Marty's Big Night and Other Oscar Predictions

Tomorrow night Marty will finally win the little golden statuette that has eluded him oh these many years. He will leave behind those legends behind the camera who failed to win, including Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, and the recently departed Robert Altman, and finally join the ranks of such cinematic geniuses as Ron Howard and Mel Gibson. In other words, does Marty really need Oscar to validate his career? Certainly not, given that winning won't make him any better than he already is on Monday, but given his past egregious snubs (namely Raging Bull & Goodfellas) a win on Sunday would hopefully make up for some of the cinematic sins of the Academy.

However, The Departed will not win Best Picture. That honor will go to this year's little VW that could Little Miss Sunshine. That's right, early favorite Babel will prove incomprehinsible enough to not win the top prize (a warning, however, Babel is the only BP nom I haven't seen. The same thing happened last year when Crash won and that was the only one I hadn't seen either, though I did predict it to beat out Brokeback Mountain.)

For some of the bigger awards, the following will most definitely be true. In Best Actor, though I haven't seen any of the films, I'm going with what everyone else is saying and pick Forest Whitaker. Having not seen any of the films does not disqualify one's judgment. After all, Academy voters don't have to see any of the films either.

Best Actress will be Queen Mirren, hands down and ten years from now Kate Winslet will pass Meryl as the most nominated actress. In the always wild card Best Supporting Actress, it will be Jennifer Hudson in another performance I did not witness (though I would not be shocked if Abigail Breslin wins). The BS Actor will go to Hudson's counterpart from the same flick, Mr. Murphy of Norbit fame.

Original Screenplay will be for LMS and Adapted for The Departed. The evening will be long and fun with Ellen hosting and I am especially looking forward to her opening monologue. If I were to make only one change, though, I would love them to flash up what the vote percentages were for each category. Wouldn't that be great to see that 90% of the Academy voted for Marty or that somebody only got, say 1% of the vote? Or even that the reason Eddie won his award with 26% of the vote was that Alan Arkin and Djimon Hounsou each had 25%, thus basically cancelling each other out. I'll make sure The Academy gets the memo. Monday I'll let everyone know how I did with all the noms (I promise not to cheat).

Enjoy!