Tomorrow morning, the nominees get announced. I shall therefore at this last possible moment weigh in with my well-considered guesses as to what is likely to get a nod, and then I should be able to change all of the wrong ones before anyone reads this.
Last year, for the record, I got an uninspiring 22/30 on the Big Six categories (Actor and Supporting Actor killed me). Knock on wood that I pass that tomorrow.
Best Picture
Brokeback Mountain
Crash
Good Night, and Good Luck.
Munich
Walk the Line
The clear frontrunners right now are BBM and GN&GL, after their sublime guild performances. Crash has a lot of guild love behind it as well. Munich and WtL don’t, but the first has a DGA nom (usually a great indicator) and the second has two of the most beloved performances of the year. I can see Capote squeaking in, but I don’t know where – four indies seems too many, but it’s the studio films that look weakest.
Best Director
George Clooney, Good Night, and Good Luck.
Paul Haggis, Crash
Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain
Bennett Miller, Capote
Steven Spielberg, Munich
Lee and Clooney are locks from the love for their films. Haggis has a healthy number of precursors, and Spielberg…is Spielberg. Bennett Miller seems to have a healthy amount of buzz for his work in Capote, although I found it totally undistinguished. This said, the Academy loves a comeback, so it wouldn’t surprise me if Woody Allen’s work on Match Point replaces Miller.
Best Actor
Ralph Finnes, The Constant Gardener
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote
Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain
Joaquin Phoenix, Walk the Line
David Strathairn, Good Night, and Good Luck.
Whoever isn’t Hoffman and Ledger is just a placeholder; but Phoenix seems to be a lock, and Strathairn benefits from being a vet, and from his beloved movie. I’d say that Fiennes’ buzz has died, but I don’t know who is likelier to get in. I’m told that Russell Crowe is a possibility for Cinderella Man, but that feels very wrong to me.
Best Actress
Judi Dench, Mrs. Henderson Presents
Felicity Huffman, Transamerica
Charlize Theron, North Country
Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line
Zhang Ziyi, Memoirs of a Geisha
Again, already a two-way fight between Witherspoon and Huffman. Dench is Oscar-bait in anything she’s in, Theron had some of the best reviews of the year, and Zhang got nearly every precursor nomination, although Keira Knightley was well-received in Pride & Prejudice, and could take any of those three spots.
Best Supporting Actor
George Clooney, Syriana
Matt Dillon, Crash
Paul Giamatti, Cinderella Man
Jake Gyllenhaal, Brokeback Mountain
Bob Hoskins, Mrs. Henderson Presents
As always, the hardest category to predict. Clooney and Dillon are both “due” and God only knows when their next Oscar worthy film will be; Gyllenhaal rides in on the Brokeback wave, Giamatti gets the make-up nom for his dumbfounding Sideways snub last year, and Hoskins is the Great British Workhorse of the year.
Best Supporting Actress
Amy Adams, Junebug
Maria Bello, A History of Violence
Catherine Keener, Capote
Rachel Weisz, The Constant Gardener
Michelle Williams, Brokeback Mountain
Weisz had some of the best reviews of the year, and Williams has the Brokeback juggernaut behind her. Adams is likely to be this year’s Bright New Thing (great reviews), and Bello has a leading role that’s being campaigned supporting, in a film with broad critical support (and with the Academy’s genre hatred, this is the only place it has a prayer at a nomination). Keener has the SAG and Golden Globe nominations holding her up; but she or Bello could easily be taken down by either Scarlett Johansson in Match Point (whose fans will be looking to get it in anywhere they can) or McDormand in North Country (Oscar royalty, and she got a SAG nomination)
Presented without commentary:
Best Original Screenplay
The 40 Year Old Virgin, by Judd Apatow & Steve Carell
Crash, by Paul Haggis & Bobby Moresco
Good Night, and Good Luck. by George Clooney & Grant Heslov
Match Point, by Woody Allen
The Squid and the Whale, by Noah Baumbach
Best Adapted Screenplay
Brokeback Mountain, by Larry McMurtry & Diana Ossana
Capote, by Dan Futterman
The Constant Gardener, by Jeffrey Caine
Munich, by Tony Kushner and Eric Roth
Syriana, by Stephen Gaghan
Best Cinematography
Dion Beebe, Memoirs of a Geisha
César Charlone, The Constant Gardener
Robert Elswit, Good Night, and Good Luck.
Emmanuel Lubezki, The New World
Rodrigo Prieto, Brokeback Mountain
Best Animated Feature
Corpse Bride
Howl’s Moving Castle
Wallace and Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit