The Envelope‘s Paul Sheehan has put up a big generous piece showcasing 36 or 37 potential Best Actor nominees, with a separate click-through page and a really nice photo showcasing each would-be nominee. The only weird part is that this isn’t May or June or July — it’s late September and the field has been narrowed down to eight or nine guys, at most, and none of them are Anthony Hopkins in Slipstream! Please!

Due respect to the Envelope-rs, but they need to get with the program. The final quarter is up and rolling, and the finalists are Daniel Day Lewis (There Will Be Blood), Denzel Washington (American Gangster), Tommy Lee Jones (In The Valley of Elah), Phillip Seymour Hoffman (Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead), James McAvoy (Atonement), Sam Riley (Control), Johnny Depp (Sweeney Todd) and Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild), and I’m being generous with two or three of these.

What’s the Envelope’s next move? Running a big piece about the 37 potential Best Actress nominees? It’s fine to run these big-blowjob, give-everyone-a-pat-on-the- back-whether-they-deserve-it-or-not articles if you’re the editor of a Hollywood Reporter special tribute edition and you’re looking to wangle as much advertising as possible, but this is Handicap Season — a time to start thinning out of the herd, not add to it.