Here are Tapley's picks:

Best Picture: “Slumdog Millionaire”
Best Director: Danny Boyle, “Slumdog Millionaire”
Best Actor: Clint Eastwood, “Gran Torino”
Best Actress: Cate Blanchett, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
Best Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger, “The Dark Knight”
Best Supporting Actress: Viola Davis, “Doubt”
Best Adapted Screenplay: “Slumdog Millionaire”
Best Original Screenplay: “Milk”
Best Art Direction: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
Best Cinematography: “Defiance”
Best Costume Design: “The Duchess”
Best Film Editing: “Slumdog Millionaire”
Best Makeup: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
Best Music - Original Score: “Defiance”
Best Music - Original Song: “The Wrestler”
Best Sound Editing: “The Dark Knight”
Best Sound Mixing: “The Dark Knight”
Best Visual Effects: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
Best Animated Feature Film: “WALL-E”
Best Documentary Feature: “Man on Wire”
Best Foreign Language Film: “Captain Abu Raed”

I wouldn't be happy with a lot of that. I'm just not in love with Slumdog. It's not even Danny Boyle's best work. And what's with Defiance?

You also thought Twilight would open higher than Legend.

FAIL.

It should have, I didn't expect the worst opening IM of all time.

Well then you're not expecting Wall-E...

BOOM!

Yeah, the only way it is winning is if it's as big as Juno or something crazy like that from the public. And its box office has been good, but not that good. This is TDK vs. Ben Button with Milk being a dark horse, and I don't see that changing.

Haven't Crash and NCFOM shown yet that being an outright hit is far from required to win? If Slumdog can make say, $50-60 million by the end of February, I'd say that definitely puts it in easy contention for the win.

Didn't work for Sideways, Little Miss Sunshine, or Juno, and arguably those films had more passionate fans (certainly for the first and last two).

Comedies, with no tech support. Slumdog could get noms for cinematography, editing, song...

It lacks the star power of those movies, but then that could always add to its charm.

Slumdog is basically a foreign language film. There's a heavy use of Hinglish or outright subtitles.

Quick! Last one to win BP was...

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=lastemperor.htm

And that one didn't even have box office on its side!

It doesn't matter when the film doesn't have any real "Best Picture" vibes, though. Sideways was my #2 of 2004, but that didn't have any at all. Even Crash felt more exclamatory. The film may be good enough to win or cool enough, but it doesn't really encompass a real feeling in the country right now. Not the film's fault, but more of a case of being ahead of its time perhaps.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=lastemperor.htm

And that one didn't even have box office on its side!

Communism, costume epic. And Bertolucci was overdue for a long time at that point.

And it actually doesn't have a huge amount of Mandarin in it.

That reminds me: will Australia get in for BP in the Globes? Bobby did, and it's a very Globesy film, but the voting is still going on if I'm correct, nobody seems to love it and it'll just scrape by on not being a financial fiasco because of the international market.

Wouldn't Milk fit the "hope" vibe more? At least that would have some darkness in it, because the economy is still in the shitter and the mess the Reagan era left us is still going to ebb and flow even while being cleaned up.