The lists represent voting from the entire TV Academy membership and comprise 50 percent of the nomination tally. The other 50 percent will be determined this weekend during Blue Ribbon Panel screenings of submitted episodes before a collection of judges. The final list of nominees will be revealed July 17.

With Pixar’s newest blue-chip animated movie ‘‘Wall-E’’ hitting theaters Friday, the 2008 Oscar race is finally off and running.

It’s an unofficial starting gun, of course. Technically, any movie that’s had a commercial release of at least a week in Los Angeles County since the start of the year is eligible to compete. But the first half of the year rarely yields much in the way of Oscar fodder, and this year has been no exception.

After broadcasting from Las Vegas last year, the awards will air live from Paramount Pictures Studios in Los Angeles on Sept. 7, MTV announced today.

The number of original songs that can be nominated from a single movie will now be limited to two, according to a rule change by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The academy’s governors approved the change late Tuesday.

Nominees will be announced on Dec. 4. The eligibility period for nominations is Oct. 1, 2007–Sept. 30, 2008.

We went, we saw, we loved it. "Iron Man" is a triumph, finally making a comic-book movie not seem so forced, so obligatory. We chalk it up to the great casting — Robert Downey Jr. (who we never tire of seeing described as "the best actor of his generation") and The Dude (a hardly recognizable Jeff Bridges playing a thankfully non-alien villain) — and, OK, the schlub factor.

We also find it interesting that the Pop Watch bloggers at Entertainment Weekly have taken the populist stance and called for the Academy to do some hard thinking — and consider Downey Jr. for an Oscar nomination. At the very least, it would be refreshing to have a slate of nominees from films the country — i.e., those same TV viewers you keep lamenting aren't watching the Oscars anymore, in droves — has actually seen.

What do you think? Was "Iron Man" just good escapist fun, or is it deserving of the Ultimate Nod? Comment below...

On Tuesday, the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. announced its key dates for its 66th annual awards. Nominations will be announced at 5 a.m. Thursday, Dec. 11.

Oscar nominees are usually revealed on a Tuesday about four weeks before the big show, which is typically held the last Sunday in February. For 2009, though, the targeted Tuesday — Jan. 20 — is Inauguration Day.
So the 81st annual Oscar nominees will be revealed Thursday, Jan. 22, and the Academy Awards will be presented Sunday, Feb. 22 — the earliest Oscars ever.

Now that the trophies are in the trophy cases, and we've finally recovered from (whew) the Oscar Week that almost wasn't, we're putting the blog to bed till the next show. Thanks for all your eyes and input. See you soon!

"Some of these movies are just too difficult for a mass audience, frankly," Davis says. "And if we have moved into an era where there's this dichotomy between big popular studio movies and smaller pictures for more specialized audiences, we may just have to get used to smaller audiences [for the Oscar telecast.] This could be a one-year blip but it doesn't look like one. It looks like something that has been developing over the past few years. It's as if the National Book Awards had to make a choice between giving awards to very serious fiction or to the most popular bestsellers. We've come to that point where there are two kinds of movies, and we're focusing on the ones which, almost by definition, aren't going to be blockbusters."

Studios now regularly promote their movies on the Web, (the success this winter of ‘‘Cloverfield’’ was partly based on a viral ad campaign). And the writers strike — which was primarily over revenue from material played online — proved just how much Hollywood is fixated on the Web. So why during its biggest night would Hollywood shun the Internet?

Cates called her Tuesday and ‘‘talked about the fact that he had made an oversight, pure and simple. He said, ‘You know I love you,’’’ Goldberg said today on ABC daytime talk show ‘‘The View.’’