Picking on Oscar

The Oscar nominations were just announced.

Yeah, all right. I'll go there. These aren't necessarily my personal favourites, but they're my favourites to win.

My picks are, appropriately, in gold.

Best Picture: "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "Frost/Nixon," "Milk," "The Reader," "Slumdog Millionaire."

Actor: Richard Jenkins, "The Visitor"; Frank Langella, "Frost/Nixon"; Sean Penn, "Milk"; Brad Pitt, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"; Mickey Rourke, "The Wrestler."

Actress: Anne Hathaway, "Rachel Getting Married"; Angelina Jolie, "Changeling"; Melissa Leo, "Frozen River"; Meryl Streep, "Doubt"; Kate Winslet, "The Reader."

Supporting Actor: Josh Brolin, "Milk"; Robert Downey Jr., "Tropic Thunder"; Philip Seymour Hoffman, "Doubt"; Heath Ledger, "The Dark Knight"; Michael Shannon, "Revolutionary Road."

Supporting Actress: Amy Adams, "Doubt"; Penelope Cruz, "Vicky Cristina Barcelona"; Viola Davis, "Doubt"; Taraji P. Henson, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"; Marisa Tomei, "The Wrestler."

Director: David Fincher, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"; Ron Howard, "Frost/Nixon"; Gus Van Sant, "Milk"; Stephen Daldry, "The Reader"; Danny Boyle, "Slumdog Millionaire."

Foreign Film: "The Baader Meinhof Complex," Germany; "The Class," France; "Departures," Japan; "Revanche," Austria; "Waltz With Bashir," Israel.

We'll see how I went on 22 February, I suppose.

A rather more short-term prediction: Heath Ledger will be on the cover of tomorrow's papers here, while they'll be some guff about the massively over-hyped Australia scoring only a costume nomination, and grumbles about Baz, Nicole, Hugh and Cate being "overlooked". (There's some merit to the Cate angle: she drove Ben Butt, even when working with a puppet. Australia, by contrast, was craptacular eye candy.) It makes a change from Cate, a cartoon and a cameraman being the "Aussie chances". That, at least, we can verify tomorrow. Zzzzzzz.

Update: Ledger, as The Joker, on the cover of all three newspapers. And this in the Telegraph:

Exactly a year after his death, Heath Ledger has earned a posthumous Oscar nomination early this morning.Ledger was nominated for best supporting actor for his diabolical turn as The Joker in The Dark Knight.Cate Blanchett missed out on a nomination for her role in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.Romantic epic Australia scored a single nomination - for costume design for Catherine Martin.The film's director Baz Luhrmann, stars Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman and cinematographer Mandy Walker were all overlooked.

Ta da!