Before the envelopes can be opened on Oscar night, Feb. 25, five contenders need to be nominated on Jan. 23. Reporting the nominees after they are announced ... that's just a list. Predicting what films will be nominated for Best Picture ... that's the tingle of the Academy Awards game.
Two slots will go to highly respected veterans of filmmaking. On the short list of the best living directors, Martin Scorsese has never won an Academy Award. Nominated six times before, he will surely be nominated for his trademark ultra-violence in "The Departed."
Also on the short list of best living directors is Clint Eastwood. With two Best Picture and Best Director Oscars in his trophy case, he will be nominated for "Letters from Iwo Jima." This film, about the Japanese perspective on a famed World War II battleground, forms a one-two punch with Eastwood's "Flags of Our Fathers," also a 2006 picture.
A third slot will follow Oscar's predilection toward the class and manners so well captured in British films. "The Queen" does not dip as far into the past as these British films often do, but this portrait of the royal family and the socio-political mood swirling around the death of Princess Diana in 1997 services that praiseworthy British perspective yet again.
Comedies have a tough time winning Best Picture, but it's difficult to keep them from sneaking onto the list of nominees. "Little Miss Sunshine" displays the kind of well-realized spirit of originality that deserves Oscar-level attention.
An unparalleled sensitivity buzzes around "United 93." Will this story about the fated airliner on 9/11 be nominated because it engages the potential of filmmaking, or will it be shunted into some side stream of cinematic history?
Success for musicals in recent years boosts "Dreamgirls" more into the limelight than it deserves. Yes, it is entertaining. Sad to say, the glamor machine will shove aside a taut, nonexploitative lens on 9/11's stamp on history. "Little Miss Sunshine" will hang onto a nomination by its cutely outrageous, dysfunctional family fingernails.
Predictions need their long-shot hedges. "Babel" enlists the size and ambition that makes personal stories into something big. It trips on telling one story too many but still carries the kind of weight that can wrestle away nomination slots. "Borat" is no way deserving of Best Picture attention except for being the surprise hit of the year. One would hope that the way it is hilarious would shift it into some lesser nomination arena, but who knows?
Who knows? That's the tingle of the Academy Awards game.