Every morning that the Oscar nominations are announced my stomach churns with panic and anxiety. One of these days, I know, I will get so many of my predictions wrong that I will have to accept the fact that I've lost all touch with reality, since what can be more real than the Oscars?

So far, though, I've managed an 80%-85% accuracy - in other words, about a grade B.

So here's the deal: you can spend $11 tomorrow and have your mind and soul degraded by "Tooth Fairy" or "When in Rome." Or you can watch Werner Herzog's new movie for free, which is screening as part of Gerald Peary's Cinematheque program at Boston University.

I'd opt for the second alternative, myself. "My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?" is reputed to be even weirder than "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans."

What with all the extraordinary events of the past week, not the least of which being the election of Scott Brown as US Senator (the same week "Legion" is released? hmmm), I feel an update on the Antichrist situation is in order.

Is Brown the Evil One, the one labeled 666 and prophesized in the Book of Revelations to bring on Armageddon? In my opinion, the jury's still out.

The other night a billion or so people watched a bunch of overdressed, sometimes inebriated Hollywood celebrities accept trumped up awards. The Golden Globes, they call them. Well, if you were one of the unfortunates who tuned in you might be asking yourself a) "What's wrong with Harrison Ford? He looks like he's coming out of anesthesia" and b) "That was terrible: where can I see a quality movie awards program?"

Watching some of unctuous, boorish, inebriated and otherwise (James Cameron gets his own category) embarrassing behavior on last night's Golden Globe broadcast, I remembered that I forgot to post my "Five Most Awkward Interview Moments from 2009." Partly that was because there weren't that many: I could only come up three.

To all the tributes to Eric Rohmer, who died a few days ago at the age of 89, I'd like to add one from my late mother, Kathleen Keough. I think it's fair to say that Rohmer was her favorite French director. Not that she was a big expert in the field, though later in life she expanded her knowledge of foreign films. As her hearing started to fade, she appreciated the subtitles.

James Cameron's "Avatar" is now in its fourth week topping the box office, with a worldwide gross of $1.3 billion and a $429 million domestic gross challenging the previous record of $800 million held by Cameron's previous movie, "Titanic." But a shrill note of protest is growing. Not about aesthetics, of course, but politics.

Saving the some of the best Best and Worst for last...

BETSY SHERMAN

TEN BEST

1.A Serious Man

2.The Hurt Locker

3.Observe and Report

4.Bruno

5.Treeless Mountain

6.Gigantic

7.In the Loop

8.Fantastic Mr. Fox

9.Where the Wild Things Are

10.World's Greatest Dad

It just occurred to me that we are almost a full week into the new year and I haven't yet listed my five worst of 2009. My guiding principle, as usual, is not to go after the easy targets, like "Did You Hear About the Morgans?" or "Planet 51," "Old Dogs" or even "Land of the Lost." Instead I've chosen films with artistic or commercial pretensions, whose critical and/or monetary success indicates a wrong direction that cinema has taken, leading inevitably to cultural and moral degeneration and the breakdown of civilization as we know it.

The last critics organization, The National Society of Film Critics (I would been there but my flight to New York for the meeting got snowed out) has voted, and it looks like "The Hurt Locker" has pretty much cleared the table with these groups, (in a mirror image of Boston, among others), Best Picture, Director, and Actor.

MICHAEL ATKINSON

It's been an exceptionally Godardian year, even if my favorite release of the year is a 40-year-old JLG romance requiem not enough critics saw, and which absolutely no one but me considered a viable 2009 list-maker in any case. I walk away stuffed and satisfied (even though I did not see Haneke's "The White Ribbon" in time), thanks largely in part to a handful of obsessive global filmmakers, Quentin Tarantino, and the persistent idea that commercial animation can be interesting, metaphorically loaded and uniquely textured, and not just a cash-hungry showbiz monstrosity.

Once again I've asked my esteemed colleagues here at "The Phoenix" to contribute their best and worst lists for the year and they have generously responded. Here's the first installment:

GERALD PEARY

10 Best:

1. The Hurt Locker

2. A Serious Man

3. Precious

4. Humpday

5. (500) Days of Summer

Since I posted that last item on filmmaker Jafar Panahi's status in Iran, the shit there has started to hit the fan. Protests over the weekend have erupted with thousands of demonstrators, violent clashes with the police, and at least ten dead. Once again, Iran's filmmakers are active informing the world of what's going on, with the great director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who has found refuge in Paris, posted an item on his website reporting the apparent assassination of the nephew of opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi.

Back in September at the Montreal Film Festival I had the privilege of interviewing the great Iranian director, Jafar Panahi ("The Circle," "Crimson Gold," "Offside"), who was the president of the international jury . He was outspoken about his support for the the anti-government movement seeking a fair election, and with the intensifying government crackdown on such dissenters I have since been monitoring the internet for any news on his situation.

Every year at this time countless awards go out to human beings for their accomplishments in movies. But what about the animals, whose contributions are sometimes the only thing that make a film worth watching? The "Where's Whitey?" Award is my small attempt to compensate for this injustice.

For those who need to be reminded, the name of the award refers to Kim Tae-kyun's "Crossing," a South Korean film I saw at the Palm Springs Film Festival.