Yes!

I can't lose this Oscar season.

Two way race now for sure.

Poor Queen. It was so much more deserving than LMS.

So now, the race:

1. The Departed
2. Little Miss Sunshine
.
3. Babel
4. The Queen
5. Letters from Iwo Jima

Yeah, two-way race, with Babel and Queen playing spoilers.

I have it as

1. LMS
2. Departed
.
3. Letters from Iwo Jima
4. Babel
.
5. The Queen

I think Letters is the most likely spoiler if there is one, the thing is that it wasn't nominated for any of these guilds, so technically we have no gotten any gauge of its strength or weakness yet. For all we know twice as many people saw it when the winners ballots were mailed out than when the guilds were. What I do know is that the people who have seen it are mad passionate about it, lots of masterpiece claims surrounding it... so who knows. Technically it hasn't lost at any of these awards, heh. Babel has the importance card and Ebert, etc. pushing it.

The Queen is flat dead.

I have my likelihood of winning the Oscar Best Picture rank as such:

1. The Departed
2. Little Miss Sunshine
3. The Queen
4. Babel
5. Letters from Iwo Jima

I put The Departed as #1 because it nabbed the DGA - the best predictor of the Oscar Best Picture winner; plus it received all the crucial Oscar nominations, including the Best Editing nom, etc, and because of it's overall support throughout the awards season. Little Miss Sunshine comes next with obvious all around support with the PGA, SAG and WGA.

Then from there I put The Queen, simply because I think Babel is pretty weak, and Iwo Jima is non-existent and dead.

Peace,
Mike.

I think The Queen and Iwo Jima are both pretty flat right now. Yeah, more people are seeing Iwo Jima, but an Eastwood film won just two years ago, and it's still a depressing foreign language war film. War films rarely win, directors rarely repeat so closely, and a foreign language film has never won. Could you imagine the same voters that voted against BBM last year voting for a foreign language humanization of the enemies of their youth? I also can't see them voting for a film like Babel, but the self-confessed Babel fans (Gwyneth Paltrow, Mary McDonnell, Brian Grazer) and stance as the nomination leader keep it ahead of the other two as most likely LMS/Departed spoiler.

As for The Departed and LMS, here's a tally of films that have won some combination of SAG, PGA and WGA (Up to 1995):

Crash (SAG/WGA)
Sideways (SAG/WGA)
LOTR: ROTK (PGA/SAG)
Chicago (PGA/SAG)
Gosford Park (SAG/WGA)
Traffic (SAG/WGA)
American Beauty (PGA/SAG/WGA)
Apollo 13 (PGA/SAG)

And PGA/WGA pre-SAG:

Forrest Gump
Schindler's List
The Crying Game
The Silence of the Lambs
Dances with Wolves
Driving Miss Daisy

And films that have won DGA and WGA going back to 1989 (When the PGA was first handed out):

Brokeback Mountain
A Beautiful Mind
American Beauty
Forrest Gump
Schindler's List
The Silence of the Lambs
Dances with Wolves

So, the PGA/SAG/WGA trio worked for American Beauty, but that also won the DGA and was the nomination leader in its year with absolutely no competitors, which can't be said for LMS.

As for WGA/DGA, it has a much better track record pre-SAG, but all those films also won PGA, so the only film to win JUST DGA and WGA was A Beautiful Mind. Not a bad comparison film, considering that was another tight year where the film that didn't have the most noms won.

So, these cleared things up about as much as they possibly could. Now it's just a two-movie mud fight. Fuuuuun.

You forgot to mention that American Beauty was the only film to ever win PGA/WGA/SAG... LMS is the second. It's close but I feel Departed has slipped up in enough awards that it really should've won, that the trend will continue at the Oscars.

He did mention that. Heh. He added that American Beauty however had also won DGA, and was the nomination leader in its year with no competition. Obviously LMS is nowhere near that success in comparison, with only 4 Oscar nominations and no Best Director nom (let alone a win).

Peace,
Mike.

Hm, I thought I mentioned that. Eh. Still, that also won the DGA and was the far and away frontrunner. Seriously look at the other nominees! Here it's fighting with The Departed.

Arkin NEEDS to win to convince me that LMS is going to win. Right now The Departed is pretty much locked in Director and Screenplay and looking good in Editing (Barring a Babel win), while all I can confidently say that LMS will win is Screenplay.

And as I've said before, The Departed has a far superior pedigree. At least when Crash won last year it had a bunch of actors that probably had many friends in the academy. And I'm sure that the friends of Jack, Leo, Marty, Alec, Matt and Martin all outweigh those of Greg, Toni, Steve and Alan, not to mention the prestige.

The other thing is that LMS really isn't the kind of movie most people would call THE Best Picture of the year. You can call it ONE of the best, but not THE. I mean, you literally can, but there's usually something that clicks in most people's heads that keep them awarding a light-ish comedy the most prestigious award in Hollywood (Yes, I know the heavy subjects, but I think the light ones outweigh the heavier stuff in the end, if that makes sense). Crime films have a far better track record (Silence of the Lambs, The Godfather movies, The French Connection), and again there's that pedigree.

Good lord am I rambling. I just have an insanely hard time seeing Little Miss Sunshine winning Best Picture. I mean, really? Boy I'm getting a headache from all the cir circles I'm thinking myself through.

Same ranking as Jon.

AHHHHH! Thank god Departed won! But Little Miss Sunshine can't, it just cant win BP! I am freaking out! I think i just shit my pants!

This was suppose to be our big night. Instead we get stuck with LMS vs. Departed again.

Yeah, I was hoping for an exciting race getting more exciting instead of the other way. I think LMS should lead among the very early returns since that was at the height of its buzz. WGA's deadline was last Monday. The key is once we are in this two weeks of largely dormant period and the late returners are seriously pondering which film to vote for, which one benefits.