Bookies favor The Hurt Locker for a Best Picture win (gaining traction: an Up in the Air upset), but if BitTorrent downloads were votes, District 9 would squeak past Avatar for the win. Biggest losers: An Education, Blind Side. [TorrentFreak]

Tomorrow is Gay Christmas Eve, with Oscar nominations announced in the ayem, setting hearts aflutter and sending visions of sugarplum fairy Hugh Jackman dancing through heads. We have a good idea of who will be nominated, but who should be?

A plague of thirsty camels has overrun a small, drought-ridden town in the Australian outback. The only way to survive: Round thousands of those suckers up and gun 'em down from choppers.

Remember when sci-fi movies were about blowing up aliens and attacking Godzilla? Those days are gone, my friend. Thanks to Battlestar Galactica and District 9, the genre now exists to please the intelligentsia. The latest victim, the Star Trek sequel.

• Another media company falls: Reader's Digest Association, the publisher of Reader's Digest (duh) and a handful of other titles (like Every Day with Rachael Ray), says it will file for bankruptcy protection shortly. [Reuters]
• As you may have heard, things haven't been too well for Harvey Weinstein and his brother, Bob. So what will happen if they don't turn the mini-studio around? "I'll be... making cheap hamburgers, or selling trailers, or refrigerators, or something," says (a refreshingly honest) Harvey. [NYT]
• Fashion mags are looking a bit thin this fall, in case you haven't heard. [WSJ]
• Don't expect the feud between Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann to dissipate: Ratings for both have been up since the war of words began anew. [LAT]
• Comedian Steve Harvey is joining Good Morning America. In related news, comedian Mo Rocca is hosting a web-based show for CBS News. [ABC, NYT]
• District 9 was No. 1 at the box office this past weekend. [ABC News]

From this weekend's major releases, the movie generating the most excitement: District 9, a relatively low-budget thriller about human-alien relations in South Africa. But it - like many films like it - has a heavy theme: goddamn aliens!