The Best Film Oscar race?

With the Academy Awards ceremony two days away, it's time to offer my picks. But before I get to that, I wanted to address the curious Best Picture horserace. At this point the three biggest contenders for the night's top prize are Babel, The Departed and Little Miss Sunshine. This is one of the most wide open races of the past decade, but the downside is that this seems to be a race to find which movie is the least of three evils. All three films have both ardent supporters and vocal detractors. Having seen all three (as well as The Queen and Letters from Iwo Jima) I can recognize that they're all great but flawed. Many are turned off by Babel's preachiness and overly ambitious multi-layered storyline. The same critics who blasted Crash last year now find Babel equally polarizing. The Departed has the dynamite pedigree and wonderful story, but many voters will be turned off by the fact that it's a remake and the near-comical amount of violence at the climax of the film. Then we have Little Miss Sunshine, which was my favorite. While the film is generally beloved, in recent weeks we've heard a sentiment that the film is too light and just isn't "Oscar-worthy." This leads to the larger question of how the academy should vote on the Best Picture prize.

There seems to be a magic benchmark of what makes a picture worthy of winning Oscar's top prize: Best Picture nominees are compared to past Best Picture winners, not the other four nominees. Voters demand a Best Picture that is deep, epic, dramatic, and most of all, serious. In short, films win best picture, not movies. The problem with this logic is that the academy often ends up overthinking the vote, as was the case with Return of the King beating Mystic River and The English Patient beating Fargo. The academy members should simply ask themselves the following: "What's the best movie I saw from last year?" and call it a day.

But since it seems that the academy is collectively hellbent on picking the film that looks the most prestigious, maybe they should look to the sports world for a pointer. In sports, athletes can only be voted to the Hall of Fame five years after the player retires. The reason is that the five year period gives voters a chance to put the candidate's career in context and eliminates much of the emotion and momentum that would undoubtedly be present if the vote took place at the time of retirement. If the academy were to wait five years (or at least one) then you'd avoid the influence of studio campaigns, and there'd certainly be less embarrassment over awards like Roberto Begnini in 1998. Best Actor, really?

MR. PREDICTO

Best Picture: The Departed
Director: Martin Scorsese
Actor: Forrest Whitaker
Actress: Helen Mirren
Supporting Actor: Alan Arkin (upset alert!)
Supporting Actress: Jennifer Hudson
Original Screenplay: Little Miss Sunshine
Adapted Screenplay: The Departed