Cond-nominations 2007

Ah, the night before Oscar nominations.

For those who don't realize it, the Academy is very precise about how they will go about announcing the best achievements in motion pictures. At 8:38 and 30 seconds on Tuesday morning, Salma Hayek will step to the podium with MPAA President Sid Ganis, most likely to camera flashes and in front of a tasteful backdrop of flat screens. Everything will fall into place as nominees in 10 of the 24 Oscar categories are verbally revealed, right in the middle of the peak hour for the network TV morning shows. Which means what?

Yeah, it's early in L.A.

In reality, Salma just finished wolfing down a Luna bar, Ganis has been pushing to show the nominations from the waist up so that he doesn't have to change out of his fuzzy pajama pants, and throughout the valley, the people about to be nominated are either in bed or at Crackdawn Yoga class. But you, the viewer, don't notice a thing. That's the magic of Hollywood.

Let's hope some magic is with my predictions. (Last year's 90% is going to be impossible to beat.)

Best Picture
Babel
The Departed
Dreamgirls
Little Miss Sunshine
The Queen

On Saturday, I saw Letters from Iwo Jima, and found it to be an excellent, excellent war movie. And as hard as I tried, I couldn't displace any of the popular choices. It's pretty tough to bank on a movie entirely in Japanese with the Academy.

Best Actor
Sacha Baron Cohen, Borat
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Departed
Will Smith, The Pursuit of Happyness
Peter O'Toole, Venus
Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland

A wise man once told me that McAdams loves Gosling, so why don't my picks love him for his role in Half-Nelson. To be honest, I don't really know. Cohen is a complete wildcard that Academy may despise, and DiCaprio may cannibalize his vote with another strong performance in Blood Diamond, and the fact that his role in The Departed may give his supporting actor votes, too. Man, that's a lot of strikes against Leo. Nonetheless...

Best Actress
Penelope Cruz, Volver
Judi Dench, Notes on a Scandal
Helen Mirren, The Queen
Meryl Streep, The Devil Wears Prada
Kate Winslet, Little Children

These are my locks. They are cold. They are made of stone. These are my stone cold locks. (Unless Maggie Gyllenhaal screws this up.)

Best Supporting Actor
Jackie Earle Haley, Little Children
Djimon Hounsou, Blood Diamond
Eddie Murphy, Dreamgirls
Jack Nicholson, The Departed
Mark Wahlberg, The Departed

Who's ready for fireworks? Alan Arkin would follow my "Old Actor Who Deserves His Due and Looks Like One of My Friend's Dads" rule, except, well, he doesn't look like any dad I know. (Maybe Joe, though.) Also, I'm leaving out Brad Pitt and Michael Sheen. I could totally screw this one up.

Best Supporting Actress
Cate Blanchett, Notes on a Scandal
Emily Blunt, The Devil Wears Prada
Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine
Rinko Kakuchi, Babel
Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls

I left out some woman from Babel named Barraza who would have fit my "Mouthful of an Actress Rule" (see Okonedo, Aghdashloo, Weisz?), but this Rinko Kakuchi keeps the Rule alive.

Best Director
Bill Condon, Dreamgirls
Clint Eastwood, Letters from Iwo Jima
Stephen Frears, The Queen
Alejandro Inarritu, Babel
Martin Scorsese, The Departed

This is Scorsese's year, a Condon I had to vote for, the guy who did High Fidelity, one of Mattias' people (besting Cuaron, del Toro, and Almodovar), and finally Clint Eastwood, who did two movies this year. on the other hand, it took two people to do Little Miss Sunshine.

Best Adapted Screenplay
Children of Men
The Departed
Little Children
Notes on a Scandal
Thank You for Smoking

Total number of those I saw? 1. Whole lot of confidence on that one.

Best Original Screenplay
Babel
Little Miss Sunshine
The Queen
Stranger than Fiction
Volver

We'll see you at 5:38, your time, Oscar.