Yes, when you take away the best actor awards, which animation is never going to get a nom for anyway, and ignore Best Animated, although Best Picture is kinda hard to ignore, then Screenplay and Director are other ways to honor Mr. Stanton and team. Of course, Wall-E isn’t up for either Picture or Director.
Milk may very well win Best Actor. Penn is in very strong contention there. I don’t think that Pitt has much of a chance. And Jenkins, even tho he had an excellent performance in The Visitor, doesn’t have the background for people to compare with his previous performances. So that leaves Langella and Rourke, with Rourke having a personal heartbreak life story, and Langella being amongst a magnificent cast. Milk probably won’t win best picture since Slumdog has been the favorite for a while now.
So Screenplay is a very fine way to honor the storymaker, a major award. Milk is nonfiction, the facts about Harvey Milk were already ‘in the can’. Most of the movie is spent in either the Castro St. camera shop or walking the marbled hallways of City Hall. So that weakness may give the win to Wall-E. I saw In Bruges, which is up for that award too. It has a very nice tour of that town, interspersed with the occasional obligatory violent act.