gold statues for everyone!

It’s time for the Oscars! That’s right, the nominees were announced today for the 84th Academy Awards to be held Feb. 26.

All of our favorite stars and Hollywood’s elite will be in attendance to find out which films were voted best of 2011.

In an incredibly indecisive move by the Academy, nine films are now vying for the top honor of the night, the award for Best Picture.

Best Picture Nominees

• The Artist
• The Descendants
• Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
• The Help
• Hugo
• Midnight in Paris
• Moneyball
• The Tree of Life
• War Horse

Some are already taking issue with the nominees. Extremely Loud was critically panned and some have expressed “mixed feelings” about The Help. (The Academy has a long history of racial prejudice as it is.)   Meanwhile, while we did get nine nominations from the Academy, they still left out quite a few good movies made in 2011. I did my best to monitor my Twitter stream today for tweets about films which people felt got snubbed. Some of these spurned titles included Young Adult, Bridesmaids, The Ides of March and the final installment of the Harry Potter franchise.

Also notably nominated is Meryl Streep, up for an Oscar for the 17th time of her career for her role as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The Iron Lady has received its fair share of criticism, though, with some pointing to Thatcher’s hard-line conservative policies and others calling the film “surprisingly sexist” in its portrayal of the world leader.

The Academy Awards take place live Feb. 26 on ABC. While we’re all in anticipation of Hollywood’s biggest night, do you have any predictions about who will take home Oscar gold?

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