Your annual Oscar anticlimax is officially underway, with Heath Ledger, Penélope Cruz and Slumdog Millionaire — among other familiar names — once again dominating the weekend's awards news.

· The American Film Institute yesterday named its Top 10 Films of 2008, from which Slumdog Millionaire was actually ineligible because it isn't, well, American. That didn't stop AFI's jury from recognizing pretty much every other laurel-bearer from the last two weeks of Oscar season — The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Dark Knight, "Frost/Nixon, Frozen River, Gran Torino, Milk, Wall-E and The Wrestler — with Iron Man and Wendy and Lucy filling in where Slumdog and Happy-Go-Lucky likely would have gone had they not been produced in lesser regions of the planet. That will teach them.

· The Boston Film Critics Association couldn't make its minds up about anything on Sunday, when Slumdog shared its Best Picture hardware with WALL-E, and Sean Penn and Mickey Rourke tied for Best Actor. Then it gave Best Director to Gus Van Sant for Milk as well as Paranoid Park, his skater thriller that mostly made the fest rounds in 2006 before petering out in limited release last March. You know the rest: Sally Hawkins, Heath Ledger and Penélope Cruz claimed the other acting awards; WALL-E took Best Animated Film; and Man on Wire won Best Documentary.

· Among smaller orgs, New York Film Critics Online fell in line behind Boston and pretty much everyone else, mixing it up just enough to honor Danny Boyle as Best Director for Slumdog.

· The ninth-annual Black Reel Awards were announced as well, bucking all convention by naming Cadillac Records its Best Picture and handing out acting awards to Queen Latifah (The Secret Life of Bees), Viola Davis (Doubt), Jeffrey Wright (Cadillac Records) and Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire). Next year, Beyoncé.