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We awoke this morning with our fully-charged Defamer prank sensors cranked high, awaiting the torrent of breaking non-news that would challenge us throughout April Fool's Day. Our first alarm sounded at Variety, where Pamela McClintock dumped the timetables for studios' award-season hopefuls and thus launched the trade's unofficial 2008 Oscar Race Handicapping Guide.

After the protracted 2007 awards season that imploded so spectacularly for ABC and mainstream Hollywood overall, we were kind of praying for at least a bit of a layoff before the strategizing likes of Universal, Fox and Paramount jumped on their trade organ to prepare us for Frost/Nixon, Baz Lurhman's Australia (pictured above), David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and even the Greg Kinnear drama Flash of Genius — which, despite being "based on the real-life story of the Detroit engineer who claimed the auto industry stole his idea for the intermittent windshield wiper," doesn't have us licking the glass on the multiplex door in anticipation.

We're still just as curious as anyone as to whether or not the Coen Brothers can repeat with the George Clooney/Brad Pitt comedy Burn After Reading, but at least let us get through a busy April 1 before forcing us to unpack our Oscar-season hype filters. We're still digging through the Diablo Cody wreckage, for Christ's sake.