Another year, another Oscar race. Being a big time movie junkie (par for the course when you are a theater major who wants to be an actor and filmmaker when you leave college), I follow the Oscars almost religiously, and I have a pretty decent understanding of who will and won’t win. So I’m offering you, the Collegian reader, a handy guide to the Oscars to help you with that office betting pool. And since I’ve won Oscar-themed contests for over four years, I think I’m qualified to call myself an Academy Awards expert.

Best Picture

A Beautiful Mind (Universal) [will]

Gosford Park (USA Films)

In The Bedroom (Miramax)

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings (New Line) [should]

Moulin Rouge (Fox)

First let’s eliminate the three that have no chance of taking home the gold. Miramax kingpin Harvey Weinstein has kept an almost unbroken decade-long stretch of Oscars nods going with the acclaimed In The Bedroom, but the movie may be too quiet for Academy tastes (the last time films like these actually won were in the early 80s when Ordinary People took home the gold). Still, its wrenching portrait of a family coping with tragedy is worthy of more than a few awards. Gosford Park always struck me as the kind of movie that gets excellent reviews but is ignored at Oscar time; plus, it’s a comedy, and comedies rarely win. Moulin Rouge gets this year’s Chocolat Award for Weakest Nominee of the Year. It’s a Technicolor whirligig that’s not as good as it thinks it is.

The Lord of the Rings deserves it, because, of the five, it ranks highest on my personal top ten list (at No. 3). It’s the kind of blockbuster that rarely gets made anymore: epic and heroic, with an eye toward humanity rather than FX. It’s that rare spectacle with as much intimacy as grandeur. Plus, it’s also fantastically well made, gorgeous looking and joyfully adult rather than kiddified. But it won’t win. That award will go to the safest nominee: A Beautiful Mind. That film is a polished, serious, and moving drama with a high-caliber cast and creative team, another rarity in Hollywood. It’s also a movie about overcoming the odds, and defeating illness, the kind of overdone subject that the Academy salivates for. Expect the feel-good film to trump the violent fantasy.

Who got snubbed? Ridley Scott’s riveting, harrowing and brutal drama Black Hawk Down is one of the best war films of all time, and it’s a crime that it didn’t get a nomination. But in the current political climate, what Academy voter would want to nominate a gritty, graphically realistic movie about a misfired military mission? Mulholland Drive was David Lynch’s best movie since Blue Velvet, but it may have been too edgy for Oscar’s older members. And then there was the backwards noir Memento, the cleverest thriller in years, and the best excuse to tell a non-linear narrative last year.

Best Actor

Russell Crowe (A Beautiful Mind) [will]

Sean Penn (I Am Sam)

Will Smith (Ali)

Denzel Washington (Training Day) [should]

Tom Wilkinson (In The Bedroom)

What is Penn doing here? He’s usually a great actor, but his performance as a mentally retarded father fighting for custody of his daughter is phony – a collection of tics and mannerisms with a hollow core. The fact that the movie is terrible – a cutesy weeper that jerks tears through liposuction – should’ve turned the Academy off from him, but once again an actor “stretching” as a handicapped person fooled them. He better not win. Wilkinson’s role isn’t flashy enough and he suffers from the “who is he?” problem, so he’ll remain the dark horse, though his quiet currents of rage and despair are far superior to Penn’s shambling cardboard acting. Smith goes through an astonishing transformation into Muhammed Ali, but he’ll be hurt by the movie’s clinical, punch less feel.

That leaves Crowe and Washington. Crowe already one last year for Gladiator, but many critics (myself included) feel as though he did better work here, and should’ve won for this film rather than the other. However, Crowe is not as beloved as Spencer Tracy or Tom Hanks, the only actors to win Oscars two years in a row. And even he was surpassed by Washington’s electric, volatile performance as a corrupt cop on the mean streets of South Central. His Alonzo Harris is one the scariest, most charismatic villains in a decade and Washington, always a sturdy actor (even in so-so films like John Q and Remember The Titans) deserves Academy Award recognition for Best Actor more than any other actor around now.

Who got snubbed? Billy Bob Thornton and Gene Hackman to name two. Thornton’s three acclaimed performances – in Bandits, The Man Who Wasn’t There, and Monster’s Ball – probably were his downfall; he became his own worst enemy, splitting up his votes amongst the three. Hackman gave one of the best performances of his career as the irresponsible patriarch of The Royal Tennenbaums but some people think the movie was too precious. I didn’t – I thought Wes Anderson’s quirks were fully integrated into his most mature, poignant film yet. And Hackman should’ve been nominated. Also forgotten: Ewan McGregor (Moulin Rouge), Guy Pearce (Memento), and John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch).

Best Actress

Halle Berry (Monster’s Ball)

Judi Dench (Iris)

Nicole Kidman (Moulin Rouge) [will]

Sissy Spacek (In The Bedroom) [should]

Renee Zellweger (Bridget Jones’ Diary)

Judi Dench is an always-dependable actress, but she should be banned from nominations for the next couple of years. She’s been nominated four out of five years running (she even one the Supporting Actress award for an eight minute role in the overrated and mediocre Shakespeare in Love), and she’s beginning to look like the Academy mascot. It has created the disquieting effect of making everyone of her recent performances appear to be geared towards the Oscars. Zellweger got the nod in a broad comedy, and the Academy doesn’t award for broad comedies. She’s hurt by the fact that, much like Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde, she gives a great performance in a merely good movie. With her win at the SAG Awards on Sunday night, Berry is one step closer to winning the gold. Why? Because, at the Oscars, the individual categories vote for their winners and nominees (i.e. directors vote for directors only, actors for actors only) – much like the Screen Actors Guild. And it would be nice to see Berry get it, considering that no black woman has ever won the Best Actress Oscar. But her little topless scene in the trashy Swordfish will likely hurt her chances with more prudent voters.

The award comes down to two competitors that are as equally likely to get it, so it all boils down to flipping a coin and hoping you’re right. I’m going with Kidman as the ultimate winner because of her early momentum, her fantastic year (which cemented her as actress that will be remembered for years) and the Julia Roberts Effect, wherein she got so much buzz that there’s no way to deny her. But her better performance came in The Others, in which her galvanizing turn as a haunted mother bought what little emotion there was to the vacuum-sealed creeper. Spacek’s performance as grief-stricken performance, roiling with anger, guilt, desperation and sorrow even in the same scene, brought her back into the public eye. It’s undeniably a powerful work, from an actress already familiar with Oscar (she won for Coal Miner’s Daughter).

Who got snubbed? I thought surely that Naomi Watts would get a nod for her incredible, star-making performance as Hollywood innocent Betty Elms in Mulholland Drive. It may be the best female performance this year, and should’ve sat alongside Washington in the winner’s circle. Then there was Thora Birch for Ghost World, and, hell, Witherspoon for Legally Blonde (if Zellweger can do it, why not her?).

Best Supporting Actor

Jim Broadbent (Iris)

Ethan Hawke (Training Day)

Ben Kingsley (Sexy Beast) [will]

Ian McKellan (The Lord of the Rings) [should]