While the majority of headlines dealing with the film coverage of this year’s SXSW Festival were dedicated to such notable screenings of Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell or Seth Rogen’s Observe and Report, the real success stories are the winners themselves. Despite the downturn in the economy, the fest achieved actual growth this year and is solidifying its place as both a home to independent cinema and a friend to the studio hype machine. While it’s hard to say how the latter will effect the fest in the long run, we can delight in this year’s winners circle as proof that the spirit of indie cinema is alive and well. Read on for the list of winners, as well as their corresponding trailers and further links for the fest.

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After months of talking about the Oscar nominees, breaking down the possible odds for the major categories, seeing all the nominees before the 22nd, and trying to live a normal life, I’m far too fried to offer any meaningful thoughts on what happened during the Oscars. So enjoy a smattering of musings and observations I made as notes while watching this year’s show.

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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.

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Do Oscar favorites really change between when the Nominees are first announced and those last few days before the ceremony? Well, of course they do! The politicking, the hand shaking, and the puff pieces do change people’s opinions on who should win these things, and, with that in mind, I offer up the following up-to-the-minute predictions to help you win your office Oscar pool. I don’t know who will be presenting, I don’t know how they plan to fill the empty sixty second void Peter Gabriel created in the show, and I’m not sure how people will react to a host with an Australian accent, but I do have a few opinions on how the big categories are shaping up.

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The nominations for the 81st annual Academy Awards were announced this morning, and while most of the picks are in step with predictions, the Academy also threw in a few shockers — which may change the point spread for awards season highrollers. So here with a list of the Oscar noms and a long-range take on the odds is AllMovie’s own resident awards bookie Perry Seibert.

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On Thursday morning, the nominations for the 81st Oscar presentation will be announced. And because I spend far too much time thinking about these awards - analyzing the different guild nominations and critics awards - I humbly offer these predictions on what to expect. As always, these do not reflect my personal opinion of what constituted the best Hollywood had to offer in 2008, just an educated guess as to what Hollywood thought about itself last year:

Best Picture:
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Frost/Nixon
Milk
Slumdog Millionaire

Best Actor:
Richard Jenkins - The Visitor
Frank Langella – Frost/Nixon
Sean Penn - Milk
Brad Pitt – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Mickey Rourke – The Wrestler

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As a lifelong movie lover, the Oscars are always a special event for me. No matter how much I learn about how movies are made, no matter how many I see, and how much I discover about what goes on behind the scenes, they are always fresh and surprising. I’ve been lucky enough to maintain an innocence, a naiveté, that allows me to suspend disbelief when I’m watching a film.

This year, for the first time, I was able to be in Los Angeles for Oscar weekend. On the day before the ceremony, I saw the Kodak Theater, the ceremony’s home since 2002, and experienced firsthand the massive amount of production that goes into making the Oscar telecast such a memorable event. For someone still able to be moved by movies past and present, placing my hands inside the impressions of Cary Grant, Harold Lloyd, and Matt Damon’s hands in front of Grauman’s Theater inspired a profound connection to the history of the art form I love. I attended an annual event called “Meet the Oscars,” a small exhibit that gives the public the opportunity to be photographed holding an actual Oscar statuette - providing me with a slam dunk snapshot for my Christmas card in ten months.

I share all this not to brag, but simply to note that while watching the telecast at the home of a dear friend in LA I was still as caught up in the show as I always am. Even though I saw first-hand the amount of fakery and construction that goes into the telecast – the red carpet, the cheesy gigantic Oscars that flank the people who enter the theater, the fact that the Kodak theater anchors a mall – I suspended my disbelief without ever thinking about it. I screamed and yelled and carried on when something surprised me, I bitched and moaned when I felt the winner was less than deserving (I’m looking at you editor of The Bourne Ultimatum), and I still marvel at the sheer star-power of great actors and marvel at the mysterious skill of the writers and directors I adore.

And the show this year was as worthy of love as any in recent memory. Here are a few of the many memorable moments and innovations.

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Every year when the Academy Awards roll around, the hardworking staff of the All Movie Guide gets together to nominate and vote on its own version of the best films of the previous 12 months. We call this little ceremony the AMG Awards, our own little alternate Oscars. Winners are presented in boldface.

Best Picture
Juno
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood
Zodiac

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