BEST PICTURE: Shakespeare in Love
BEST DIRECTOR: John Madden
BEST ACTOR: Ian McKellen
BEST ACTRESS: Cate Blanchett
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Ed Harris
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Judi Dench
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: The Thin Red Line
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Shakespeare in Love
BEST ART DIRECTION: What Dreams May Come
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Elizabeth
BEST COSTUME DESIGN: Elizabeth
BEST FILM EDITING: The Thin Red Line
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE: Italian. No, wait. Central Station
BEST MAKEUP: Elizabeth
BEST ORIGINAL DRAMATIC SCORE: Life is Beautiful
BEST ORIGINAL MUSICAL OR COMEDY SCORE: Price of Egypt
BEST ORIGINAL SONG: "When You Believe"
BEST SOUND: Armageddon. Oh, you said "best" sound, not "loudest". In that case, Saving Private Ryan
BEST SOUND EFFECTS EDITING: Saving Private Ryan
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: What Dreams May Come

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: Lenny Bruce
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT: A Place in the Land

BEST SHORT FILM, ANIMATED: Bunny
BEST SHORT FILM, LIVE ACTION: Victor
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Wow, this was hard. First of all, I haven't seen any of these films and there weren't any hookers this year! I mean, jeez, every year since '90 either the Best Actress or Best Supporting Actress went to a woman portraying a prostitute. This year, what to we have? The Queen of England. Twice. Well, Brenda Blethyn (Little Voice) did go cruising in bars, but that doesn't count.

The Twin Queens should win this year. Elizabeth's Cate Blanchett will win for Best Actress simply because Elizabeth won't win for Best Picture, everyone's ga-ga over Shakespeare in Love (SiL) so the Academy will have to toss a bone to the other good non-war film, Elizabeth. Best Actress is it.

Meanwhile, over at SiL, Judi Dench will win because (as The Brunching Shuttlecock's movie critic says) "she was supposed to win Best Actress last year for Mrs. Brown, and the Academy feels really badly about letting her down. It's a perfect situation. They pay Dench back for slighting her, and they give an award to a comic performance, thereby avoiding being called stodgy for yet another year."

Saving Private Ryan and Elizabeth should sweep the minor awards, aka the awards given out in the first five hours of the ceremony (Cinematogrpahy, Costume Design, Makeup...). Tom Hanks won't win for Best Actor because, well, he's already got several. And his perfomance in SPR was really Tom Hanks playing Tom Hanks in a war film.

And what's with the Sound and Sound Effects Editing awards? It seems to get nominated there, you have to have big exploding things in your movie. And make them loud. Did anyone leaving The Mask of Zorro actually discuss how the sound was presented? "Wow! What great sound!" No. Zorro just had a thing blow up real big, but Armageddon topped it by having multiple big things blowing up really loudly, but Saving Private Ryan had bullets whizzing by while multiple things were blowing up really loudly which let the audience experience stereo sound. Saving Private Ryan wins.

What Dreams May Come gets art nods for the Painted World scene.

-Faux "Alan Smithee" Pas