Best Picture

This is a weird year for Best Picture, with absolutely no front-runner and all five nominees have a genuine shot at winning. The film with the most nods this year, Dreamgirls, isn’t up for Best Picture. There’s no Chocolat or Finding Neverland to immediately dismiss from the running. Even the film without a Best Director nominee isn’t going down without a fight.

At a slight disadvantage are the respectable critics’ faves, Letters and The Queen, which probably won’t inspire enough passion from the voting body. Little Miss Sunshine’s directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris didn’t make the cut, most probably because they were two heads rather than one, which may make it the exception to the pretty hard-and-fast rule about needing a directing nod to take Best Picture. Babel did win the Golden Globe and has the most nominations of these five, but really, what kind of Best Picture winner doesn’t win anything else? Even freak winners Shakespeare in Love and Crash picked up writing awards, and Gladiator and Chicago at least took an acting award.

I’m looking back 11 years for the last Best Picture race this kooky, when early favorites Apollo 13 and Sense and Sensibility saw their directors stunningly shafted from the nominations, even though Sense won the Globe, Apollo won with the PGA and DGA, while long-shots Babe and Il Postino had the upper hand with Best Director nods. That year, a confused Academy decided to match Best Picture with their Director favorite, Braveheart. I think in this murky year, they’ll do the same.

Prediction: The Departed Personal Pick: Hmmm…none of my favorites are here. I was charmed by Sunshine but it’s not Best Picture material. I guess The Departed? (Yup, it’s been that kind of year.) Fear my wrath if Babel wins.