Oscar-bation!

(nate silver)

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Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com has made his Oscar predictions, and he could be right. Silver rose to fame in the past couple of years when he used mathematical formulas and historical statistics to accurately predict the winners of several political races, and he's now put his mad scientist genius to work for the Oscars.

According to Silver's calculations, Mickey Rourke will win Best Actor and Kate Winslet will win Best Actress. He's probably right. Kate is a lock, you can bet a large amount of money on it. The only controversy surrounding Kate's nomination is whether or not it was a "leading" role. Let's see, she was in almost every scene, and the story was about her character. How is that a "Supporting" role? Regardless, she's going to win. As for Mickey, we still think Frank Langella has a shot at an upset, and Sean Penn probably deserves it more, but never underestimate the power of sentiment when it comes to Oscar voting, and Rourke's comeback from the darkside is a powerful, heart-tugging, sentimental freight train.

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Silver also predicts Heath Ledger's win for Supporting Actor. Again, he's probably right, but this would be the sorriest Oscar win of the entire night. If Ledger wins, it will be primarily because of his tragic death. If it weren't for that, not only would Josh Brolin win, but Ledger probably wouldn't have even been nominated. Haven't we been down this road before? Haven't we given out Oscars in the past for silly reasons?, i.e. Whoopi Goldberg, Marisa Tomei, Liz Taylor for Butterfield 8, etc., and then we always look back later and say, "What were we thinking?" You'd hope, just once, we'd resist the urge to use major awards to try to achieve closure of our unresolved feelings, but this might not be the year for mature emotional growth.

Silver's prediction for the biggest upset, though, is his choice of Supporting Actress, Taraji P. Henson. While all other predictors point to Penelope Cruz, Henson could pull it off. For one, it might be the only chance the voters have to reward "Benjamin Button", which will probably lose in all of its other Oscar categories, and number two, Henson is African-American. Oscar voters have been salving their "white guilt" for the past few years at a fairly steady rate for not having recognized African American actors in the past. Not that Miss Henson is not deserving of a win, far from it, but for the Oscars, at this time in our society, being Black doesn't hurt, just as for Ledger's Oscar chances, it's a definite plus to have died tragically young.

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(taraji p. henson)

.As for Best Picture, it's "Slumdog Millionaire". Period. This thing has won every single movie award of the entire awards season, and only God himself could stop it from winning the Oscar at this point. But since God revoked his Academy membership after the debacle of "Crash" beating "Brokeback Mountain" for the 2006 Best Picture, there's not much even He can do about it.