Two more days until we find out who wins this year’s Academy Awards! Okay, so the exclamation point is more than forced. It’s been quite awhile since we’ve had even an ounce of excitement about the Oscars. But we mustn’t let predictability get us down. Sure, even the still-uncertain races (Penn vs. Rourke; Winslet vs. Streep; Man on Wire vs. Trouble the Water) are anything but interesting, because the everyman of 2009 couldn’t care less about who gave the year’s better performance and would probably be fine shrugging his shoulders at the TV screen in the event of a tie (or, better yet, irresolution). However, there’s one thing people keep forgetting about the Academy: they’re full of surprises.

So, rather than just go with the easy, “predictable” predictions, we attempted to guess who and what will Crash the Oscars this year with a surprise victory — preferably the kind that adds an “ing” to “upset.” And once again, we’d like to extend the forecasting fun to you. What surprises do you expect and/or hope for? Or, if you’re down with the boring route, what “certain” winners do you truly believe in? And why? The most accurate comments will be reprinted in our final Oscar column on Monday.
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When Milk wins the Oscar for Original Screenplay on February 22, it will be the first biopic to take the award in 26 years. Back then Gandhi faced some stiff competition, including two fellow Best Picture nominees, Tootsie and E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial, as well as An Officer and a Gentleman and Diner. And three of these opposing titles were 1982’s three top grossing films. Gandhi’s main obstacle, though, was not one of the other nominees. It was the difficulty of winning a category that’s typically associated with originality. Plenty of movies based on true stories have been nominated for Original Screenplay, but that “based on” factor can be a drawback, and the Academy tends to favor scripts born completely out of the imagination here.

Unfortunately for Milk, that Academy disfavor has been strong for the past three decades, passing over such ‘nonfiction’ films as The Queen, Shine, Nixon, Braveheart, Bugsy, Hotel Rwanda, Erin Brockovich, The Aviator and Good Night, and Good Luck for more “creative” efforts like Little Miss Sunshine. But this year, the ‘fiction’ films nominated for Original Screenplay are not strong candidates, whether for critical, commercial or political reasons. So fortunately for Milk, screenwriter Dustin Lance Black will partly win the Oscar by default. Not all voters will be choosing Milk in a process of elimination, though. Some will actually see that Black has penned a great “original” biopic and that it is indeed the most deserving of the nominated screenplays.

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The nominations for the 81st Annual Academy Awards were announced this morning, and they likely have upset a large number of people in the comic book geek community. Yes, the most obvious snubs have to do with The Dark Knight, which failed to garner nods for Best Picture, Best Director or even Best Screenplay — yes, obviously Heath Ledger was at least nominated. And at least the comic book adaptation did get a few craft awards, including Best Cinematography. Could we blame the Academy’s usual penchant for Holocaust movies? Perhaps, since The Reader was a surprise nominee for Best Picture and Best Director. What else was overlooked and what else was shockingly present? My immediate thoughts after the jump:

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The Golden Globes have been handed out, and the last of Oscar ballots are to be postmarked by today. So, that’s it, the nominations for the 81st Academy Awards are being figured out as we speak, and campaigning is over until the official contenders are announced on January 22. Hopefully a few Academy members took notice of our unlikely last-minute suggestions, but it’s more probable that we’ll be looking at an unsurprising crop of films represented in the major eight categories. As you’ll see after the jump, we predict that two heavily-buzzed supporting performances will be snubbed. Of course you’re likely to disagree with these foreseen omissions. In fact, we welcome all you readers to make your own predictions in the comments section — what you think will be nominated, not what you want nominated. And on Monday, January 19, SpoutBlog will feature a post highlighting the best of these comments and predictions.

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Never known for their radical choices (inexplicable, occasionally, but rarely daring), the National Board of Review split the difference with their 2008 honors, citing predictable crowd pleasers (Slumdog Millionaire was named the Best Film of the year) and well-feted indies (Man on Wire for Best Documentary, Frozen River for Directorial Debut), alongside a few actual, suprisingly surprising choices. Let the Right One In and Edge of Heaven for Best Foreign Film? Okay! Changeling as one of the 11 best films of the year? Aww, NBR — your milquetoast cred remains intact. Never change!

indieWIRE has the full list.

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In a crowded year for Best Actress contention, Anne Hathaway could be the only first-timer to receive an Oscar nomination in the lead category, possibly going up against mainstays such as her Devil Wears Prada costar Meryl Streep and Kate Winslet, as well as the less-nominated vets Nicole Kidman and Kristen Scott Thomas. Her main competition for the outsider, dark horse position is Frozen River’s Melissa Leo (who may benefit from her film’s initiatory screener campaign even though River’s theatrical release was early and hardly noticed), and Happy-Go-Lucky’s Sally Hawkins, whose film just debuted to favorable reviews citing her brilliant (as in talented and bright) performance. But Hathaway is sure to be the victor –– even though her performance in Rachel Getting Married is hardly deserving of such an honor.

The Oscar buzz for Hathaway has been high for weeks now, enough that the actress apparently joked about it in her Saturday Night Live monologue earlier this month (I thought of it as less a current-year expectation than a general career goal, but it’s made Risky Biz Blog’s Steven Zeitchik compare Hathaway to Catherine O’Hara’s buzz-afflicted character in For Your Consideration). The fact that she’s a well-known movie star should make Hathaway’s buzz continually more reportable by the press and more noticeable by both the public and the voters, which gives her some advantage over Leo and Hawkins in terms of cultural consciousness.

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Sundance doesn’t technically end until Sunday, but I’m already half-way home from Park City, where the general sense last night seemed to be that the bulk of the buyers weren’t exactly in a hurry to close deals before closing night. But as our deal chart shows, Sony Classics managed to sneak in two quick, six-figure buys at the end of the week, first nabbing the contentious Frozen River, then closing the pick up of the Duplass Brothers’ mumble-horror comedy Baghead late last night. Check out the full chart here.