Oscar Predictions

It's that time of year, so here are my yearly Oscar predictions. Usually I do pretty good, but I have to confess, this has been a really tough year to predict. The best picture and best actress races are really too close to call. Best Picture could go either way to Brokeback Mountain or Crash, and Best Actress could go to Reese Witherspoon or Felicity Huffman. Ideally I'd like to list both of them, but I know that's not really fair as far as predictions go. Both races are hard to pick, so I'm more or less flipping a coin on those two. So here are my predictions:

Best Picture
Crash

Achievement in Directing
Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain

Best Actor
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote

Best Actress
Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line

Best Supporting Actor
George Clooney, Syriana

Best Supporting Actress
Rachel Weisz, The Constant Gardener

Best Original Screenplay
Paul Haggis and Robert Moresco, Crash

Best Adapted Screenplay
Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, Brokeback Mountain

Achievement in Cinematography
Dion Beebe, Memoirs of a Geisha

Best Film Editing
Hughes Winborne, Crash

Best Art Direction
Art Direction: Grant Major; Set Decoration: Dan Hennah and Simon Bright, King Kong

Achievement in Costume Design
Colleen Atwood, Memoirs of a Geisha

Achievement in Makeup
Howard Berger and Tami Lane, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe

Best Original Score
Gustavo Santaolalla, Brokeback Mountain

Best Original Song
'In the Deep' - Music by Kathleen “Bird” York and Michael Becker, Lyric by Kathleen “Bird” York, Crash

Achievement in Sound Editing
Mike Hopkins and Ethan Van der Ryn, King Kong

Achievement in Sound Mixing
Christopher Boyes, Michael Semanick, Michael Hedges and Hammond Peek, King Kong

Best Visual Effects
Joe Letteri, Brian Van't Hul, Christian Rivers and Richard Taylor, King Kong

Best Animated Feature Film
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Best Animated Short Film
One Man Band

Best Foreign-Language Film
Tsotsi (South Africa)

Best Live-Action Short Film
Cashback

Best Documentary Feature
March of the Penguins

Best Documentary Short
God Sleeps in Rwanda