Visual Effects shortlist:

Aus­tralia
The Curi­ous Case of Ben­jamin But­ton
The Dark Knight
Hell­boy II: The Golden Army
Iron Man
Jour­ney to the Cen­ter of the Earth
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

These will be nar­rowed down on the 15th of Jan­u­ary after mem­bers of the Academy’s visual effects branch have viewed 15 minute clips of these movies, pre­sum­ably show­cas­ing their effects. The mem­bers shall then vote, and then there will be three.

Makeup shorltist:

The Curi­ous Case of Ben­jamin But­ton
The Dark Knight
Hell­boy II: The Golden Army
The Reader
Synec­doche, New York
Tropic Thun­der
The Wrestler

There is only a ten minute clip for these movies, they will be voted on on 17th Jan­u­ary, to pro­duce the final list of 3.

The 81st Acad­emy Awards are on EDIT: Feb­ru­ary 22nd.

Via SHH:

The Pro­duc­ers Guild of Amer­ica has just nom­i­nated the movie for its annual Pro­duc­ers Guild Awards tak­ing place Sat­ur­day, Jan­u­ary 24 at the Hol­ly­wood Pal­la­dium. The Dark Knight is going up against The Curi­ous Case of Ben­jamin But­ton, Frost/Nixon, Milk and Slum­dog Mil­lion­aire for Best Picture.

Things are look­ing on course for an Oscar nom­i­na­tion come Jan­u­ary 22nd!

The nom­i­na­tions for the golden globes were announced today, and as usual are being mea­sured as a pre-cursor to the pos­si­ble nom­i­na­tions for the Oscars.

Heath Ledger has picked up a nom­i­na­tion for the best sup­port­ing actor for his role as the joker, a very strong indi­ca­tion that he may be in the run­ning for the same honor at the upcom­ing acad­emy awards.

More shortly as I am post­ing this from a mov­ing train on an iPhone.

The cin­e­matic re-release of The Dark Knight to coin­cide with the Oscars is going to take place on Jan­u­ary 23rd, report Vari­ety.

Warner Bros. will re-release “The Dark Knight” on Jan. 23 in a nation­wide launch, guar­an­tee­ing that it will become the fourth film to take in more than $1 bil­lion in world­wide box office.

“Knight” has cumed $530.3 mil­lion domes­ti­cally and $465.9 mil­lion inter­na­tion­ally, leav­ing it less than $4 mil­lion short of the billion-dollar mile­stone. Only “Titanic,” “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” and “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” have topped that mark.

“Knight” also is the second-highest domes­tic grosser of all time, trail­ing only “Titanic.”

The re-release will come six weeks after the DVD launch of “Knight,” set for Tuesday.

Dan Fell­man, pres­i­dent of Warner’s domes­tic dis­tri­b­u­tion, made the announce­ment Thurs­day. “We wanted to pro­vide one more oppor­tu­nity for movie­go­ers to expe­ri­ence it on the bigscreen as it was meant to be seen,” he added.

Thanks jetxj9!

Nick wrote in with this excel­lent piece of Fan art show­ing an (old) Oscar poster clev­erly defaced by the Joker, cre­ated by joshmc at the Fan Art Exhibit.