Let's begin with a caveat: I'm not very good as this Oscar-guessing thing. So if you're planning to use my predictions to help win your annual Academy Awards pool, you should know that two years in a row now, I've only guessed correctly in 15 out of 24 categories, giving me an average of .625 - a moderately underwhelming record.
Then again, if that were my batting average in professional baseball, I'd be a god, so I'm pressing ahead.
The following are the nominees for the 80th-annual Academy Awards, scheduled to air on ABC affiliate WQAD-TV at 7 p.m. on Sunday, February 24. And while there's much uncertainty about the eventual results in several major categories, at least I'm feeling confident about this year's all-but-inevitable Best Picture - a category I botched last year. And the year before that. And the year before that. (You've been warned.)
Boldface denotes my predictions.
BEST PICTURE
Atonement
Juno
Michael Clayton
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood
Winner of the Producers Guild Award, the Directors Guild Award, and the Screen Actors Guild Award. The last movie to do that? The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, which won 11 Oscars out of its 11 nominations. With its eight nods, I don't see No Country pulling off that kind of 100-percent victory. Seven out of eight seems about right, though.
BEST ACTOR
George Clooney, Michael Clayton
Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
Johnny Depp, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Tommy Lee Jones, In the Valley of Elah
Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises
And don't be surprised if, while Day-Lewis is holding the Oscar, the statuette actually genuflects.
BEST ACTRESS
Cate Blanchett, Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Julie Christie, Away from Her
Marion Cotillard, La Vie en rose
Laura Linney, The Savages
Ellen Page, Juno
As Julie Christie is the more obvious front-runner, I'll inevitably pay for this wrong guess. But I'll do it with honor, as Cotillard's performance is the sort of stunningly inspired transformation that won Day-Lewis an Oscar for 1989's My Left Foot. And Cotillard did just win the British Academy Award for Best Actress. After winning a Golden Globe last month. Hmm. Maybe I won't be paying for this guess.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Charlie Wilson's War
Hal Holbrook, Into the Wild
Tom Wilkinson, Michael Clayton
Hey, I'm not betting against him ... .
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Cate Blanchett, I'm Not There
Ruby Dee, American Gangster
Saoirse Ronan, Atonement
Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone
Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton
Because it would be unthinkable if the Academy didn't reward at least one likable performance this year, and among this lineup, Dee's the only option. And yeah, she only has five minutes of screen time ... and only one big scene ... and she's totally peripheral to the storyline ... but still ... it's Ruby Dee!
BEST DIRECTOR
Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood
Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, No Country for Old Men
Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton
Jason Reitman, Juno
Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell & the Butterfly
It's quite possible that, in future years, we'll bitch that Anderson was robbed of a Best Director Oscar for There Will Be Blood, the way we still gripe about Scorsese's loss for GoodFellas. And then we'll stop bitching, because we'll remember just how freaking good No Country for Old Men actually is.
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood
Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, No Country for Old Men
Christopher Hampton, Atonement
Ronald Harwood, The Diving Bell & the Butterfly
Sarah Polley, Away from Her
Substitute "Best Adapted Screenplay" for "Best Director," and just re-read the previous commentary.
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Brad Bird, Jim Capobianco, and Jan Pinkava, Ratatouille
Diablo Cody, Juno
Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton
Tamara Jenkins, The Savages
Nancy Oliver, Lars & the Real Girl
Fo shizz.
BEST FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILM
Beaufort, Israel
The Counterfeiters, Austria
Katyn, Poland
Mongol, Kazakhstan
12, Russia
Normally, the majority of foreign-language Oscar nominees don't reach our area. But this year, they barely made it to anyone's area. With no buzz to rely on, then, I'm going with the Holocaust drama The Counterfeiters, because I can't seem to find an Oscar prognosticator who isn't predicting it. If I'm gonna be wrong, I'm gonna have company.
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
Persepolis
Ratatouille
Surf's Up
A mean-spirited critic finally gets what's coming to him. How could the Academy possibly resist?
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
No End in Sight
Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience
Sicko
Taxi to the Dark Side
War/Dance
My brain says No End in Sight, Charles Ferguson's and Audrey Mars' staggeringly smart Iraq war indictment. But, come on, it's an election year ... how could voters resist the urge to give Michael Moore one more crack at the mic?
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Atonement
The Diving Bell & the Butterfly
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood
In addition to No Country, perpetual Oscar also-ran Roger Deakins has also been nominated for The Shawshank Redemption, Fargo, Kundun, O Brother Where Art Thou?, The Man Who Wasn't There, and The Assassination of Jesse James. Just give it to him, already!
BEST ORIGINAL SONG
"Falling Slowly," Once
"Happy Working Song," Enchanted
"Raise It Up," August Rush
"So Close," Enchanted
"That's How You Know," Enchanted
Without question, the decade's most idiosyncratic category. (Winners since the 2000 Oscars: Bob Dylan, Randy Newman, Eminem, Annie Lennox, Jorge Drexler - for a song performed in a foreign language - Three 6 Mafia, and Melissa Etheridge.) Expect the Irish acoustic number to win, and deserve to win, over Enchanted's clever animated-musical parodies and whatever August Rush song I've blocked from memory.
BEST FILM EDITING
The Bourne Ultimatum
The Diving Bell & the Butterfly
Into the Wild
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood
If the Coen brothers' editing alias Roderick Jaynes wins this one, and the Coens also win the Picture, Director, and Adapted Screenplay awards they're likely shoo-ins for, they'll have made history, tying for the record of most Oscars received in a single year. The four-time winner they'd share that acknowledgment with? Walt Disney. And if anyone ever opens a CoenBrothersland, I'm there.
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
The Golden Compass
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
Transformers
A Michael Bay-directed adaptation of a toy, for Pete's sake ... and a pretty damned good one! Academy members should feel no guilt about voting for Transformers here.
BEST SOUND MIXING
The Bourne Ultimatum
No Country for Old Men
Ratatouille
3:10 to Yuma
Transformers
Or here. Which should be great news to nominated mixer Kevin O'Connell, currently on his 20th nomination without a win. Last year, referencing his likely (and eventual) loss for Apocalypto, I wrote, "The 20th time has to be the charm, right?" It just might be.
BEST SOUND EDITING
The Bourne Ultimatum
No Country for Old Men
Ratatouille
There Will Be Blood
Transformers
For the devastating precision of those bullets during the hotel attack. And for that same scene's quiet unscrewing of a light bulb. And the distantly ringing telephone. And for the transponder. And for the comedic scratch of a woman's fingernails against an emery board. And for the ... .
BEST COSTUME DESIGN
Across the Universe
Atonement
Elizabeth: The Golden Age
La Vie en rose
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
There are only a handful of truly iconic dresses in cinema history. Keira Knightley's emerald-green number is one of them.
BEST ART DIRECTION
American Gangster
Atonement
The Golden Compass
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
There Will Be Blood
Atonement's decorations - particularly in that famed six-minute tracking shot - were pretty iconic, too. Too bad that director Joe Wright never lets you forget it for an instant.
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
Atonement, Dario Marianelli
The Kite Runner, Alberto Iglesias
Michael Clayton, James Newton Howard
Ratatouille, Michael Giacchino
3:10 to Yuma, Marco Beltrami
Once upon a time, about a decade ago, winning Best Costume Design, Art Direction, and Score would mean a fait accompli Best Picture win. (See Shakespeare in Love, Titanic, The English Patient ... .) Not so much now. Evolution in progress, my friends.
BEST MAKEUP
La Vie en rose
Norbit
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
As much as I'd love to back La Vie en rose here - and really, from a voter's perspective, isn't it the least embarrassing choice? - I'm betting on Pirates' Ve Neill and Martin Samuel. They helped create dozens of monsters, while La Vie's Didier Lavergne and Jan Archibald basically lent their talents to ... well, one.
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT
Freeheld
La Corona (The Crown)
Salim Baba
Sari's Mother
The subject matter in this frequently downbeat category includes AIDS, the Iraq War, and a mismanaged health-care system ... and that's just Sari's Mother. Call me insensitive, but seriously, how can it lose?
BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM
At Night
Il Supplente (The Substitute)
Le Mozart des Pickpockets (The Mozart of Pickpockets)
Tanghi Argentini
The Tonto Woman
I love that parenthetical "The Mozart of Pickpockets" more than I can say. Apparently, we wouldn't have been able to translate the film's foreign-language title without it. It's a total shot in the dark, but I'm predicting a Tonto Woman win here, as it's based on a story by some writer named Elmore Leonard. I hear he's good.
BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM
I Met the Walrus
Madame Tutli-Putli
Même Les Pigeons Vont au Paradis (Even Pigeons Go to Heaven)
My Love (Moya Lyubov)
Peter & the Wolf
I Met the Walrus features a previously unheard interview with John Lennon. Peter & the Wolf has all that Prokofiev music. Can I be honest, though? I'm really hoping some ill-prepared young star - Hayden Christensen or Jessica Alba, maybe - is forced into saying "Tutli-Putli" in front of a billion people.
