Picture: Slumdog Millionaire.
Top Ten: Burn After Reading, Changeling, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Dark Knight, Defiance, Frost/Nixon, Gran Torino, Milk, Wall•E and The Wrestler... so I scored 6/10 of my predictions --not bad considering it coulda gone anywhere. But they actually made it an 11 film year since their Best Picture is no longer listed in their top ten. Sneaky way to honor more films and make sure their dinner is well attended, don'cha know.
Director: David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Actress: Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married
Actor: Clint Eastwood, Gran Torino
Supporting Actress: Penélope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Supporting Actor: Josh Brolin, Milk
But this being the NBR, they found a way to honor just about everybody including non top ten scorers like Doubt, The Visitor and Frozen River which is still doing really well in precursors... whoda thunk?. The only instantly noticeable "snubs" among high profile Oscar hopefuls were zip for Revolutionary Road, The Reader and Australia. They had to make room for multiple honors for the Eastwood films, you see.
See the full list of awards here
before nominations were announced... I wrote
I forgot to make National Board of Review predictions [update: my correct predictions are in red below] but they announce today. It's best not to overthink their choices. Just remember: they turn into quivery jello if you say any syllables that sound like "Clint Eastwood" or "Edward Zwick". They also love December movies and they sometimes throw curveballs in the supporting categories. So here's my totally silly and utterly useless guesswork mere hours (minutes?) before we know. Filler!Predictions
Picture: Revolutionary Road * Director: Ron Howard Frost/Nixon * Actor: Clint Eastwood -Gran Torino (if this traction is going to happen for real and not merely in the minds of pundits, it has as good a chance of any of starting here) Actress: Winslet for both Revolutionary Road and The Reader (they like double dippers) Supp Actor: Heath Ledger -The Dark Knight (I'm predicting him for every group this year --which is boring but it's one bandwagon few will want to miss) * Supp Actress: Vera Farmiga Nothing But the Truth * Foreign Film: Gomorra (Italy) * Documentary Man on Wire * Semi-Random Top Ten Guesses: Changeling, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Dark Knight, Defiance, Doubt, Gran Torino, The Reader, Vicky Cristina Barcelona and The Wrestler
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