LONDON, England - The envelopes have been opened, the statuettes collected and the limos departed.

The biggest shock at this year's Oscars is that low budget, no-star 'Slumdog Millionaire' was even a contender in the first place.

Now all that's left for this year's Oscars is to sift through the results and fathom out what happened - and why.

Oscar results are usually analyzed in terms of expectations and shocks - which winners succeeded and failed to satisfy the pundit's predictions (as I attempted to do a few weeks back – how did your predictions go?).

But 2009 was a year largely devoid of shocks.

Heath Ledger ("The Dark Knight"), Kate Winslet ("The Reader") and Penelope Cruz ("Vicky Cristiana Barcelona") all won in their respective categories as predicted. Likewise, "Slumdog Millionaire" took Best Picture and Best Director (I foolishly suggested "The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button" might nab one of these).

Many commentators have hailed Sean Penn's Best Actor prize for "Milk," for which he beat out favorite Mickey Rourke ("The Wrestler") as a shock. Not so.

There's two types of shocks in the Oscars - unexpected shocks and predicted shocks.

Unexpected shocks are few and far between - say "Brokeback Mountain" losing out on Best Picture to "Crash" in 2006.

It just happens: sometimes the awards season goes on for so long that the front runner simply gets overhauled. Or, Academy voters maybe say to themselves: You know what, we're not going to vote the way everyone reckons we are.

Penn's win, on the other hand, is a predicted shock. Penn won the same Oscar in 2004 for "Mystic River." Every awards body has its own tastes. It's not that the Academy does not like Mickey - they just prefer Sean.

No, this season's biggest shock has been a slow-burn unexpected shock, one that's been so long coming that it's almost failed to register.

"Slumdog Millionaire."

The Oscar success of Danny Boyle's Mumbai-set film has been hailed as a sure bet these past few weeks - "Slumdunk Millionaire," if you will.

But its victories were never certain.

The shock is not just that "Slumdog" won eight Oscars (which puts it on a par with "Gone With the Wind" and "On The Waterfront," and ahead of "Schindler's List" and "Lawrence of Arabia") but that it was even a runner in the race at all.

Remember - this is a low-budget, no-star film that almost went to DVD following the collapse of Warner Independent Pictures (which like CNN is owned by a unit of Time Warner) before it was rescued last summer by Fox Searchlight.

If "Curious," "Slumdog's" closest rival with 13 nominations, had won more awards then it would remind Oscar-watchers of the success of "Forrest Gump." Films like "Milk," "Frost/Nixon" and "The Reader" also have their own Oscar-nominated antecedents.

But "Slumdog" is reminiscent of nothing else that has been this popular in recent Oscars history.

Sometimes the best shocks also hint at a seachange.

What do you think about this year's Oscar winners? Tell us your thoughts.

LONDON, England – The dust has settled after yesterday's Oscar nominations. We know everything in terms of the final five in each category - but for many of the awards we are only left with guesswork as to the likely winners come February 22. Oscar likes to surprise - only in hindsight, once the awards have been handed out, can we determine why the Academy voted as it did.

The Oscar nominations for best picture are announced in Beverly Hills Thursday.

Making Oscar predictions is a game for fools - but it's also lot of fun, something we need in the current climate. Give me your suggestions at the bottom of this post - and in the meantime I'd offer the following...

No movie will make a clean sweep. "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," with 13 nominations, heads the field, with "Slumdog Millionaire" behind it on 10. This only reflects how "Curious" has acting nominations while "Slumdog" does not: these two are running close.

The certainty in the main categories is Heath Ledger ("The Dark Knight") for best supporting actor  - not just for his performance or because he died but also because he would have won an Oscar eventually. The likeliest challenge? Philip Seymour Hoffman ("Doubt"), who beat Ledger to a best actor Oscar in 2006. But it would be a major upset.

The best actor is Mickey Rourke's to lose for "The Wrestler." Oscar likes a comeback - Rourke's only hindrance is if the prize is taken for granted by everyone, in which case Oscar could choose someone else. Academy winner Sean Penn, who expands his range through the powerful and tender "Milk," is in the wings waiting for him to fall.

The biggest nomination shock is in best actress and the exclusion of Kate Winslet for "Revolutionary Road" (it lost out in best film and director too), for which she won a best actress drama Golden Globe.

Still, the five-time nominee will win her first Oscar for "The Reader," in which she was wrongly pushed for supporting actress. Strongest challenges come from two-time winner Meryl Streep ("Doubt") and Anne Hathaway ("Rachel Getting Married"), who between them have dominated critics' awards.

Best supporting actress is more open (although why no Rosemarie DeWitt for "Rachel?"). Amy Adams and Viola Davies (both "Doubt") will cancel each other out; and "The Wrestler's" Marisa Tomei may suffer due to Rourke's likely success. Expect Penelope Cruz to win for "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," Woody Allen's overly-mannered drama.

The best picture and best director usually go to the same movie. The tussle here is between Danny Boyle's colorfully kinetic "Slumdog" and David Fincher for "Curious." Trailing third is "Frost/Nixon," which feels more like a series of strong performances than the complete package.

Crowdpleaser "Slumdog" stands out in a season of autumnal features tinged with regret and loss. It's also hard to ignore the technical challenges faced by Boyle for the Mumbai shoot. Remember - less than six months ago "Slumdog" was bound for DVD in the United States.

Plans to shoot "Curious" have kicked around Hollywood for years - usually not a good sign. But Fincher, who usually deals in darker fare, does a strong job of sustaining the narrative for more than 150 minutes.

Actors are strongly represented in the Academy - and "Curious" is unlikely to win any acting awards. Will voters compensate this retool of Oscar-winner "Forrest Gump" elsewhere - maybe give it a director or picture plaudit and "Slumdog" the other? Don't rule it out.

Of course this is all conjecture. One, or all, of these tips, is plain wrong. Oscar is unpredictable - that's part of its appeal

But who do you think should win this year's Oscars - and who do you think has unjustly been left out?

LONDON, England - Can Mickey Rourke make one of the comebacks of modern movie history, bagging a Best Actor Oscar for his role as a fallen fighter in "The Wrestler?"

Mickey Rourke's arresting movie comeback as Randy Robinson, has some serious Oscar beef.

Don't bet against it after watching  Darren Aronofsky's harrowing drama, which took top awards on the autumn festival circuit and has just opened in the U.S.

Rourke - whose bad-boy existence has fed tabloids for the best part of two decades - confronts the part of fallen 1980s ring legend Randy "The Ram" Robinson, getting by on a diet of painkillers and steroids and at one point lamenting: "I'm an old broken-down piece of meat."

Wrestling traditionally presents itself as prime-time pantomime; in contrast Aronofsky takes a naturalistic, semi-documentary stance, revealing a contrived theater of gore, replete with staple guns, barbed wire and self-cutting as stage props.

Despite acknowledgment, even reverence, from fellow ring stars, Robinson looks toward stripper Cassidy (Marisa Tomei), also engaged in a world of fakery, for solace; and his estranged student daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) for reconciliation.

But he is a relic fighting against time and his attraction to the limelight, as primitive and retro as his bleach-yellow scrag of hair or the 1980s bouffant rock that soundtracks the drama.

Photography sets the narrative within a series of interiors - the inside of trailer homes and locker rooms, supermarkets and strip clubs - to emphasize how Robinson is trapped in his addiction to the limelight. When the drama does switch to exteriors, it is into a chilly landscape washed in gray hues and slab browns. Rarely does Aronofsky - himself making a minor comeback after "The Fountain"(2006) - allow the camera to go wide.

Toward the movie's end there are a couple of minor narrative mistrips - but they are not enough to derail Aronofsky's intent nor Rourke's startling and raw performance.

Of course it's easy to say that Rourke is simply building on his own life experiences for the role (a seasoned boxer himself, he has referenced his wild times during publicity junkets for the movie).

But that notion suggests Rourke is somehow channeling and not acting; and with "The Wrestler" he draws from Robinson a fragility and vulnerability, even tenderness, that can only provoke a sympathetic wince from audiences.

For Rourke has made a comeback with serious Oscar beef. And in an awards season largely devoid of last year's clutch of masculine features - "No Country For Old Men", "There Will Be Blood", "Eastern Promises" - his performance sets him well apart from rival nominees. Whether that will help him with awards voters is another issue.

As movie resurrections go, Rourke's performance is up there with Oscar-nominee John Travolta's turn in the higher-profile "Pulp Fiction" (1994), which helped parlay his then-stranded career into longer-term gains. Here's hoping Rourke can do similar.

Who do you rate for the best movie comebacks - be they in front or behind the camera?

You suggested some great ideas, including early afternoon screenings during the week (that's how I caught "Cloverfield," "Tropic Thunder" and Indy 4 this year) and investing in a home cinema setup. For what it's worth I would also venture the following...

1. Try your local IMAX cinema if you're fortunate enough to live near one. The range of movies is usually limited to blockbusters and the tickets tend to be pricier - but the screen is as tall as an apartment block and the sound loud enough to drown out a mariachi rally. I thoroughly enjoyed "Batman Begins" at the IMAX in London in 2005 - despite a group of truant schoolkids who hollered throughout.

2. If you know any journalists or other media professionals, then see if they will take you as their guest to a preview press screening. Everyone usually sits there and, um, watches the movie.

3. It's also worth joining a film club if there's one in your town or city - fellow members are as likely to be as passionate about movies as you and not want to ruin your enjoyment.

Hope that all helps - happy viewing...

P.S. Myriam: feel free to use the flyer idea, there's no copyright on it - but I accept no responsibility for any adverse reaction.

LONDON, England - So I'm sat in Screen 3 of The Curzon Soho, an artsy basement cinema in London's Soho district. We're 10 minutes into the early afternoon screening of black-and-white documentary "Of Time And The City," Terence Davies' elegiac paean to post-World War Two Liverpool. Selected to play at the Cannes Film Festival, Davies' very personal outsider memoir has been universally praised by critics, its release much anticipated by UK audiences for its use of –

Terence Davies' 'Of Time And The City' - best appreciated without annoying audience members.

And then it starts.

Creak creak. Creak creak. Creak creak.

My seat pitches back and forth. Back and forth.

I look round. A fellow audience member in the row behind has his knees buried into the back of the seat next to mine.

I stare. He stares back. He does not care.

Creak creak. Creak creak. Creak creak.

No one else is sat nearby. I'm the only person bothered. If I complain I risk disturbing the pic for everyone else. I don't want to move. Why should I?

So I simmer in silence for the next hour - and fling "Of Time And The City" into that grubby popcorn bucket marked Movie Screenings Wrecked by Someone Else In The Audience.

Poke around among the dregs of said bucket and you'll stumble on the likes of "Batman" (1989, Cardiff), when I sat next to a scarily pale woman and her scarier paler teen son. Ten minutes in and they yanked bulging carrier bags from under their seats. For the next hour they fell upon samosas, sausage rolls, crisps, orange juice cartons, meat pies, pizza slices and chicken wings like those teeny tiny dinosaurs munching on the asking-for-it IT guy in "Jurassic Park."

Then there was "Last Orders" (2001), Fred Schepisi's touching drama about loss starring Michael Caine, Bob Hoskins and Ray Winstone (sounds a tall order but Schepisi managed it). Did the audience really benefit from having a party of students among its numbers that night, only one of who could speak English - and who had to loudly translate the dialogue for the other 11?

It's not just been in the UK - take "Spider-Man 2" (2004) in a moviehouse just off Times Square. The best that New York could offer included scary-looking gang members nonchalantly sloping up and down the aisles; the background drone from two fellow tourists who mistakenly thought they had tickets for "Fiddler On The Roof"; possibly a séance going on near the emergency exit. Hey, at least the seats were comfy.

Being stuck on the subway in high summer, being handed a parking ticket first thing on a Monday – nothing, but nothing, hurts more than having a movie screening wrecked.

They're all there, sloshing around in the bucket.

"Bladerunner: The Director's Cut" (1992, constant, maybe understandable, drunken guffaws at Sean Young's performance); "The Truman Show" (1998, "dee-diddly-dee-dee-dee-diddly-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee" from a cellphone at the crucial bit when Truman's yacht crunches the horizon); "The Others" (2001, how is it physically possible for popcorn to scratch so loudly?); "Solaris" (2003, bored father with weekend custody of sugar-pumped toddlers in ponderous sci-fi drama); "Sideways" (2004, man swaying back and forth for the first half of the film, then left to right for the second half – altitude sickness maybe?); something directed by Pedro Almodovar (sometime during the last 40 years, too massively irritated by the end to recall what the movie was or where i saw it or what wound me up in the first place - just that it somehow involved cheesy nachos).

Seems I'm not the only one. A few weeks back cinema chain Vue made some of its "Quantum Of Solace" screenings adult-only in the UK in order to stop kids ruining the movie for older patrons. It's a move made from the best of intentions – but as my litany of movie misery attests, over-18s are as much to blame as children. It all comes down to a question of respect, regardless of age.

Several years ago, I thought about printing up some flyers to hand out at the end of wrecked screenings. "Thank you for ruining my enjoyment of the film" they would read at the top. "You managed to do so by..." There would then follow a checklist of common complaints with the appropriate offenses ticked.

My other half thankfully caught sight of an early draft. She pointed out that (i) it was arrogantly patronizing to grade people on their movie-watching manners; (ii) she would never go to the movies with me again (though that would avoid the usual rom-com versus zombie flick bickering); (iii) she would refuse to visit me in hospital if I was dumb enough to go ahead with the idea.

She also reminded me that I was, um, being utterly hypocritical. So...

...I'd like to apologize to anyone disturbed by a group of giggling drunken students at a late-night screening of Roman Polanski's "Bitter Moon" in the northern English city of Sheffield in 1992. I'm really, really sorry. It's just that the last 30 minutes seemed like some hybrid mutation of "The Poseidon Adventure" and "What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?," with Hugh Grant slung into the sad sorry cocktail for good measure. What can I say? Drink seemed the obvious, if inexcusable, solution.

But what do you think? Should cinemagoers be more tolerant of each other's foibles? Have you any ideas for trouble-free cinema viewing? Send your comments to the usual below...