> And I'd like to know how Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow did not get nominated for Art Direction or Cinematography or Visual Effects.

I bombed out on the visual effects portion of the predictions game. I had, at various times, guessed all of the three eventual nominees, but in the end NONE of my final choices matched. I am also shocked that Sky Captain wasn't there, but I did have a sneaking suspicion that it would get passed over somehow. Perhaps the technology is a little too revolutionary to make the veterans of the industry comfortable.

Anyway, here's another surprise: neither House of Flying Daggers nor A Very Long Engagement made the Foreign Film list. In a year where foreign language films flourished (even discounting FOUR that were ineligible for the Best Foreign Language Film category this year, namely Hero, Maria Full of Grace, The Motorcycle Diaries, and The Passion of the Christ), only one of the five nominees is familiar. Meanwhile, foreign language films cleaned up in other categories -- besides three of the four ineligible for Best Foreign Film scoring nominations in other categories, both House of Flying Daggers and A Very Long Engagement showed up in other places as well.

The one familiar title in the list is "The Sea Inside," which also had an outside chance to score in the Best Actor category. It's gotten a tremendous amount of critical buzz, but does that mean it will win? After Amelie scoring a smattering of outside nominations and losing the Best Foreign Film win to an unknown, I wouldn't count on it. Part of the trick here is that this is one category where the voters are educated: voters have to attend screenings of all the nominees before voting, so if there's an undiscovered diamond out there, it'll become the leading contender with the Academy long before the media catches on.