First a few random notes.
I don't think Queen Latifah deserved the nomination she got.
There's a picture of Daniel Craig in a current gay magazine (I forget whch one) from Casino Royale. It's very similar to the much used one of him coming out of the water at the beach, but in this one he's full on grabbing his package. Hot!
Many of the comments in this thread talk about "the Academy" like it's a small group of people who communicate with each other to decide who they're all going to vote for. In truth, in regards to this years nominations, they pretty much fell in line with all of the other award giving organizations. There's a website wherein this guy has come up with a mathematical equation to predict the Oscar nominations in the major catagories based on all of the precursors. The formula didn't do so hot with the screenplay nominations this year but it usually works pretty well. Check it out.
http://www.geocities.com/ps971100/I'm surprized so many folks here didn't like Babel. Hands down, it's my favorite fiction movie this year, second only to the non-fiction Deliver Us from Evil. To me it's about how we all go through our tragedies, some external, some internal, we hit bottom, we come back out the other side, some the worse for wear, some stronger, life goes on, and most importantly, we're all in it together. Love the subtlety of the acting and how the point wasn't told to the audience but shown, similar to BBM which is why I'm so surprized.
Anyway, here's what I think will win the major categories and what my favorites were.
Picture: I would like to see Babel take the Oscar as it did the Globe, but I could see any one of these five winning so I don't have a prediction here. Incidently, that's what could make this year particularly intriguing: outside of the acting catagories and a couple of others, most of the races are pretty open.
Director: I'll predict Scorsese and hope for Greengrass for United 93. Incredible film and I'm the only person I know who's seen it. Pity.
Actor: Whitaker will get it. I liked Gosling. Seeing Venus tomorrow so I may be editing this.
Actress: Mirren will get it. None of these nominees really jumped out at me with the acting skill displayed, so I'm going to root for Penelope Cruz for having the most engaging presense in her role. (Update 2/2: Saw The Queen again and I take it back. Mirren was pretty great.)
Supporting Actor: Murphy seems most likely, and he entertained the hell out of me so I hope he gets it.
Supporting Actress: I'm guessing that having seen Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls might be similar to having seen Streisand for the first time in Funny Girl in '68. Just wow. I similarly predict that, if Hudson does more films, we will see that while she certainly has an incredible talent for expressing emotion through song, like Streisand, we will see that every character she plays is some variation of the basic Hudson persona, like Streisand. She deserves this one and she'll never be as good in anything else. Hope she enjoys a great recording career.
Adapted Screenplay: I'm going to predict the Departed, also my favorite in this category. I was riveted by every turn of the plot. The script was the strongest thing about this movie.
Original screenplay: Babel's my favorite movie but Little Miss Sunshine is my favorite script. Hope it wins and I think it will. (Update: I enjoyed The Queen much more the second time. Now I'm not sure who I want to win or what I think will.)
It's interesting to note that not one of the Best Picture nominees is up for art direction or cinematography. I don't know if that's ever happened before.
One more public service link: Here's the moviecitynews.com critical concensus page, a chart which takes over 200 top 10 lists and totals them up. There's another site that's even more inclusive (over 600 critics in 2005!) but or some reason it's not up this year.
http://www.moviecitynews.com/awards/2007/top_tens/00_index.htm