Ryan Gosling didn't win an Academy Award last night. But Ryan Gosling totally won the Academy Awards last night.

Can a sweep year at the Oscars also be a spread-the-wealth year at the Oscars?

This morning's announcement of contenders for the 96th Annual Academy Awards was da bomb. Kind of literally.

It's time again for my Oscar-nomination predictions! My annual article in which I hope you forget a large portion of it five seconds after the actual nominees are revealed!

Either 2023 was a particularly outstanding year for movies or my standards are getting lower – though I suppose both could be true.

The deservedly lauded homegrown talents Scott Beck and Bryan Woods are clearly In Demand, which makes it all the more impressive and special that they would dedicate time, money, and resources to giving the Quad Cities what we've sorely lacked: a beautiful, conveniently located establishment devoted to the collective moviegoing experience that will provide, as Beck and Woods insist, something for everyone, and on a weekly basis.

Before getting to the awards – and one particular movie gave us loads to talk about on that front – let me begin by addressing the event itself, because last night's 95th Annual Oscars telecast was a little boring. Intentionally, gloriously, blessedly boring.

It feels odd to preface a lengthy article devoted to my predictions for the 95th Annual Academy Awards by asking you to not listen to me. But this year? If you want to win your Oscars pool? Don't listen to me.

While the announcement itself provided a bunch of welcome confirmations and surprises, as well as the obligatory less-welcome ones, the most gratifying thing about the roughly 20-minute presentation of Oscar nominees was our again being able to hear in-the-moment gasps, whoops, and even, for one category, laughs with the lists of names and titles. Especially titles. But we'll get to that.

Blockbuster sequels to 13- and 36-year-old films nominated for Best Picture with no correlating nods for directing, acting, or writing, An independent release cited for directing, acting, and writing nods with no corresponding Best Picture acknowledgment. The most nods of the year – 11 in all – awarded to a foreign-language remake that debuted on Netflix. Welcome, folks, to my official, inevitably misguided attempts at predicting the January 24 Oscar nominations!

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