Watch the 2012 Oscars Best Picture Nominees Online

The 2012 Oscar nominees have been announced, which means it's once again time for many of us to look at the list of Best Picture nominees and think, "Gee, I haven't seen any of these."

If you're thinking just that, Yidio has your back. Now that the long-time home of cat videos and nut shots has streaming movies available for rental, you can watch some of the Academy Award nominees at home in an instant, without having to deal with so much as a Redbox.

This is especially good to see as subscription services like Hulu and Netflix do not yet have any of the Best Picture nominees available for online streaming.

Of course, some of the nominees are not yet available since they just hit theaters a month or so ago. So if you want to see "War Horse" or "The Descendants," you're going to have to wait a while longer.

However, you can rent "The Help" (link), "Midnight in Paris" (link) and "Moneyball" (link) through Amazon and iTunes for $3.99 apiece for a 48-hour rental. All three are fine films in their own way, and well worth the $4, especially if you want to be nice and pay for legal content.

So if you can watch three of the Best Picture nominees via Yidio before the Oscars even air, does that make it officially "the future" now? I'd say so.