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2003 will be remembered as The End Of The Academy As We Know It. The game changes next year, as the Oscars move a month earlier and the entire awards schedule gets shaken up. But for now…

LET THE WEINSTEIN AWARDS BEGIN!!!

There aren't many surprises to chew on this year. The closest thing to an original thought was the Director's Branch nomination for Habla Con Ella (Talk To Her.)

The single worst nomination of 2003 is Treasure Planet as Best Animated Film. Treasure Planet is not only NOT one of the five best animated films of the year, it is unwatchable for anyone over 12. Congratulations to Tony Angelotti for shoving that one down The Academy's throat.

The second most egregious error is the failure of City of God, one of the very best films of 2002, 2003 and the last decade in general, to get a Best Foreign Language Film,. The film was not eligible in any other categories, since Miramax released the film three weeks after the qualifying period ended. The film was pushed out of the New York Film Festival, so the legend now goes, by Manohla Dargis, who is said to have walked out of the film after 20 minutes. Harvey is quoted as being shocked that the film didn't make NYFF, but ever since, his handling of the film has been ham-fisted and for those of us who love the film, a horror.

(A brief aside… I am watching E!, where the "experts" are putting the exclamation point in "IDIOT!")

Miramax got 21 of the 40 nominations in the Top Eight categories, which is actually not as bad as their four-for-eight run in Best Picture would suggest.

This column has not been overly kind to Gangs of New York, but the truth is, of ten nominations, the only two that I feel are unworthy are Best Picture and, sadly, Best Director. There is no director in this era that has not won an Oscar who is more worthy than Scorsese. But to give it to him for a jury-rigged, Weinstein-cut, shadow of his vision of Gangs of New York would be a true record books asterisk item.

Limited nods for Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers will be talked about quite a bit, but New Line should be happy to have gotten the Best Picture nomination. Given the unliklihood of winning in any major categories this year, Best Picture is all they needed. The campaign for Return of the King begins today. Peter Jackson, the writing team. Viggo Mortenson, Andy Serkis, Ian McKellan and the dominant female character in King all become leading contenders for next year's Oscars right now.

The real shafting of New Line came with About Schmidt, the real lost film of this year. Seeing the film limited to Nicholson and Bates and the nomination count for Chicago reminds me of one thing… rely on those initial instincts. When I first saw Schmidt, I walked out of the theater saying that Nicholson would win the Oscar and that the film was not a Best Picture movie. And I called Chicago as the movie to beat in October, long before seeing it.

I was wrong about Adaptation. It got all three acting nods, but no Best Picture berth. A damned shame. But the elders of The Academy could never get over that third act. (Either could a lot of young, smart people… who just didn't get it.)

Not only didn't Antwone Fisher get major nominations. It got NO nominations. Academy Rock has landed on Denzel. And it's not really funny.

About A Boy did push Lord of the Rings right out of a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination.

And although there was only one Black person nominated in a major category, Salma Hayek, Alfonso & Carlos Cuaron and two nominations for Pedro Almodovar suggests that The Academy feels that brown is this year's black.

More on Thursday, including actual rankings of the nominees…