With the Academy Award® nominations being announced on Tuesday, it's hard to pay attention to the new releases this weekend. No matter how you may feel about the Oscars®, it's hard to suppress the excitement that surrounds the awards, and there are always movies of interest that one can find from the list of nominees. While your tastes may not mirror that of the Academy, the nominees are a good starting point for a short list of movies to see from the past year.

But anyway, back to the new releases this weekend!

Strangely enough, I can connect all four new releases to Jennifer Garner, so here goes. The easy one is Catch and Release, which stars Ms. Garner as a woman whose husband-to-be dies right before the wedding, and she has to come to terms with some secrets that he didn't disclose, including his son. Garner was also quite an item with Ben Affleck at one time, who is starring in Smokin' Aces.

The two starred in Daredevil, in which she played a character named Elektra. Coincidentally, Carmen Electra appears in the comedy Epic Movie, so even though that's a tenuous link, I'll take it anyway.

Last up is Blood and Chocolate, which is about a girl who has an interesting night hobby of turning into a werewolf. Normally, that wouldn't be a problem so long as you live in Romania, but she's fallen in love with a human, and the alpha male werewolf really had his sights set on her.

Where's the connection to Jennifer Garner, you say? Well, the aforementioned Mr. Affleck was in Pearl Harbor with Kate Beckinsale, who starred in Van Helsing as a princess whose brother turned into a werewolf. So there, all roads lead to Jennifer Garner!