San Diego Comic-Con 2009

Every movie, or so the Comic-Con saying goes, looks like a hit at Comic-Con.

"There is a lot of enthusiasm," Cameron Diaz confirms to us before we're scolded by a flack for not abiding by our place in the press line. (Sorry, we got a bit enthusiastic.)

OK, so that's a yes on enthusiasm. But what about Oscar buzz? Does enthusiasm translate into nominations? Are there movies being hyped in San Diego that are going to be as hot as a Comic-Con swag bag come the Academy Awards?  

Our findings (that, to give you fair warning, may not necessarily appease "Team Cullen" T-shirt wearers):

• James Cameron's Avatar and Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds will not be ignored. They are everywhere here. On lamppost signs. On rolling billboards. In action-figure bubble packs. (Well, at least Avatar is. If Inglourious Basterds has any Brad Pitt or Nazi dolls, then we're sorry, we missed them. Probably because we were too busy staring at Seth Rogen's ride from Green Hornet.)

Of all the Comic-Con movies, Avatar went into San Diego with the most serious Best Picture buzz, and nothing that's happened here has changed that. James Cameron is working the scene like a man whose last movie didn't win a record-tying 14 Oscars and gross nearly $2 billion worldwide. 

Inglourious Basterds, along with Robert Downey Jr.'s Sherlock Holmes, helped pack Friday's Warner Bros. panel, and while we didn't spy anybody running out of the presentation high on Tarantino's World War II adventure, that's probably because nobody runs here. E!'s own movie man Ben Lyons told us his one stone-cold, Comic-Con-related Oscar prediction is a nod for the film's main Nazi baddie, Christoph Waltz, who won Best Actor at Cannes.

• Another Lyons prediction: Nominations for New Moon. Maybe.

Now Lyons wasn't calling for a Best Actor slot for Robert Pattinson, but he was saying the technical/special-effects categories weren't off-limits. Remember: Director Chris Weitz previously managed two tech nominations and one win for the otherwise ignored Golden Compass.

Any kind and any number of nods would be an upgrade for the series—Twilight didn't score one.  

• With the Best Picture field expanded to 10 movies, Star Trek has generated modest Oscar buzz. Paramount Pictures, which invited visitors to its convention-hall booth to lounge in Captain Kirk's chair, and be surrounded by pretty green alien ladies while they're at it, sure looked like it was working on its buttering-up techniques. Now if only Academy voters were as easily swayed as fanboys…

• Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus features the final performance by reigning Best Supporting Actor winner Heath Ledger and is enjoying some nice notices from Thursday's presentation. But as those same nice notices point out, Gilliam's film doesn't have a U.S. distribution deal yet. Consider any Oscar talk on this film to be presently tabled.

• A guy handing out complimentary fake-foxtail ties assured us Wes Anderson's stop-motion animated film, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, will win 10 Oscars.  

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