The Oscar season is just starting to heat up. I’ve been fairly silent on the subject, but I’ve been consuming the news hungrily, poring over multiple online sources to get the latest on hosts, nominee counts, and the ever-shifting dynamics of what’s up or down, hot or cold, in or out.

Earlier today, one of my my favorite digital stopovers posted an article looking back at the worthiest Academy Award winners of the past ten years. As I think I’ve established, I find this sort of thing absolutely irresistable, and, after all, I’m a little preoccupied with considered the cinematic peaks of the 00s these days.

So here’s my humble tally of the instances from the past decade when I was most pleased by the names announced after the phrase “And the Oscar goes to….”

Best Picture: While I don’t even consider it the strongest film to win the Best Picture trophy this decade, it was a huge thrill when The Departed snagged the top prize. It was practically a given that its oft-denied director would receive the Academy Award that should have been his years (and years and years) earlier, but the consensus opinion was that the film itself was too dark, too violent, too crude to prevail. Not only was it the best of the five nominated films that year, but the Best Picture trophy ratified the Best Director prize that went with it. Best Director wasn’t just a de facto lifetime achievement award, it was bestowed because Academy members believed he directed the best movie of the year.

Best Director: Speaking of the obliquely unnamed individual above, it was a complete thrill to see Martin Scorsese finally get the award he’d deserved to win at least two or three times previously in his career, especially for a movie like The Departed, which feels as tough and uncompromising as the earlier offerings that the Academy was too skittish to honor.

Best Actor in a Leading Role: I’m tempted to opt for Sean Penn’s win for Milk, if only because it’s nicely representative of one of the most welcome trends in Academy selections in recent years, the triumph of of merit over sentiment. Instead, I need to stick with the performance that I suspect most would name: Daniel Day Lewis‘s in There Will Be Blood. It’s arguably the best from any performer in any category in the whole ten year span.

Best Actress in a Leading Role: Despite my belief that the Academy got this award exactly right half the time during the 00s, I find myself fairly underwhelmed by the collected performances when it comes to making selection for this exercise. (I wouldn’t have this problem, by the way, if Julianne Moore had won, as she should have, for Far From Heaven, a performance as inventive as inspired as Day-Lewis’s in There Will Be Blood.) I’ll submit the entirely unsurprising win Julia Roberts earned for Erin Brockovich, if only because watching it again recently for the first time in years reminded me just how good, and bravely unlikable, she is in the role.

Best Actor in a Supporting Role: I don’t know if there was another performance these past ten years that was as immediately iconic as Javier Bardem‘s in No Country For Old Men, not even Heath Ledger’s turn as The Joker that won a year later.

Best Actress in a Supporting Role: There are some sensational, show-stopping performances that won in this category, which makes me value Rachel Weisz‘s win for her subtle, intelligent work in The Constant Gardener all the more.

Best of the Rest: Almost as thrilling as watching Martin Scorsese collect the prize was seeing Randy Newman finally win after fourteen losses in prior years. Beginning by jokingly announcing “I don’t want your pity,” Newman proceeded to deliver a speech that matched up nicely with the tremendous collection of songs that he’s penned over the year. It was spirited, sardonic, and, in the end, surprisingly sweet.

I’ve become far less caught up in the swirl of the Academy Awards in recent years, and I fear that the expansion to ten nominees is going to blunt its impact even further. Still, when I think of the moments above, I realize that I’ll continue to be helplessly drawn in for the foreseeable future.

(Posted simultaneously to “Jelly-Town!”)