A while ago I said that "The Pianist" was probably the least likely of the five Best Picture nominees to win the award. Stephen disagreed, saying that The Two Towers had a slimmer chance.

But, funny thing about the whims of taste, The Pianist seems to have emerged from the pack to be Chicago's strongest competitor. It was easily the least known of the five at the time it was nominated, but a lot of things have fallen into place for it since. It won BAFTA's Best Picture award (as well as the least significant Cesar Awards' Best Picture). And it's gotten incredible press about Polanski's U.S. exile for his underage rape case from 1977, including the victim campaigning to move past the past.

I haven't seen the Pianist. I've seen Chicago. Chicago is a *lot* of fun. But grave flaws in the editing prevent it from being worthy of a Best Picture award from a technical standpoint, and one normally expects greater emotional investment in a Best Picture. Still, I wouldn't object to its win all that much, because, like I say, it's a *lot* of fun.

And the truth is that I haven't seen a movie all year that deserves Oscar's Best Picture. Minority Report comes the closest but is weighed down with a final act that doesn't entirely feel right (although I cringe more at those who protest that the film should have outright ended with Cruise's imprisonment). The Two Towers is great but flawed. Road To Perdition isn't flawed at all, but it doesn't cut deep enough for a Best Picture.

Of course, I haven't seen some of the strongest films of the year. Stephen assures me that Far From Heaven and Adaptation are worthy of Best Picture. But if we just look at the actual nominees, Gangs lives in the shadow of better Scorsese films, and The Hours is burdened with a weighty somberness. The Pianist, being a holocaust film, is an Academy reflex action (much like "A Beautiful Mind"), but nonetheless it's distinctly likely that it *is* the best of the five nominees and worthy of the award in the first place. I'd love to be able to say for sure, but, hey, I haven't seen Shanghai Knights yet, and I have my priorities. Still, the film looks promising enough that its race against Chicago adds a level of interest in this year's Oscar race.

Change of subject. The ACE's Eddie awards, which give out awards in editing to feature films, TV shows, etc, were given out last weekend. The winner for Best Edited Drama was Gangs of New York. The winner for Best Edited Comedy/Musical was Chicago. If we take these awards as an indicator of the Oscars, Best Editing will go to one of the two.

We can only hope that Gangs, and not Chicago, is the winner. Chicago is great in nearly every way, but the editing is so bad that it undermines the performances and dancing.

At the same time, Gangs of New York is fraught with controversy over the edit that was released to theaters. While I don't know where to stand on that one, still, both films are tainted with controversy about the editing.

Looking at the list of Eddie nominees, though, makes me suspicious of the awards season in general all over again. The Eddie nominees read like the Oscar nominees. What, all the best films of the year for directing, writing, acting, and so on just happen to be the same ones with brilliant editing? To an extent I can believe this, but I think it's safe to say that if a film terrible in every way except the editing, which happens to be unprecedently brilliant, it wouldn't have a chance of being recognized. Not at the Eddies, which is focused exclusively on editing, and definitely not at the Oscars.

So you vote for your favorite movie in a category like Best Editing, or at least the Best Picture nominee that has the most cuts. That sounds suspiciously like a Chicago win, which would be the most ignominious Oscar of the year.