The Complete Oscar Index: Now With Time-Lapse Animation!

Five months flies when you're having fun, and that's precisely what I was doing following the long awards-season trail all the way to this weekend's Oscars ceremony. And I have 20+ weeks of Movieline's Oscar Index to prove it -- now comprehensively compiled in one central location and animated (crudely, but still) for your reflective pleasure.

Starting last September from the point of view that "Oscarology has never quite been what anyone would call an exact science," Movieline tracked awards commentary, festival acclaim, critics and guild prizes, box office, crazy campaign stunts, brilliant behind -the-scenes maneuvers and general word of mouth to "chart the progress of this week's projected nominees as their profiles rise, fall, and/or are overtaken around the zeitgeist."

The Index strove for something close to objective empiricism in a notoriously silly, subjective and hyperbolic field, and to the extent it achieved that, it had a tendency to move fast. New readers often wondered where past contenders disappeared to, and if/how they were really competitive in the first place. I eventually found myself wondering the same thing, so here you go: all 23 weeks of the inaugural Oscar Index organized by category, followed by the week-to-week archives from which the charts were drawn.

As far as I'm concerned, this is the story of the 2010-11 race. It looks like just one story, I guess, but everyone who's everyone in this beloved Oscar racket will hear their voice in there somewhere. I appreciate them all for their diligence and perspective, and I appreciate you for checking it out regularly. I hope we get to do it again next year!

BEST PICTURE

The Nominees: 127 Hours, Black Swan, The Fighter, Inception, The Kids Are All Right, The King's Speech, The Social Network, Toy Story 3, True Grit, Winter's Bone

The Also-Rans: For Colored Girls, The Town

BEST DIRECTOR

The Nominees: Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan; Joel and Ethan Coen, True Grit; David Fincher, The Social Network; Tom Hooper, The King's Speech; David O. Russell, The Fighter

The Also-Rans: Danny Boyle, 127 Hours; Christopher Nolan, Inception; Peter Weir, The Way Back

BEST ACTRESS

The Nominees: Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right; Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole; Jennifer Lawrence, Winter's Bone; Natalie Portman, Black Swan; Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine

The Also-Rans: Anne Hathaway, Love and Other Drugs; Sally Hawkins, Made in Dagenham; Diane Lane, Secretariat; Lesley Manville, Another Year; Julianne Moore, The Kids Are All Right; Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit

BEST ACTOR

The Nominees: Javier Bardem, Biutiful; Jeff Bridges, True Grit; Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network; Colin Firth, The King's Speech; James Franco, 127 Hours

Also-Rans: Robert Duvall, Get Low; Ryan Gosling, Blue Valentine; Mark Wahlberg, The Fighter

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