Welcome to Oscar Talk.

In case you’re new to the site and/or the podcast, Oscar Talk is a weekly kudocast, your one-stop awards chat shop between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood. The podcast is weekly, every Friday throughout the season, charting the ups and downs of contenders along the way. Plenty of things change en route to Oscar’s stage and we’re here to address it all as it unfolds.

It’s our 100th episode! With four years of coverage behind us, I went back and listened to our first podcast from August 28, 2009 and took notes on what we discussed. So we chew on that for old time’s sake.

One of the things we talked about in that first podcast was “The Hurt Locker,” and this year, Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal are back in the fray and weathering criticism of “Zero Dark Thirty.” We discuss that and coverage of same.

With that in mind, we also discuss the idea of “whisper campaigns” against films this time of year, whether they make an impact and whether it’s of any value to cover such things in the media.

And finally, we dig in on the Best Animated Feature Film race and how we see it playing out.

Have a listen to the new podcast below. If the file cuts off for you at any time, try the back-up download link at the bottom of this post. You to subscribe to Oscar Talk via iTunes here. And as always, if you have a question you’d like us to address on a future podcast, send it to OscarTalk@HitFix.com.

“Here I Come” courtesy of Stuart Park.