One of the great things about being a 20-year-old entertainment journalist from a college newspaper based out of Wisconsin is that I count among my sources a nearly bottomless reserve of Hollywood insiders, all of whom I can call upon at a moment's notice whenever I am in need of gossip, column ideas, or simply a direct line to the Speaker of the House.

This past week, I decided to put these contacts to good use in order to glean some super-insider information about the recently announced Academy Award nominations. After days of burning up the phone lines, I have come away with a big piece of information, something which just might blow this entire race wide open: Apparently, there is some up-and-coming director named Martin Scorsese everybody seems to think is quite the talent and, crazy as this sounds, he just might have a shot at the Best Director award.

I've never heard of him before, but I guess he has made a few movies over the years, including titles like (please excuse me while I check my notes) "Goodfellas," "Raging Bull," and something called "Taxi Driver" which sounds like a delightful romp that I look forward to watching with my 7-year-old nephew over spring break. Apparently, this Scorsese fellow has been nominated for the Best Director Oscar six times, but has yet to win, which a lot of my Hollywood friends think is unfair. A lot of people I've talked to seem to think that this is going to be the year Scorsese wins, even though the movie he has in the running is a noncommercial little art house film called "The Departed," which, from what I understand, stars Tom Wilkinson and Helen Mirren as teachers at a Vermont prep school. Again, this is really insider knowledge, but I wanted to pass it along since absolutely nobody else is talking about this guy and you probably won't hear anymore about him or his movie over the next four weeks.

OK, so now we're back from wiseass-land where sarcasm reigns supreme. Look, nobody likes Scorsese more than I do, but if I have to hear another story about how he has not won yet, my head is going to explode quicker than Billy Costigan's at the end of "The Departed" (I would just like to apologize to everyone who has not seen "The Departed" for just ruining the ending. What I meant to say is that Alec Baldwin's character turns out to be a ghost).

I've just been shocked by how few interesting Oscar intrigues have taken shape over the past week. Obviously, part of the problem is that this is an obscure group of nominees, with most of the movies having either not made their way out to most of the country yet, or, in the case of "Little Miss Sunshine," "Babel," "The Departed," "The Queen," and "Little Children," were all released in the early fall. I guess I just don't understand why in this era of the Internet and 24-hour entertainment media, somebody can't manufacture an interesting story.

Call me an idealist (or just somebody who needs to fill his word quota), but there have to be more stories floating around that need to be told, or at least noted. Here are some subplots that may only be of interest to me.

Paul Haggis and I Would Not Be Good Roommates (Probably Because He Would Be More Popular than Me)

I realize that it is part of my job to be objective and keep an open mind about new movies from people whose work I have not particularly enjoyed in the past. With this in mind, simply allow me to say that I really, really dislike Paul Haggis' movies. The man has written six features–"Letters From Iwo Jima," "Flags of Our Fathers," "Casino Royale," "The Last Kiss," "Crash" and "Million Dollar Baby" — and I have hated every single one of them.

This wouldn't be perplexing if not for the fact that everyone else seems to love his movies, which I suppose means that I have grossly underestimated the appeal of movies where people scream their feelings at one another. This year, he managed to score his third consecutive nomination for "Letters From Iwo Jima," which is a pretty impressive achievement no matter how you feel about movies where unappealing people tell you about their emotions. Now, after saying all of this, I just want to say that I am still holding out hope that "Medellin" is going to be awesome, with or without Vinnie Chase in the Pablo Escobar role.

"Dreamgirls" Fans Would Be Comfortable Living in 17th-Century Massachusetts

As somebody who has a deep hatred for the cottage industry of Oscar prognosticators, I was pleased to see "Dreamgirls" get shut out when it came to Best Picture and Best Director (I also didn't think this movie was any good). For nine months, we've had Entertainment Weekly's Dave Karger and L.A. Times Gold Derby blogger Tom O'Neil trumpeting the movie as a shoo-in for best picture before anybody had even seen one second of footage. When Bill Condon's movie got shut out of the top two categories last week, O'Neil went on a bizarre, amazingly wrongheaded run on his blog where he derided the Oscar voters, calling them "those straight ole white geezers" and claiming Academy voters "can't break out of their white skins," a line even Paul Haggis would think was over-the-top.

I understand his feelings. Everybody who invests themselves in movies gets upset when something we love gets denigrated, but O'Neil's thesis — that anybody who doesn't like "Dreamgirls" is a latent racist — is shockingly irresponsible. If you want to find an example of racial inequality in Hollywood, look at Universal's decision not to push harder for Spike Lee's "Inside Man" this awards season. Lee's movie was one of the best-reviewed pictures of the year and broke a hundred million at the domestic box office. If we want to talk about fairness with regards to Hollywood and race, fine, but let's try and get over viewing an uneven musical as some sort of a sacred text.

Dames, Dames, Dames!

OK, so this is an obvious point, but I feel it needs to be made: Does America even have any actresses anymore? Are all of the little girls who want to grow up to be actresses somehow being born into Australian and English households only? With the exception of superhuman-acting-cyborg Meryl Streep and small child Abigail Breslin, none of the female actors up for nominations are American. How is this possible?

The Following People Would Be Fun to See, But You Will Not See Them

I love how in order to try and drum up some excitement for the ceremony, everybody is aflutter about the prospect of Sacha Baron Cohen accepting the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar in character as Borat. The one problem with this enticing hypothetical is that it has no chance of happening, since the thirty-four people who worked on the "Children of Men" script are going to be winning Best Adapted Screenplay anyway.

Personally, if given the chance to have anybody accept an award in character, I would much rather see Mark Wahlberg's Sergeant Dignam, if only so he could be the first person to use the word "fuckstick" in an acceptance speech since Judi Dench at the 1998 Screen Actors Guild awards. That was a fun night.

Ray Gustini is a sophomore majoring in English and journalism. Have any inside Oscar scoops for Ray? E-mail him at [email protected].