but two of its co-stars are nominated in this category: Amy Adams as the ingenuous young nun who suspects Hoffman’s priest of misconduct, and Viola Davis as the mother of the boy he may be molesting. I’d give the prize to Davis’s heart-tugging performance. Taraji P. Henson is fine as the adoptive mother in Benjamin Button, but Davis has less time onscreen and yet is more impressive. Marisa Tomei is also nominated as the aging pole dancer in The Wrestler, but she barely holds her own against the mighty Rourke in the title role.

Maybe to prove it has a sense of humour, the Academy has also thrown — apologies to John Lennon — a Spaniard in the works. They’ve included Penelope Cruz for her zesty performance as the half-mad Spanish artist in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

The surprise: Where’s Cate Blanchett? Come on, they nominate Brad Pitt for Benjamin Button and not Cate? Her role as a dancer-turned-mother in that film also involved gradual aging, and she did it affectingly without the benefit of all those digital effects. Of course, this actress is always a dazzling shape-changer, but let’s not start taking that gift for granted.

Best Director

Unlike some years, this time out, all the directors of the Best Picture nominees have also been recognized in the Best Director category. The contest really comes down to just two men: David Fincher for Benjamin Button and Danny Boyle for Slumdog. Both are brilliant, original filmmakers whose directing has yet to win an Oscar. Boyle has already received the Golden Globe for Slumdog, plus his film relies less on FX tricks than pure visual bravura. He’s gotta have it.

Martin Morrow writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.