It used to be that Sundance acclaim meant the kiss of death for its recipients. The 2008 Oscar nominations may signal the end of that curse.

Oscar-chasing Scott Rudin and Harvey Weinstein's convalescence from their bruising steel-cage Reader release-date squabble has left a tiny window open today for other awards hopefuls, a selection of which are scrambling through with varying degrees of aggression. But while the upstart Frozen River (a Defamer Attractions "Underdog" alum) is reportedly the first film to send out screeners to Academy voters, and while the controversial German pick for Best Foreign-Language Film, The Baader-Meinhof Complex, found mixed reviews upon its LA bow last Friday, the real witchcraft is wafting from a cauldron deep inside the Paramount lot. There, we're told, Brad Grey's ambition to exorcise DreamWorks and conjure awards-season glory for Brad Pitt yielded both the lovely Benjamin Button trailer after the jump and a closer, carefully vetted look at the 'Mount Spell Book.Which ultimately amounts to little more than succeeding without Steven Spielberg or Marvel's creative influence. But it will, as The NY Times reminds us, first depend on whether or not Grey can actually make people forget about Paramount Vantage less than a year after the label co-produced two Best Picture nominees before folding into the mother ship. How else to accomplish that, of course, but by courting both Oscar and audiences on the tenets of early 19th-century philosophy: