Today, the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) announced their nominees for Best Cinematography of 2011.  Nominations went to Guillaume Schiffman, (The Artist), Jeff Cronenweth (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), Robert Richardson (Hugo), Hoyte van Hoytema (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), and Emmanuel Lubezki (The Tree of Life).  The most notable snub is leaving out Janusz Kaminski for War Horse, and it looks like Steven Spielberg‘s movie is just about finished in the Oscar race after having also missed nominations from the Directors Guild and Writers Guild.  I would also say the ASC snubbed Roger Deakins for Rango, but I never really expected them to be open-minded enough to acknowledge an animated movie for Best Cinematography.

The ASC winner will be announced February 12th.  The ASC victor usually lines up with the Oscar winner. [Correction: /Film's Russ Fischer informs me that Kaminski couldn't have been nominated because he resigned from the society years ago.]

Continuing on with our look at the 2012 Oscar race, today we delve into Best Animated Feature and the technical categories. As Pixar’s Cars 2 was the studio’s worst-received feature to date (it currently sits at 38% on Rotten Tomatoes), we’ve got ourselves an actual competition in the Animated Feature category. Not only that, but if all 18 films that were submitted to the Academy are deemed eligible, we’ll have a total of five nominated films. This leaves us to debate the merits of Rango and The Adventures of Tintin against the likes of Puss in Boots and Arthur Christmas.

Additionally, we’ve taken a stab at Best Original Screenplay, Best Adapted Screenplay, and the technical categories. As these are incredibly tricky to predict this far out (and my picks would be doomed to haunt me come February), I’ve simply listed a couple of frontrunners in each category instead of going in depth. Though it’s still early, we’ve got an overall picture of how things look like they’ll stack up; so hit the jump to check out the state of the race so far. If you missed our previous preview articles, be sure to take a look at our picks for Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress, and Best Actor and Best Actress.