George Clooney

Anna Kendrick, nominated for Best Support Actress at this Sunday's Oscars, says the statuette belongs to another.

Courtesy Fox Searchlight Pictures

Anna Kendrick doesn’t expect to win an Oscar for her ferociously perky supporting turn as a corporate terminator in Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air. That, she says, is an honor earmarked for another actress, though she coyly declines to reveal the mystery winner’s identity.

Jeremy Renner's gutsy performance in 'The Hurt Locker' has landed him in the thick of this year's Oscar race for Best Actor.

Courtesy Summit Entertainment

He’s touted as a dark horse in Oscar’s Best Actor race, a relative unknown in a field of nominees highlighted by presumed frontrunner Jeff Bridges and George Clooney. Yet Modesto native Jeremy Renner, the fair-haired star of Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, is no stranger to the screen, or to awards consideration.

Keep your eyes on the prize.

Courtesy Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Nominations for the 82nd annual Academy Awards were announced this morning at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, and though there were few surprises in the major categories – one notable exception being The Blind Side, a surprise contender for Best Picture in this year's expanded category – the races should be tighter and less predictable than in years past. The following is a list of the nominees, with the presumed favorite denoted by an asterisk.

Reitman calls the shots from behind the camera on the set of 'Up in the Air.'

Courtesy Fox Searchlight Pictures

If there remains any doubt that Jason Reitman has arrived as one of Hollywood’s most gifted young directors, Up in the Air, his incisive new comedy about a corporate hatchet man who flies the friendly skies from one soul-crushing gig to the next, should put it to rest.

Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg battle the summertime blues in 'Adventureland.'

Courtesy Miramax

This has been heralded as the year of the animated movie, and with good reason: Fantastic Mr. Fox, Coraline and Up, among others, proved as engaging for adults as for children, validating a genre unfairly dismissed as kiddie fare by some critics and too many Oscar voters.

George Clooney and Vera Farmiga enjoy the friendly skies in Jason Reitman's 'Up in the Air.'

Courtesy Paramount Pictures

Ryan Bingham is suave and effortlessly self-assured, a masterful manipulator of even the messiest situations. It would be tempting to dismiss him as a soulless corporate mercenary, but there is real human feeling behind his veil of calm. That he can divorce himself from it to excel at his job – he’s a hatchet man, charged with handing out pink slips and preconditioning his victims for unemployment – is his gift and his curse.

The Family Fox: Roald Dahl's vulpine heroes arrive invigorate Wes Anderson's excellent new comedy.

Courtesy 20th Century Fox

Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox is hardly the groundbreaking spectacle we’ve come to expect as Hollywood animation studios race to push the genre to dizzying heights of digital wizardry.

George Clooney, playing a goofy telekinetic, faces off against an unsuspecting goat in Grant Heslov's new comedy.

Courtesy Overture Films

I’m not sure how much of The Men Who Stare at Goats is true. It’s inspired by Jon Ronson’s book, which documents a time when the U.S. military encouraged a select few in its ranks to hone their psychic abilities, believing, however inaccurately, that the Russians were doing the same. But what transpires in the movie, directed by Grant Heslov (HBO’s Unscripted) and starring George Clooney, is so flagrantly over-the-top it seems like a lunatic riff on the facts.

George Clooney plays a high-flying exec who specializes in giving corporate lackeys their pink slips in Jason Reitman's 'Up in the Air.'

Courtesy Paramount Pictures

After an open weekend highlighted by the regional premieres of Lone Scherfig’s An Education and Katherine Dieckmann’s Motherhood, which helped earn star Uma Thurman a festival award, Mill Valley’s annual celebration of cinema from all corners of the globe continues through next weekend.