But here we are ... and this week, our predictions for who and what we think will be winning on Sunday night at the 72nd Annual Academy Awards in all the categories, so here goes ...
Best Picture -- American Beauty
As usual, the Academy served up a rich variety of films for its five nominees for Best Picture. The Sixth Sense was the blockbuster film among this list, and it's like nomination for Ghost in 1990 ... a spiritual film which was very popular, with no chance of winning the Best Picture Oscar.
In fact, why is this films even on this list ... so many other great films this year could have taken its place, most notably Magnolia and The Green Mile have Oscar written all over it, you could tell the moment it was released, but it did only get four nominations, and lost quite a bit a steam with no critics prizes for Best Picture and a complete snub at the Golden Globes.
The Insider is a solid and well deserved Best Picture nominee, but it still was not a huge success, and doesn't really stand a chance to win the big prize.
So it comes down to another Dreamworks vs. Miramax battle ... The Cider House Rules is the big surprise of the 72nd Oscars, getting 7 nominations including Best Picture. It's a smaller drama and the only reason it had any shot this year is because Miramax's ruthless Oscar campaigning worked last year, in one of the sickest upsets ever, when Shakespeare in Love won Best Picture over Dreamworks's Saving Private Ryan.
Miramax will pull out all the stops again this year, to convince Academy voters that Cider House is the safe choice for Best Picture. But Cider House is no Shakespeare in Love, and we hope that the Academy will come to its senses this year and give the Oscar to American Beauty, the clear deserving winner from this list.
We are frankly amazed to see it as the front runner for Oscar's top prize because we honestly did not think it would be a film that the Academy would embrace, but it's been great to see them do so. We hope they continue it with a Best Picture win come Oscar night. It's definitely a film of a singular brilliance, and is clearly the best film of 1999. May Dreamworks kick Miramax's ass in Round 2!
