Longtime readers know I'm a bitter guy on this subject:  the Academy Awards were never perfect, but once we had a system through which the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences sifted through the many different positions both mainstream and critical as to the year's best movies and tried to select a consensus best Picture everyone could kinda agree on.  What we have now is a system with no more validity than, say, my own Top 10 List.  Contemptuous of mainstream hits and hard-edged Art House fare alike (not to mention anything about politics more recent than 30 years ago), the Academy now seems to put its' Best Picture stamp only on the Best Movie Made For the Academy.  As such, the bitterness.

Luckily, despite producing an utterly myopic and pointless list of Best Picture contenders, the Academy hasn't missed the boat in the acting categories, and it's there that my attention will be primarily focused Sunday night.  I just find myself particularly frustrated to have just ended a seminal movie year, one which 20 years from now will still have movie lovers debating the relative merits of The Dark Knight vs. Iron Man vs. Wall*E while a certain kind of cinephille will roll their eyes at these rubes who've never even SEEN Synecdoche, New York.  The only reason anyone will remember any of the five names we might hear read at the conclusion of Sunday night's ceremony will be for that very reason:  Crash needs another buddy.  On the other hand, twenty more years like the last five and the Academy Awards will have long since become the Golden Satellites of their day.

And yet, history is history, and it must be previewed.  Especially since I've only missed two predictions each of the two years I've done this.  Let the predictions begin:

BEST PICTURE
Who's Nominated:  The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Reader, Slumdog Millionaire
Nominee in Exile:  The Dark Knight-How rare for my favorite movie of the year to be the top-grossing movie of the year.  Then, on top of that, for it to emerge as a major awards season player.  This was America's movie, even its' critics' (only the also-snubbed WALL*E appeared on more Ten Best Lists).  Just not the Academy's.
My Preference:  Hard to remember the last time I hadn't seen a Best Picture nominee I really loved, but it happened this year.  Milk was the best of this lot.
My Prediction: Benjamin Button got the most nominations.  Milk hasn't publicly capitalized on the Prop 8 cross-reference as well as I thought it would, but could still prevail if that's been in a lot of members' heads.  The scary dark horse is a Weinstein Special campaigning The Reader into the title of Least Relevant Best Picture Ever.  Only Frost/Nixon's got no shot at all.  But the award season momentum, along with wins from the Golden Globes, Screen Actors, Directors and Writers Guilds and more critics society honors than anyone else, is all pointed in one direction:  Slumdog Millionaire.

BEST DIRECTOR
Who's Nominated:  Danny Boyle for Slumdog Millionaire, Stephen Daldry for The Reader, David Fincher for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Ron Howard for Frost/Nixon, Gus Van Sant for Milk.
Nominee in Exile:  Christopher Nolan for The Dark Knight-Nolan has quietly built a truly amazing resume, including Memento, The Prestige and Batman Begins.  Now comes his crowning achievement, a dazzling meditation on good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, expedience vs. ethics all seen through the prism of a comic book superhero past directors could barely keep from descending into spoofy nonsense.  A nomination was overdue.
My Preference:  Funny thing:  of the three nominees whose movies I've seen, I don't count any of them as particularly well-directed:  Boyle's cast is mostly flat, Howard's movie has no forward momentum, and Van Sant chose to regard his captivating subject from a distractingly passive distance.  As such, I'm going off the board and saying that no matter what the merits of Benjamin Button, an Oscar for the gifted David Fincher would be long overdue.
My Prediction:  Year in, year out, this is one of the easiest categories to guess because the correlation between the Directors Guild's choices and the Oscars is just about perfect, so much so that I used that exact same sentence in last year's preview!  Even moreso than his movie, Danny Boyle's been on a roll, Guild included, and I'd be crazy not to pick him.

BEST ACTOR
Who's Nominated:  Richard Jenkins for The Visitor, Frank Langella for Frost/Nixon, Sean Penn for Milk, Brad Pitt for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Mickey Rourke for The Wrestler
Nominee in Exile:  Clint Eastwood for Gran Torino-Nobody must have been more surprised than Clint when the nominations came out and he discovered that despite wins or nominations for Best Actor, Best Director for two different movies, as a producer of two different Best Pictures, Best Original Score and Best Original Song throughout the award season, the music stopped and he was empty-handed.  Pity, too, since his work in Torino is among his best ever, with a raw emotion he's only recently been able to tap into.  Hopefully roles to lure him out of acting retirement keep coming along.
My Preference:  Like last year's Daniel Day-Lewis, for me, one man's work so towered over all competitors that there's really no conversation.  Mickey Rourke was so emotionally naked, so convincing in the ring as a pro wrestler, so visibly beaten down by unseen decades of bad choices.  How can you go any other way?
My Prediction:  Except that I expect the Academy to do just that.  Their snubs of The Wrestler in ever non-acting category tell us something about their lack of connection to the subject matter.  They've also got a long history of voting for actors as though they were voting for the people they were playing instead, and whether you're voting for Harvey Milk or Sean Penn, those are two things the Academy loves to do.

BEST ACTRESS
WHO'S NOMINATED:  Anne Hathaway for Rachel Getting Married, Angelina Jolie for Changeling, Melissa Leo for Frozen River, Meryl Streep for Doubt, Kate Winslet for The Reader
Nominee in Exile:  Sally Hawkins for Happy Go Lucky-The movie never did arrive in my area, but did anyone this year go from front-runner to non-nominee faster?
My Preference:  No contest, Meryl Streep takes a role that on paper is Doubt's villain and makes her not only a woman to root for, but a stock character who's fascinatingly three-dimensional.  And that last line is a killer.  This is the rare year when the best male and female performances of the year are actually Oscar-nominated, I just fear they won't win.
My Predicton:  It seemed easy:  Screen Actors Guild winner Streep (or Hawkins, distant memory that is) wins Best Actress and Kate Winslet finally wins an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress for The Reader.  Then, Academy members decided she was a lead actress (booting her performance in Revolutionary Road which actually won her the Golden Globe in this category) and I can't help but think the "it's time" sentiment along with HARD campaigning by the indefatigable Weinstein will swing this her way.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Who's Nominated:  Josh Brolin for Milk, Robert Downey Jr. for Tropic Thunder, Philip Seymour Hoffman for Doubt, Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight, Michael Shannon for Revolutionary Road
Nominee in Exile:  Anil Kappor for Slumdog Millionaire-The one thing about the presumptive Best Picture that's as good as it's supposed to be.
My Preference:  Just about any other year, Downey Jr.'s amazing comic turn would be the choice, but what the late Heath Ledger accomplished in The Dark Knight is one of those iconic performances by which others in the same genre will always be judged.  There's a long history of great psycho comic book villains in the movies, but the reserves of pure, joyous madness he found within himself were unprecedented.
My Prediction:  This is the one category that's been locked down pretty much from the very beginning of the awards season.  It's Heath Ledger.  Period.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Who's Nominated:  Amy Adams for Doubt, Penelope Cruz for Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Viola Davis for Doubt, Taraji P. Henson for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Marisa Tomei for The Wrestler
Nominee in Exile:  Kate Winslet for The Reader-I have no beef with the Academy's picks, just the fact that this unseen performance is clearly out of category and the mistake will probably steal a deserved award from Meryl Streep.
My Preference:  Great performances by Davis and Tomei, but what makes me go with Amy Adams is how unique her work in Doubt is.  Most great roles are as troubled, dark characters, but Sister James is sweet, saintly, a woman who knows nothing of the world outside her church.  But to watch her goodness buckle under the weight of the possibility that her parish Priest is a child molester is remarkable.  It's a great, great performance.
My Prediction:  The press has been solidly behind the candidacy for Cruz, who certainly would fit a long history of actresses in Woody Allen films winning in this category (including Diane Wiest twice).  But my gut tells me this is one of those years (like Marcia Gay Harden's win in 2000 for Pollack) when a long-respected working actress scores an upset.  My money's on Viola Davis.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Who's Nominated: Frozen River by Courtney Hunt, Happy-Go-Lucky by Mike Leigh, In Bruges by Martin McDonaugh, Milk by Dustin Lance Black, WALL*E by Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter & Jim Reardon
Nominee in Exile: The Wrestler by Robert E. Siegel-Challenging and moving in equal measure with a real feel for the world in which its' set.  Depending upon who you ask, its' unusual 2-act structure is either a cop-out or a bold stroke, I tend to side with the later camp.
My Preference:  At its' best, WALL*E is bold and challenging, but at its' worst, the plot becomes as bloated and smug as its' obese future humans.  So I'll go with Martin Mcdonaugh, who hasn't crafted a perfect narrative, but his script is chock full of memorable characters and quotable lines ("Look!  They're filmin' midgets!").
My Prediction:  Only one of these movies is nominated for Best Picture, so I'm picking Dustin Lance Black, who also won the Writers' Guild award in this category.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Who's Nominated: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by Eric Roth and Robin Swicord, Doubt by John Patrick Shanley, Frost/Nixon by Peter Morgan, The Reader by David Hare, Slumdog Millionaire by Simon Beaufoy
Nominee in Exile:  The Dark Knight by Christopher and Jonathan Nolan-These two brothers have worked together three times:  Memento, The Prestige and now the brilliant Batman sequel.  Hard to find a better writing track record than that.
My Preference:  Tight as a drum, a nailbiting thriller with BIG roles hit out of the park by suitably big actors; John Patrick Shanley didn't win the Pulitzer for nothing:  his adaptation of his own Doubt was as good as any script last year.
My Prediction:  The whole award season's been going his way, right up to the Writers' Guild and his movie's going to win Best Picture.  Go with Simon Beaufoy.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
Who's Nominated: Bolt, Kung Fu Panda, WALL*E
Nominee in Exile:  Horton Hears a Who-Last year's best animated movie was actually this, the first movie to really capture the spirit of its' Dr. Seuss source material.  Both timely and joyful, largely (but not entirely) forgotten during the Awards season. 
My Preference:  Its' "canine Truman Show" concept requires quite a suspension of disbelief, but if you go with it, Bolt is funny, spirited and ultimately moving.
My Prediction:  First, a question.  Since Waltz With Bashir was shut out in this category, if it wins Foreign Language Film, does that mean Kung Fu Panda was better than any foreign language film released last year?  It's a good time to ask because without Bashir, there's been no award season competition for WALL*E.

I've always had high hopes for Hugh Jackman as an Oscar host, and I know the producers will be working overtime to freshen up the presentation of their often-stale show:  the likelihood for either innovative triumph or memorable debacle is quite high.  While I'm highly invested in the acting categories, those Best Picture nominees are gonna sting pretty much forever.  Et Tu, Oscars?