Cinematography is among the easiest categories to predict for next week. I wouldn't overanalyze that one.

Here's an interesting statistic. Only 6 films in HISTORY have won the ACE, WGA, and DGA awards together. Forrest Gump, Schindler's List, Dances with Wolves, Patton, and The Sound of Music. The Departed is the 6th. Yes, it's still a very wide open race but come on, The Departed in 5th place?

Well, everybody else will speak for me about your cinematography debacle, but if you predict something else to win, and Children of Men loses the cinematography Oscar, I'll track you down and slap you on the back of the head, because I feel you have the power to jinx it. Don't do that Kris. You know you want it to win the Oscar.

I'm not going to predict anything else, I'm just saying they like their postcard imagery and "Children of Men" is lacking int hat department. I think it's the best work of the year, but it certainly isn't "pretty." "The Man Who Wasn't There" lost, after all.

And b, we've all seen your stat on The Blog. No need to post it again.

Departed will be in my #4 spot in tomorrow's charts.

Sorry, just wanted to make sure both of you got a chance to see it. Good point about Man Who Wasn't There. Than again, I can bring up Master and Commander. Seabiscuit was a lot more eye candy and beautiful in my eyes.

Master and Commander was a beautiful film with a lot of various scenery.

Interesting stat on THE DEPARTED, but I think we've all learned this season that statistics and prescedents were made to be broken. Crazy, crazy year.

I think "The Departed" will win because I suspect it has the likeliest across branch support and is the biggest hit of the bunch.

HOWEVER, it is still an extremely close race and the ACE/WGA/DGA means little in my opinion; prior to last year, no film with PGA/DGA/WGA had lost.

Nothing is written in stone, but last's year turnout in Best Picture was a very big exception to the rule. Just because the turnout in events so far this season and last year's shock happened doesn't mean precedents are now going to always be broken. Even though Crash won, we still would have been saying up to the last minute anyone who didn't predict Brokeback to win was a fool.

Lame twist? Isn't the whole reason you play this game because it has the potential to be exciting and indecipherable?

The ACE tie only makes things more interesting... does it help "Babel" or "The Departed" more?

With that being said, I've predicted "The Departed" to win since the nominations were announced (even though it's my least favorite of the nominees), and I'm now more confident than ever in predicting it for the win.

It's lame because they should have had the nuts to settle on a "best." I could care less what their decision does to the "game." Believe it or not there are times in the season when I actually respect the awards-giving bodies, usually the guilds. And I think a tie is bogus.

(He says, knowing full well his top ten list sports a tie at #1.)

Uhhh...last time I checked ACE was a secret ballot voting organization. They tied because that's how the votes landed. They didn't sit down and just fail to reach a decision.

Uhhh...I'm well aware of how they vote. There should be a tie-breaking scenario, that's my point.

It wouldn't be really fair then if there had to be a tie breaker. It's not lame at all that they tied. It made this race so exciting. I love that. Where's the fun in predictability?

Again, my point isn't the race needing to be exciting. I could care less about that. I'd just like to see more in the way of definitives.

But that's just me.

Kris, it's kind of patently hypocritical to call an organization lame because it's secret ballot process resulted in a tie when you deliberately gave out a tie for best picture of the year. And then worse to keep defending what you said. I'm just sayin... makes no sense... plus there is no fair way to break a legitimate tie in the vote.

Plus, yeah, ties are very exciting. I would be over the moon if the oscars had another major tie a la Streisand/Hepburn in the 60's.

Did you miss the part where I made fun of that very aspect of my top ten?