I'm pleased to report that this has been a good year for roles for women, and the Academy will have its hands full trying to narrow the field down to only five nominees for Best Actress and Supporting Actress. That's progress: hurray for Hollywood!

On the other hand, it wasn't such a good year for animals. In fact, there were so few noteworthy roles for animals in this year's releases that in choosing the competition for the "Where's Whitey?" Award for Best Animal Performance I've had to resort to nominating performances in films I haven't seen, and even in one case a performance by an entrée.