I'm really not certain why The Two Towers was nominated for Best Picture. Were all the other movies last year really that bad? As a movie that stands on its own, TTT fails: it has disparate storylines that don't relate to each other in this movie and has a serious case of narrativus interruptus during the last part of the movie with the cuts between the action-laden battle at Helm's Deep and the torporic Ent conclave. The Two Towers is just a part of a greater work. To be nominated for Best Picture the movie should be able to stand on its own, to be viewed without having to watch the first movie. To me, this was the most unexpected of the year's Oscar nominations.

Treasure Planet for Animated Feature Film wasn't too surprising. The category was created for Shrek, a movie that could have been nominated for Best Picture, but it's animated. So we have a category that's now established and (surprisingly enough) there weren't that many animated movies that year. In order to fill the five slots for the category, they added Treasure Planet. Does anyone else recall any other animated films in 2002?

Also looking at the "most unexpected" Reader Poll, the only thing that was unexpected about The Time Machine being nominated for Makeup was that the movie was released in 2002. I had thought it was released much, much longer ago. It's surprising that the Academy recognized a film from January or February. Even moreso that they chose The Time Machine, one of the signs of the upcoming apocalypse. But what's even stranger is that only two movies were nominated for the award. Didn't any of the other movies released in 2002 use makeup? If they can scrape together five movies for the Animated Feature Film award, can't they do the same for Makeup?

On to random predictions. Just remember, I've had a less than 50% accuracy in predicting the Acadamy Awards Winners and I haven't seen more than 5% of the movies that brought forth nominations.

Actor in a Leading Role: Adrien Brody plays a Jew in WW2 Poland. His character is oppressed by Nazis, so Adrien has a good shot. Nic Cage plays two people and I have a feeling that several people are thinking Adaptation should have been in the Best Picture category, so he's up there. I've heard some really good stuff about Daniel Day-Lewis in Gangs of New York. Of the five movies the Actor in a Leading Role nominees represent, I haven't seen any, but I want to see Adaptation and Gangs.

Actor in a Supporting Role: Ed Harris is in The Hours, so he's got that campaign working for him. Plus, his character has a terminal illness. He's a lock.

Actress in a Leading Role: Not only has Nicole Kidman turned in a magnificent performance, is starring in a movie that has interesting and complex roles, she's also got the "we should give her the award this year because she should've gotten the award last time but we were giving it to someone we should've given it to the year prior" thing working for her. She's a lock.

Actress in a Supporting Role: Catherine Zeta-Jones. Not only could she be running for Actress in a Leading Role, none of the other four Acting awards are going to Chicago, the movie that seems to be heavily favored for winning something. If she doesn't win, it'll be Julianne Moore.

Animated Feature Film: Ice Age, the only one of these I've seen, was okay, but nothing more than a matinee movie. Spirited Away should win, just so America might realize that Studio Ghilbi does produce some good stuff. (Although even if it does win, people will still think of "Animated Feature Film" as the "Children's Movie" category.)

Most of the rest of the movies nominated, I haven't seen. The Two Towers shouldn't get Film Editing. The cuts between Helm's Deep and the EntUnion -- rather, the way they were cut together -- really seemed to make the ending of that movie not work as well as it could have. Gandalf falling down the Big Hole in the beginning also had an odd feeling, but I'm not sure if that's because that was where the poorest visual effects in the movie were or if it was the editing.

Best Picture sould have included several other movies -- Minority Report was fantastic and I've heard Adaptation was amazing. Unfortunately, science fiction movies are overlooked by the Academy, even when they are done extremely well.

Which brings me to Sound and Sound Editing.

Usually the movie that wins these categories has plenty of explosions. Loud explosions. None of these do, or at least I haven't heard that explosions were featured in the ones I haven't seen. I predict Minority Report will win for Sound Editing. It's a science fiction film and the voting members of the Academy who haven't seen it will think science fiction = space battles and exploding Death Stars, so they'll vote for it. Sound will probably go to Chicago. It's a musical and that's all about sound, right? Right.

Oh, and Adaptation won't win for Writing (Adapted Screenplay). A fictional character is nominated for the award. As interesting as that sounds, the Academy would never award the Oscar to a fictional character for fear of looking stupid. Adaptation got in because it should have been a Best Picture nominee but wasn't. It will get no further.

Faux Pas has spoken.