Amid all the earnest commentary, debate and prognostications over the Academy Awards, it’s refreshing to see someone taking the Mickey out of the nominees.

The UK website TheShiznit.co.uk cheekily has poked fun at the best film contenders by redesigning the movie posters “so they're a little more honest about their content.”

[Related: See the full list of 2012 Oscar nominees]
[Oscar watch 2012: SBS Coverage]

The Shiznit creative team’s wicked sense of humour is often politically incorrect but some of the new titles and taglines are very funny.

Hence The Iron Lady is rechristened Total Bitch with a strap that proclaims, “Crippled our Nation. Stole our Milk.”

The Help is dubbed White People Save Racism with the slogan, “You’re welcome, black people.”
 
Hugo’s 11 nominations haven’t spared the film from being mocked for its mediocre box office performance, affixed with the new title Marketing Nightmare and the slogan, “Martin Scorsese’s Loving Homage to the Early Era of Cinema and Filmmaking…for Children.”

Stephen Daldry’s 9/11 drama Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is pilloried as Extremely Lame & Incredible Cloying. 

David Fincher’s lurid remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is retitled All the Rape, No Subtitles with the strap, “The movie you already saw…Now in English.”      

The Descendants is given a clumsy new moniker which makes fun of its star:
Look! George Clooney is Good at Acting!

Perhaps the most devastating critique is the poster for Terrence Malick’s apparently pretentious, abstruse The Tree of Life: a montage of stills with one word in the middle: “WUH?”     

Among the least clever or inventive is the re-tweaking of Oscar frontrunner The Artist, which becomes Pure Art…Guaranteed Winner.

Christopher Plummer’s nod for best supporting actor in Beginners inspired the site to re-name the film Old gay man wins Oscar, which is misleading because Plummer isn’t gay.

The satirists at TheShiznit also took aim at several films that were overlooked in the nominations, including J. Edgar, whose poster shows Leonardo DiCaprio pleading, “Please nominate me. I’ll take anything. Even if it’s, just, like Best Make-Up.”

And Lynne Ramsay’s confronting We Need To Talk About Kevin is re-billed as Hardcore Sequel to Problem Child.   

The Shiznit’s piss-take does seem to have touched a nerve with many people who aren’t enthused with the current crop of Oscar nominees.

“From a pure spectator perspective this looked like a very boring year for movies. I don’t really hit the theater anymore unless something really compels me, and only Drive was able to do that this year,” said one comment posted on Collider.com. 

“The Artist hasn’t even won an Oscar, yet it feels like it already has. This sux,” moaned another.

Speaking of The Artist, an amusing tape of blooper outtakes from the silent movie has surfaced on the Internet. Enjoy.