Oh God yes, the Oscar nominations were announced this morning! Our excitement was rewarded with a slew of nods for bleak pics featuring quiet dudes, as No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood each scored eight nominations.

Jon Stewart will host the awards show on February 24, which may or may not be a star-studded event, depending on whether celebs want to cross writers' strike picket lines and attend the ceremony. The possibility that the strike will be over by then is looking more and more like a distant hope.

After the jump, a partial list of the snooze-worthy nominations, and why they're, well, snooze-worthy ...

Best Picture
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood
Atonement
Juno
Michael Clayton

Why this is boring: Juno is like a non-surprise surprise here, a sort of a Prozac nomination just so we don't all slit our wrists. Michael Clayton is sort of a shocker, too, as it's just not that good. There are a bunch of other movies that could have taken its place, but I guess it has George Clooney doing something serious and vaguely altruistic, which, as we all know, equals automatic nomination.

Best Actor
Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will Be Blood)
George Clooney (Michael Clayton)
Johnny Depp (Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street)
Tommy Lee Jones (In the Valley of Elah)
Viggo Mortensen (Eastern Promises)

Why this is boring: This is excruciatingly dull. Day-Lewis and Jones both have Oscars from flicks they made in the early '90s. Clooney's won before, but he's just so handsome and charming, they had to nominate him again. Depp's been nominated before, and maybe they'll give it to him as a sort of lifetime achievement award. If there were any justice, they'd give this to Viggo, who is the only one on this list who's never won and never been nominated. And he got naked and did a knife-fight scene. Ballsy!

Best Actress
Marion Cotillard (La Vie en Rose)
Ellen Page (Juno)
Julie Christie (Away From Her)
Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth: The Golden Age)
Laura Linney (The Savages)

Why this is boring: It ensures that we'll be reading about how cool Ellen Page every day for the next three months.

Best Supporting Actor
Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men)
Philip Seymour Hoffman (Charlie Wilson's War)
Casey Affleck (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
Hal Holbrook (Into the Wild)
Tom Wilkinson (Michael Clayton)

Why this is boring: Okay, it's silly that Javier Bardem is being put forth as a "supporting actor." I smell a studio strategy so he doesn't have to compete with Daniel Day-Lewis in the big-boy Best Actor category. Casey Affleck should win, just because he's young and the most likely to give a speech that won't have us begging for the orchestra to cut in.

Best Supporting Actress
Ruby Dee (American Gangster)
Cate Blanchett (I'm Not There)
Saoirse Ronan (Atonement)
Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone)
Tilda Swinton (Michael Clayton)

Why this is boring: As usual, Cate Blanchett deserves to win.

Best Director
Ethan and Joel Coen (No Country for Old Men)
Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood)
Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)
Jason Reitman (Juno)
Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton)

Why this is boring: OMG! This is a thrill, a sort of slap in the face for Atonement director Joe Wright, who is noticeably and amusingly absent.

Now, oddly enough, CNN isn't listing the nominations for Best Writing in its coverage of the nominations. Seems a little tacky when Hollywood's writers are on strike, trying to get more respect/money. So, here are the writing nominations, without snide comments—because we're classy like that.

Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen
Diablo Cody (Juno)
Nancy Oliver (Lars and the Real Girl)
Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton)
Brad Bird (Ratatouille)
Tamara Jenkins (The Savages)

Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published
Christopher Hampton (Atonement)
Sarah Polley (Away From Her)
Ronald Harwood (Le Scaphandre et le Papillon)
Joel Coen, Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men)
Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood)