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I'm Julia Turner, and this is the Slate Culture Gab Fest, All Hail, Haley Edition.

It's Wednesday, January 26, and on today's program, we're going to talk about the 2011

Oscar nominations, the new IFC sketch comedy show, Portlandia.

And Jonah Weiner will be joining us to talk about a mysterious man who orchestrates kidnappings and turns your life into one gigantic episode of Inception, The Television Show.

And it's not Stephen Metcalf, oddly.

I'm sorry that I can't describe it more succinctly than that. Jonah will when he gets here. Stephen is out this week. He'll be joining us again next week. Joining us to talk about the Oscar nominations is our browbeat blogger Nina Shenrosstogi, who's been covering the web reaction this morning. We're recording on Tuesday just after the nominations have been announced. What are the big stories coming out of the nominations, Nina?

Well, the big story, I guess, overall is that the King's Speech kind of pulled ahead of the pack with 12 nominations this morning.

And then True Grit, which a lot of people had felt had was kind of, you know, that True Grrit's fortunes were waning a little bit in the last few weeks pulled into second place with 10 nominations. And then the social network, which everybody had sort of thought was going to be the princess of the Oscars only had eight nominations tied with Inception.

But overall, you know, the field of final nominees matched up pretty well with what, you know,

Oscar prognosticators were expecting with a few notable snubs and a few sort of happy surprises.

What was the biggest snub of the morning?

Well, right now it seems like people are most up in arms about Christopher Nolan being left off the best director category.

He was one of the Directors Guild of America nominees a few weeks ago, but did not actually make it onto the Oscars list. But his movie did make it onto the best movie list, although it's clearly in the, since he wasn't nominated, it's clearly in the AlsoRans category. Right, right. This is the second year where we have 10 nominees for Best Picture. So, as you noted Dana in your commentary on the nominations this morning, that second five begins to feel a little bit like Also Rants, right? Yeah, it seems to me, I'm not sure what the future of this 10 picture slot in the best picture will be, but it seems like it's sort of becoming a ghetto, basically, that you stick pictures in there that you want to recognize in some way, but not actually truly compliment. And I couldn't help but take a little umbrage that both the films directed by women, especially in the year after Catherine Biglow swept the two big categories, got a best picture nomination and not a best director nomination. So there was a little bit of a feeling of, oh, great movie. Who was that little lady who made it again? Wait, what? Which two movies were those? I was thinking of The Kids Are All right, directed by Lisa Cholodinko, and Winter's Bone,

which is directed by Deborah Granik. But Winter's Bone did have a pretty good morning. It got, you know, very surprisingly good. Yeah, had four of the big nominations, Best Picture. It sort of slid into that last slot that people weren't sure if it was going to go to maybe the town or to Winter's Bone, but it, you know, slid in there.

It got a best actress nomination for Jennifer Lawrence, a best supporting actor for John Hawks and then a best adapted screenplay. Dana, were you rooting for that movie? And I'm also interested to hear what some of the other delights were of the morning's harvest. Were there any things that you particularly enjoyed in your

year of movie going that you were happy to see? There were definite happy surprises. I mean, as for Winters Bone, it wasn't, you know, I'm not a huge champion of that movie, but I really, really liked it. And my favorite thing about it was the acting in John Hawks in particular. So I was really happy to see him. And that's one category that I will be rooting against all hope, because I seriously doubt he'll win for best supporting actor, but he's really fantastic in that movie. He's

unrecognizable, which is always a good sign. I had no idea it was John Hawks till the end of the movie. John Hawks is like one of those guys. He's a very shape-shifting kind of actor. It's true. So some of the nice surprises for me, okay, I wrote about this this morning already, but this Greek movie Dogtooth, which, again, I'm not a complete champion of, but I was definitely fascinated by, got into the best foreign film, foreign language film category. And that was just a complete surprise because it's the most un-Oskary movie ever. Have either of you seen Dog Tooth? No, I was listening to a discussion of it on film spotting over the weekend, and it sounds like it's a crazy mind fuck of a movie. Yeah, it's this like sick, weird, dark, extremely violent, avant-garde. I guess avant-garde is maybe not quite the word, but I mean, it's definitely an art house movie that appeals to people with sick imaginations. And so the idea of, you know, the mainstream Oscar voter, which, you know, they tend to be whatever older people have more conservative tastes. And that's kind of a truism that, you know, the most, the movie that sort of manages to please that the biggest mainstream swath of people is the one that wins the Oscar. I mean, just, I can imagine those people being completely repulsed by dog tooth and just running out of the screening room throwing up. So if nothing else, it's fascinating to imagine the presence that that movie will have at the Oscars and the fact that, you know, some of the stars and the director may come from Greece and show up at the ceremony. That would be pretty cool. Can I share with you guys my Oscar Peave of the morning? Absolutely. Yes. All right. First of all, we should pour one out for Steve and just note that the Oscars are a ridiculous sham and that we shouldn't pay attention to them and they're, you know, no judge of quality at the movies. So stipulated, but now to just care devotedly about the Oscars. I always pay particular attention to the costume Oscar. I wrote a slideshow about this for Slate a few years ago.

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