How I Did

Best Picture
Four out of five (Babel, The Departed, Little Miss Sunshine, The Queen)

Dreamgirls obviously missed out and Letters From Iwo Jima, which I had as an alternate, got in.

Best Director
Four out of five (Clint Eastwood, Stephen Frears, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Martin Scorsese)

I thought Bill Condon might be vulnerable but I never would’ve predicted Dreamgirls missing Best Picture, which makes his absence here more understandable. My alternate pick Paul Greengrass (United 93) was the token nominee of a film not up for Best Picture.

Best Actor
Three and a half out of five (Peter O’Toole, Will Smith, Forest Whitaker…Leonardo DiCaprio)

Both of my alternates scored instead. Thankfully Ryan Gosling got in but Sacha Baron Cohen did not. And I had the right actor but wrong film (just like Oscar) for DiCaprio’s nomination.

Best Actress
Five for five (Penelope Cruz, Judi Dench, Helen Mirren, Meryl Streep, Kate Winslet)

Best Supporting Actor
Three out of five (Alan Arkin, Jackie Earle Haley, Eddie Murphy)

I had Departed’s Jack Nicholson and Queen’s Michael Sheen but Blood Diamond’s Djimon Hounsou, an alternate pick, and Departed’s Mark Whalberg, who I mentioned but didn’t believe in, made the cut.

Best Supporting Actress
Four out of five (Adriana Barraza, Cate Blanchett, Jennifer Hudson, Rinko Kikuchi)

Alternate pick Abigail Breslin happily made it in instead of Prada’s Emily Blunt.

Best Original Screenplay
Four out of five (Babel, Little Miss Sunshine, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Queen)

Alternate pick Letters From Iwo Jima (stronger than I expected overall) was nominated, United 93 was not.

Best Adapted Screenplay
Four out of five (Children of Men, The Departed, Little Children, Notes on a Scandal)

Common sense prevailed and The Devil Wears Prada’s script is not nominated. I predicted the wrong token nomination for Borat, which turned up here instead of Best Actor.

Best Animated Film
Three for three (Cars, Happy Feet, Monster House)

Thankfully. Now let’s see the penguins take down Pixar!

Best Documentary (Feature Length)
Three for five (Deliver Us From Evil, An Inconvenient Truth, Iraq in Fragments)

I had Jesus Camp as an alternate. My Country, My Country is the fifth nominee.

Best Foreign Language Film
Four for five (Days of Glory, The Lives of Others, Pan’s Labyrinth, Water)

Denmark’s After the Wedding made it in but Spain’s Volver, ludicrously, did not.

Best Art Direction/Production Design
Three for five (Dreamgirls, Pan’s Labyrinth, Pirates of the Caribbean)

I thought Children of Men and Marie Antoinette would pop up here but instead nominations went to The Good Shepherd (the only nom for a very solid film) and The Prestige.

Best Cinematography
Three for five (Children of Men, The Illusionist, Pan’s Labyrinth)

Not a single Best Picture in the running in this category. I thought Babel and Dreamgirls would crack the list but instead: Cinematographers’ Guild nominee The Black Dahlia and relative surprise The Prestige.

Best Costume Design
Four out of five (Curse of the Golden Flower, The Devil Wears Prada, Dreamgirls, Marie Antoinette)

I had The Queen as an alternate, which made the list over my prediction Pan’s Labyrinth.

Best Editing
Three out of five (Babel, The Departed, United 93)

Surprisingly light on Best Picture nominees. I thought Dreamgirls and Little Miss Sunshine would make it in but nominations instead went to “thoughtful” action films Blood Diamond and Children of Men.

Best Makeup
Two out of three (Apocalypto, Pan’s Labyrinth)

Ok so maybe the makeup in Click is really good, because it landed a nomination over the showy Pirates of the Caribbean. I don’t really want to find out.

Best Score
Two out of five (Babel, The Good German)

I had the right composers but the wrong films for two of the nominations: Philip Glass was nominated for Notes on a Scandal not The Illusionist, and Alexandre Desplat for The Queen and not his superior work on The Painted Veil. Both were my alternates. I really can’t say what possessed me to predict The Da Vinci Code over actual nominee Pan’s Labyrinth (easily one of the year’s great scores).

Best Song
Three out of five (Cars, Dreamgirls, An Inconvenient Truth)

All three Dreamgirls songs made it in but only one was an alternate pick for me. It might be a bad omen that Happy Feet missed out here, but it’s a good thing that Bobby couldn’t get a single nomination.

Best Sound
Four out of five (Blood Diamond, Dreamgirls, Flags of Our Fathers, Pirates of the Caribbean)

I predicted Babel but Apocalypto made it in.

Best Sound Editing
Three out of five (Apocalypto, Flags of Our Fathers, Pirates of the Caribbean)

Blood Diamond and Letters From Iwo Jima are also nominated in the other hotly contested sound category. (Not having a clue what I was doing, I predicted Cars and The Departed.)

Best Visual Effects
Two out of three (Pirates of the Caribbean, Superman Returns)

I thought Poseidon would be too clunky and trashy to nominate. I was wrong. And Casino Royale, which I incorrectly predicted, was completely shut out today.


Overall: 70 out of 99, or 71%. Counting the alternates: 83 out of 99, 84%.