Movies: My 2006 Oscar picks scorecard

This year just 10 of my 24 Oscar predictions were correct. I was 4 for 6 in the major categories (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Leading Actor, Best Leading Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress). I correctly surmised 6 more categories (Best Animated Film, Best Art Direction, Best Documentary, Best Makeup, Best Sound Mixing, Best Visual Effects). The Departed derailed the balance of my prognoscenti by winning 5 Oscars (I had only presaged 1) and Pan's Labyrinth further toppled my count by losing 2 Oscars I had expected it to win and winning 1 I had not (I had presaged 4).

Last March for my 2005 Oscar winner predictions, I correctly selected 15 of the 24 categories. Two films I had most wanted to win -- Crash and March of the Penguins -- did win, though I had surmised that Brokeback Mountain and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room would capture Best Picture and Best Documentary. The remaining 7 categories I missed were minor ones: Best Animated Feature, Best Live Short Film, Best Short Documentary, Best Sound Mixing, Best Song, Best Foreign Language, Best Cinematography.

This year to date, I have only seen 3 films from the field: Happy Feet, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, and The Queen. Nevertheless, my approach is to shoot completely from the hip, with no prior knowledge of the nominees necessary beyond buzz and gut instinct. So here, for the second year, I posted and flagged my Oscar picks in salmon and I now flag the actual winners (where they differ) in blue. (Sorry, I'm not listing artists, authors, and technicians by name this year, only actors and directors. Comments follow many categories.)

BEST PICTURE
Babel
The Departed
Letters From Iwo Jima
Little Miss Sunshine
The Queen
(Scorsese might have swept Best Picture and Best Director -- and he did -- but I took a chance on the Academy splitting the vote like last year with Eastwood as a favorite. As it turns out, The Departed had a lot of buzz and marketing push besides doing very well in the box office.)

DIRECTING
Alejandro González Iñárritu -- Babel
Martin Scorsese -- The Departed
Clint Eastwood -- Letters From Iwo Jima
Stephen Frears -- The Queen
Paul Greengrass -- United 93
(Scorsese has long deserved Best Director -- his time had come.)

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Leonardo DiCaprio -- Blood Diamond
Ryan Gosling -- Half Nelson
Peter O'Toole -- Venus
Will Smith -- The Pursuit of Happyness
Forest Whitaker -- The Last King of Scotland
(Like Mirren for Best Actress, Whitaker has been the clear choice to win Best Actor.)

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
Penélope Cruz -- Volver
Judi Dench -- Notes on a Scandal
Helen Mirren -- The Queen
Meryl Streep -- The Devil Wears Prada
Kate Winslet -- Little Children
(The Academy saw Mirren as the clear favorite.)

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Alan Arkin -- Little Miss Sunshine
Jackie Earle Haley -- Little Children
Djimon Hounsou -- Blood Diamond
Eddie Murphy -- Dreamgirls
Mark Wahlberg -- The Departed
(Dreamgirls was the extremely popular dark horse yet I felt Arkin would finally get the nod.)

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Adriana Barraza -- Babel
Cate Blanchett -- Notes on a Scandal
Abigail Breslin -- Little Miss Sunshine
Jennifer Hudson -- Dreamgirls
Rinko Kikuchi -- Babel
(While Hudson had a raft of mass appeal, I wasn't sure the Academy would back a musical for best supporting actress. I felt it was better to vote across the board for Dreamgirls or imagine the show might get shut out -- as it did for Best Song, for which the film provided 3 of the 5 nominations.)

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Children of Men
The Departed
Little Children
Notes on a Scandal
(At least it wasn't Borat -- but apparently The Departed made a sweep of five Oscars rather than allow them to be spread more democratically across the field.)

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Babel
Letters From Iwo Jima
Little Miss Sunshine
Pan's Labyrinth
The Queen
(I didn't think a comedy would win two major Oscars but clearly the love for this film held out.)

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
After the Wedding
Days of Glory (Indigenes)
The Lives of Others
Pan's Labyrinth
Water
(The Lives of Others was my second choice and I almost changed my vote at the last minute but you can only choose one and you can only choose once!)

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
Cars
Happy Feet
Monster House

ART DIRECTION
Dreamgirls
The Good Shepherd
Pan's Labyrinth
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
The Prestige

CINEMATOGRAPHY
The Black Dahlia
Children of Men
The Illusionist
Pan's Labyrinth
The Prestige
(OK I get it -- the critical mass of inertia for one film wins this year over the democratic point spread across several titles.)

COSTUME DESIGN
Curse of the Golden Flower
The Devil Wears Prada
Dreamgirls
Marie Antoinette
The Queen

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Deliver Us From Evil
An Inconvenient Truth
Iraq in Fragments
Jesus Camp
My Country, My Country

FILM EDITING
Babel
Blood Diamond
Children of Men
The Departed
United 93

MAKEUP
Apocalypto
Click
Pan's Labyrinth

ORIGINAL SCORE
Babel
The Good German
Notes on a Scandal
Pan's Labyrinth
The Queen
(OK so the winning score is the only one I did not hear.)

ORIGINAL SONG
“I Need to Wake Up” - An Inconvenient Truth
“Listen” - Dreamgirls
“Love You I Do” - Dreamgirls
“Our Town” - Cars
“Patience” - Dreamgirls
(I hadn't heard any of these and since I couldn't decide between anything from Dreamgirls, I went with Pixar, the traditional past winner; instead, this was the first time a documentary won.)

SOUND MIXING
Apocalypto
Blood Diamond
Dreamgirls
Flags of Our Fathers
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

SOUND EDITING
Apocalypto
Blood Diamond
Flags of Our Fathers
Letters From Iwo Jima
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

VISUAL EFFECTS
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Poseidon
Superman Returns

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT
The Blood of Yingzhou District
Recycled Life
Rehearsing a Dream
Two Hands
(With the minor categories and no knowledge whatsoever, it's hard to do more than guess.)

BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM
The Danish Poet
Lifted
The Little Matchgirl
Maestro
No Time for Nuts
(I wasn't able to see Lifted or The Danish Poet or No Time for Nuts but at least I knew Scrat, the star of the latter.)

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM
Binta and the Great Idea (Binta Y La Gran Idea)
Éramos Pocos (One Too Many)
Helmer & Son
The Saviour
West Bank Story
(I wasn't able to see any of these so here again it was an utterly blind guess.)