The FG Predicts: The Oscars

This isn't exactly a challenge, especially post-Globes, DGAs, SAGs and the release of the nominations, and I'm skipping several categories, (you're welcome). The key to the Oscars is that each category votes for its own - actors for actors, directors for directors, so it's not entirely unpredictable.





Best Adapted Screenplay: Brokeback Mountain - great movies start with great stories. A reminder that actors, (and scenery for that matter), can be as beautiful or as rugged as possible, but if they don't have anything good to say or do, it's a waste of everyone's time.

Best Art Direction: I'd like to see Good Night & Good Luck win this category - it's pretty courageous to release a black & white film these days & this one was so good overall, I'm hoping it will win a few of the /smaller/ categories (I think it's going to miss out on the big ones). Of course, Memoirs of a Geisha might also eek it out, for entirely different reasons.

Best Supporting Actor: This is a slightly more challenging category than usual. George Clooney isn't going to get best director, so the Academy may give him this category as a consolation prize, because he's so popular, and because he puts his money and his art where his principles lie. Paul Giamatti pulled a Russell Crowe at the SAGs, winning this year because the actors feel guilty he didn't win for Sideways, so he can't be ruled out. I don't see the other three really contending, unless Jake Gyllenhaal wins to kick off a Mountain-slide.

Best Supporting Actress: Hmm. I have yet to hear a single kudo from a real person for Rachel Weisz's performance in The Constant Gardener, but I may be better able to evaluate that when I've seen it later this week. (She won the Globe and the SAG.) I'm tempted to think it's a result of all the Brits holding SAG cards ... Catherine Keener would be a nice choice, and again, Michelle Williams could win as part of the aforementioned Mountain-slide.

Best Actress: Although I suspect Felicity Huffman should win for TransAmerica, I don't think we're going to see a one-two punch on gender issues this year. Keira Knightley was lovely as Elizabeth Bennett, but wasn't even nominated at the SAGs. Reese Witherspoon seems to have this one sewn up, (which I know will disappoint all the Scarlett Johanssen fans coast-to-coast - she wasn't even nominated! Apparently it's just enough that she shows up to be groped.) Of course, any time Judi Dench is nominated, there's a chance she'll win. Still, I'm going with Reese - the added bonus is that you know she'll wear something amazing.

Best Actor: Every now and again, several outstanding performances pop up in the same Oscar season, and the best actor nominees are suffering this year. David Strathairn was amazing in Good Night & Good Luck, Heath Ledger broke new ground for straight Australian men in cinema, but this award belongs to Phillip Seymour Hoffman for two reasons. He hasn't won before, despite a string of incredible performances, and he embodied Capote.

Best Director/Picture: Ang Lee is going to win for direction & the Academy likes to keep these categories together like bookends - splitting it up only five times in the past 25 years (1981, 1989, 1998, 2000, 2002). Plus, they really wanted to give it to him in 2000 for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (the award went to Steven Soderbergh for Traffic). So I predict Mountain will take the two that really matter, while blanking on the acting categories.

Quibbles? Queries? Outright indignation? Bring it on - that's why there's a comments section.