[AFGNCAAP]

My take at who should leave with statuettes tomorrow night, if anybody cares:

Best movie - either Lost in Translation or Return of the King. Master and Commander is a captivating film, beautifully shot and with tremendous acting, but doesn’t have the touch of genius that couple have. I haven’t seen Mystic River, and any award for Seabiscuit would be a misunderstanding.

Best Director - Peter Jackson. Actually, I seem to be in minority in thinking that Lord of the Rings finale was slightly weaker than the previous two installments, but Jackson's work was so far underrated by the Academy, so it would be a fair choice

Best Actor - I will keep my fingers crossed for heart-breaking, silent performance by Bill Murray.

Best Actress - if only voters fail to confuse good acting with gaining weight, I suggest Naomi Watts. Stupid as it is to judge a movie by its trailer (I won’t be able to watch it earlier than in two weeks time), I'm very positive about 21 grams, because: 1) Amores Perros rocked, 2) I love stories told not in chronological manner, 3) if Naomi is at least half as good as in Mulholland Drive, it's worth seeing for her.

Best Supporting Actress - Zellweger in Cold Mountain, just quit nominating her!* Otherwise, Patricia Clarkson seems to be an outstanding actress who sort of appeared out of the blue.

Best Original Screenplay - Sofia Coppola. Period.

Best Adapted Screenplay - hmm, why not LOTR, especially seeing how miserable most of its opponents look? Surely it wasn't easy to extract a cohesive screenplay from the Tolkien's two thousand page epic (even though they shouldn't have excluded Saruman!).

Best Cinematography - Master and Commander, Best Music - Danny Elfman rules, all the technicals - Return of the King. Other categories: I either don't care or know too little about the nominees (like in Foreign Language Films, out of which, sadly, I had heard only about one).

Sorry for that, but I am a movie afficionado, and I wanted to share...

*Just kidding. This time she really deserves the praise, but for the last two years, her nominations were rather far-fetched.