While I go to the cinema at least once a week, I tend to visit Manchester’s art house cinema so my films of the year tend to be relatively obscure. It’s not that all the films at Cornerhouse are particularly artistic, but they’re not Oscar fodder and many are foreign, which means they’re ghettoised by the Academy. I try to review the films I see (it’s one of the reasons I started blogging), but sometimes just don’t get round to it.

And The Departed, the bookies favourite to win the best film Oscar, is one of those films I very much enjoyed but never got around to reviewing. The odds are that Scorsese will finally get a director’s Oscar. That bet has got to be worth taking; it must be his turn. But then the odds may not be so generous if the great man is seen as a certainty.

Anyway. The staring pistol’s been fired and here’s the full list of nominees. So who do you fancy? What are your Oscars betting options? And what kind of betting makes the most fun? The easiest route to straightforward bet has to be Totesport (look under specials) who have a free £50 bet promotion on. But if you’re looking for better odds or a bit more variety, try exchange betting with Betfair (look under sports, then special bets USA). Exchange betting pitches punter against punter to remove the bookmaker’s margin and give you to chance to offer odds against a result as well as take odds offered to win.

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