One of our favorite Academy Award season traditions is Turner Classic Movies’ 31 Days of Oscar. Every February, TCM showcases hundreds of former Oscar winners and nominees, usually introducing them with even more fun, nerdy facts and analysis than usual. This year, they take the geek-factor up a notch with TCM University, a clever theme that presents the movies as college course material. Each night has a department, each department has its classes, and each class has its pertinent cinematic coursework. Saturday the 21st, for instance, belongs to the American History Dept., where your first class of the day is American Military Heroes, and the lecture starts with 1960’s The Alamo. In honor of this tribute to the film student in all of us, TCM University Dean Robert Osborne recently talked to reporters about the curriculum, and shared his thoughts about this year’s crop of nominees.

Q: What led to decision to have this year’s theme be TCM University ?

A: Actually, we change it every year. Every year we try to get a different way to present stuff so it’s not just the same static way. One year we did it by categories — we had all the Best Supporting Actress nominees one day, supporting actors another, and directors another, cinematographers, etc. One day we went from A to Z starting with the movie Above and Beyond and the last one was Z with Yves Montand, so it’s just part of a creative way. My only objection to it was the fact that I went to college and I never thought college was all that fun, so the idea of asking people to come to college for 31 days — to classes — I thought, “Wait a minute,” but you know it’s just actually a way to present the films in a fresh way. And it’s interesting, if the day is the study of dance that means you get to show Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse and Moira Shearer, so it’s kind of a fun way to do it, I think.

Q: What’s your favorite class at the TCM University this year?

A: Well, favorite is really hard for me because I’m probably like you are, I really love movies, so I like a whole mix of films. I guess I’m stage-struck; on February 22nd we’re studying Theater and Drama. We’re studying theater production and screenwriting and acting, so for theater production you’ve got movies like The Country Girl, which is about the putting on of a Broadway play, and Band Wagon, which is the same, and The Producers, which is raising money to put on a play. Then you go to screenwriters and it’s four movies that have screenwriters as a central character like The Bad and the Beautiful and Sunset Boulevard. Then in Acting 101, you get movies like Stage Door, where you’ve got Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers trying to be actresses on Broadway; The Dresser, about Albert Finney as a tired and older British actor; A Star Is Born, where you’ve got Janet Gaynor trying to be a star in Hollywood; and Mephisto, about a German actor who sells his soul to the Nazis in order to get better parts. So I guess that’s kind of a fun day for me, but I have to say I don’t really have any favorites because I’m addicted to movies, so anytime there’s a good movie to watch — particularly if there’s somebody in it I’m particularly partial to as an actor or actress — I’m all for it.

Q: How much thought goes into the programming on a given night at TCM, not just during theme months like the 31 Days of Oscar?

A: A lot of thought goes into it, and I have to say that one of the great things about working at TCM is that people there from all ages — from very young to not all that old — are very passionate about the channel and what they do, so none of that is really taken lightly. What I love is they go to great lengths to try to figure out interesting ways to program films. This great guy that does the final programming is a guy named Charley Tabesh, and he’s so open about suggestions. Not only does he have great ideas, but he’s open to others and that doesn’t always happen in a big corporation — a lot of people get very territorial about what they do and don’t want, but Charlie is very open to suggestions, and he’ll say, “Oh hey, I saw a movie last night with a funny scene where Ginger Rogers slaps this woman and it’s very funny, so why don’t we have a series of movies with slap scenes in them?” And we’ll do that, so you’ll get Vivacious Lady with Ginger Rogers and Jimmy Stewart, Chinatown with Jack Nicholson slapping Faye Dunaway, and movies that have slap scenes in them. So they do go to lengths to try to find interesting ways to put films together so there’s a reason for them to be together, but they’re not just all the same kind of film.

Q: TCM is a resource I tend to recommend when people younger than me show an interest in movies and want to know where they can learn about movies.

A: It kind of is a great way to learn about movies because we have them all. We have silent films, which aren’t necessarily my favorite kind of film, but I’m getting to really like them in seeing how good some of them are. And we’ve got foreign films, so you’re getting the best Kurosawa and François Truffaut and others, plus American movies, so I think it is a great way to get educated. And also, we don’t always want to be educated — sometimes we just want to relax and have fun — so we’ve got a lot of films that don’t even pretend to be great films, but they were made to entertain people for a couple of hours, take their minds off their troubles. When we’ve got a world like we’ve got today where you do have troubles, I think it’s great to sometimes look at these silly little comedies or something that are not pretentious — a little murder mystery or something — and just have your troubles taken away for an hour and a half. We have a bunch of Ronald Reagan movies coming up because he’s going to be our star of the month coming up in April, and he made a lot of B-pictures — he made a lot of A-pictures, too — but the B-pictures only run like 55 and 60 minutes, but they’re very entertaining. They weren’t meant to be anything but entertaining for an hour or so. So I’m all for those as well.

Q: Who do you think the big winners are going to be at this year’s Oscars?

A: Well, I really think, and this is not my wishes, this is an indication when you consider the other awards that have been given, especially when you’ve got groups like the Writers Guild and the Directors Guild giving their awards, because that’s the same people, basically, that vote for Oscars as well, and I would suspect the picture and director will be Slumdog Millionaire and Danny Boyle. I would suspect the Actor will probably be Sean Penn. I think Actress will probably be Kate Winslet. I think the Supporting Actor will be Heath Ledger. And I think Supporting Actress will be Penélope Cruz. I just think that’s kind of the way it’s gonna go, but I think there certainly could be upsets, like Viola Davis in Doubt could be an upset winner for Supporting Actress. I think if people watch Frozen River, Melissa Leo will take it hands down. The problem is will they watch their DVD of Frozen River before the Oscars, because she could be an upset winner, but there’s been no buzz about her, so maybe she doesn’t have a chance — but she’s absolutely fabulous in that movie. And that’s what makes Oscar night kind of fun, you never really quite know, there’s no such thing as a given because everybody — you know you and I can sit down and have a talk and we’ll totally disagree on all five of the ones who should win — and that’s what makes it interesting. If you’ve got over 5,000 people who all feel as strongly about their opinions as you or I do, that will all show up when the ballots are counted.

Q: Which movies from this year’s crop do you think you’ll be introducing on TCM in five or ten years?

A: Well that’s a good question. I certainly hope Frost/Nixon, I think that’s a really good movie, and Milk as well. I’d love it if we could show Wall-E because I loved — I’m not into that kind of film — but I was totally captivated by it. And Slumdog Millionaire. The thing that I think will be very interesting is which of these movies, whether they’re on TCM or not, will we be thinking about or in awe of five or ten years down the line? It’s the one thing about Slumdog Millionaire — I think it’s such a popular picture right now and everybody loves it, and they’re really gung-ho about it, but I’m not sure if it wins how that’s going to stack up next to say Lawrence of Arabia and Casablanca and The Life of Emile Zola, or Bridge on the River Kwai a few years down the pike. I could be totally wrong about this, but it strikes me kind of like the year Shakespeare in Love won and everybody was so gung-ho about it at that moment — and it won over Saving Private Ryan — and then nobody’s ever mentioned it or thought about it, or wanted to see it, since then.

Q: What movie would you most love to show on TCM that you have not had the chance to yet?

A: Well, we’ve entered into an agreement with 20th Century Fox where we get to show X number of films once a year, then next year we get more. I’m kind of addicted to Gene Tierney the actress, and when we can show Laura, which I think is one of the great film noirs of all time, and we can also show The Razor’s Edge — which is one of my favorite books — and the 1946 version with Gene Tierney, Clifton Webb, and Tyrone Power, I mean then I’ll really be happy. Plus a Gene Tierney film called Leave Her to Heaven, which is in the most sensational color I’ve ever seen — and it’s described by many as a color film noir, but I’m not sure it’s possible to have film noir in color, but it’s a really great story. When we can show those three I’ll be really happy.