The main event

First let's get the snubs over. Passed over for a best actor nod were Eric Bana for Munich, Russell Crowe for Cinderella Man, Ralph Fiennes for The Constant Gardener (my vote for 2nd biggest snub) and the biggest snub was Cillian Murphy for the film Breakfast On Pluto.

The noms for best actor in this year's race are the much talked about Heath Ledger who plays a tortured, maybe-gay-maybe-just-bi, ranch hand in Brokeback Mountain; The man in black is back as Joaquin Phoenix channels Johnny Cash (and does his own singing) in Walk The Line; Terrence Howard plays a pimp turned rapper and gives a revelatory performance in Hustle & Flow; David Strathairn plays Edward R. Murrow in the noir film Good Night, and Good Luck. He does act opposite the real Joseph McCarthy (whom some in early screen tests thought was a real actor and needed to tone it down). And Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the flawed Truman Capote in the aptly titled Capote.

The women have it going on too. There were plenty of snubs in this category too. Vera Farmiga for Down To The Bone, Ziyi Zhang in Memoirs Of A Geisha and, my vote for biggest snub, Joan Allen for The Upside Of Anger. Charlize Theron is back as a mine worker who sues her co-workers for sexual harassment in North Country; Felicity Huffman gives a career turning performance as a male-to-female transgender coming to terms with news that she has a teenage son in Transamerica; Reese Witherspoon continues the "they do their own singing" tradition as she channels June Carter Cash in Walk The Line; Keira Knightley is Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine of Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice; and Judi Dench scores a nod as Mrs. Henderson, the owner of a burlesque theater in London's West End during the time of WWII, in Mrs. Henderson Presents.