Making Picks

Oscar Predictions From The Day The Nominees Were Announced
On February 11th, the day the nominees were announced for the 75th Annual Academy Awards, my friend Kevin and I made our Oscar picks. Without the benefit of seeing who had all the buzz leading up to the Awards; without seeing who won the Screen Actors Guild, Director’s Guild or any of the other Guild Awards; or watching who said what and how contrite they were in their interviews after being nominated; without any of that, we made our picks.
In the past few years since Kevin and I began making our Oscar picks our record is unrivaled. We can both boast about having a success rate of more than 90% when choosing all of the 24 categories, and we each got 5 out of the 6 major categories right last year.
Not surprisingly, our picks are very similar, with only a few differences.
I debated whether or not I should make new picks, and ask Kevin to do the same, now that the day of the Oscars in upon us. In the end, I decided that we should stand on our early choices and see how we do.
So even though Renee Zellweger has all of the Actress buzz going into tonight’s Awards, Rob Marshall has the Directing talk going his way, CHICAGO looks like a favourite to win every category it is nominated in, and the fact that I KNOW Christopher Walken will win Best Supporting Actor, here are Kevin and my Oscar picks- no explanations, just our picks- in the six major categories (plus Animated Feature since we are both Animation Geeks), which we made over a month ago, on February 11th, 2003:
DAN’S OSCAR PICKS
ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Daniel Day-Lewis
ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Chris Cooper
ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
Nicole Kidman
ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Queen Latifah
ACHEIVEMENT IN DIRECTION
Martin Scorsese- GANGS OF NEW YORK
BEST PICTURE
CHICAGO
ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
ICE AGE
KEVIN’S OSCAR PICKS
ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Jack Nicholson
ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Chris Cooper
ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
Nicole Kidman
ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Catherine Zeta-Jones
ACHEIVEMENT IN DIRECTION
Martin Scorsese- GANGS OF NEW YORK
BEST PICTURE
CHICAGO
ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
SPIRITED AWAY