After all the prognosticating, more than a month after the nominees were announced, Oscar Sunday is upon us, and all is right with the world.
The Gurus o’ Gold: the 14 critics predict a Best Picture win for The Departed. Kris Tapley, at In Contention, is calling for Letters From Iwo Jima to pick up the Best Picture prize, while Tom O’ Neill at the L.A. Times’ Gold Derby predicts a sweep for The Departed (will win in every category it’s nominated); Sasha Stone, over at Oscar Watch, is right in step with O’Neill.
USA Today‘s Claudia Puig, the ever thoughtful Jeffrey Wells, the independent-minded James Berardinelli, The Hollywood Reporter’s Anne Thompson, and a host of others also offer their two cents worth.
VanRamblings? Where do we come in? Who, and what, do we feel will win?
Well, even though we’re feeling a little verklempt, not to mention a tad burnt out about this whole Oscar prediction thing, fair’s fair, so …
Best Picture: Babel. Why Babel? Very few have seen Clint Eastwood’s Letters From Iwo Jima. Little Miss Sunshine is too slight (and won last night at the Independent Spirit Awards). The Departed is far from Martin Scorsese’s best. And, The Queen is a warmed-over BBC production.
As to the remaining ‘big’ awards: Helen Mirren is a lock for Best Actress (The Queen). Forest Whitaker is a lock for Best Actor (The Last King of Scotland). Martin Scorsese is a lock for Best Director. Jennifer Hudson is a lock for Best Supporting Actress (Dreamgirls).
The only toss-up: will Eddie Murphy take home the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, or will Alan Arkin triumph?
And, oh yeah, Best Foreign Film oughta go to The Lives of Others.
We’ll know soon. Full results will be published below, later tonight.

Update: Perhaps not the most boring Academy Awards in memory (Ellen DeGeneres was fine, if a little unexciting … even if the programme did run long), there were few, if any surprises at the 79th annual Academy Awards.
Nikki Finke snarkily live-blogged the event, as did Greg Kirschling at Entertainment Weekly and L.A.’s Defamer.com.
The New York Times has already published their wrap-up of the ceremony, as has the L.A. Times. Tom Shales at the Washington Post found the ceremony to be “a bore and horror,” while Variety’s Brian Lowry writes the ceremony was “unspectacular bordering on dull.”
So, who won and are out partying while you’re getting ready for bed?
Just as we reported earlier in the day, as critics predicted The Departed won in every category it was nominated (save Mark Wahlberg for Best Supporting Actor), including Best Picture, Best Director, Adapted Screenplay and Film Editing. Forest Whitaker (Best Actor), Helen Mirren (Best Actress) and Jennifer Hudson (Best Supporting Actress) were, as it proved, ‘locks’ indeed, while Alan Arkin proved more popular than Eddie Murphy, taking home his Best Supporting Actor Oscar. And, of course, as we predicted above, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others picked up Best Foreign Film, which oughta improve its box office.
You were thrilled, you were excited, and now it’s all over til next year.
C’mon back later in the week, when VanRamblings will set about to publish the first of two lists on films to be released in 2007 that are likely to gain Oscar recognition come next February 24, 2008.

We’re less than one week away til the big day, and VanRamblings is back to weigh in on four more Oscar contenders.
Of course, Little Children remains our favourite film of 2006 (followed by The Good Shepherd, Babel, The Lives of Others and Letters From Iwo Jima … pretty much in that order), but we’ll leave to another day the posting of our Top 10 Films of 2006 list.

First up, the film that will garner Martin Scorsese that Best Director Oscar statuette he’s long sought. Too bad, though, that The Departed is a rather humdrum adaptation of the Hong Kong crime flick Infernal Affairs, a high body count movie where sterling performances (from Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson and Mark Wahlberg) become the focus over compelling narrative. The Departed isn’t a bad film; rather, it’s just not up to the standards of Raging Bull, Casino and Bringing Out the Dead.
The pick o’ the bunch this week, Clint Eastwood’s Letters From Iwo Jima is everything that Flags of Our Fathers was not: passionate, strikingly original, involving, masterful and resignedly melancholy. How is it possible that anyone would come away from this film and not see the absolute futility of war? Certainly deserving of a Best Picture nod, Letters From Iwo Jima is eloquent, powerful, humanizing filmmaking, created by a mature filmmaker working at his peak.
Set in the dying days of the Spanish Civil War, when Franco had long been in control of the reigns of government, Guillermo del Toro’s fabulist fairytale, Pan’s Labyrinth, brilliantly melds the realms of fairy tale and brutal 20th-century history as it relates the trauma of war through the haunted eyes of a lonely 10-year-old girl. Often terrifying and graphically violent in its depiction of evil, Pan’s Labyrinth is decidedly not children’s fare, but del Toro does create a richly imagined world, and magnificent film fare.
Volver may not be one of Pedro Almodóvar’s more compelling nor inventive films but for all that, given the heavier fare reviewed in today’s posting, Volver comes across as generally involving, sporadically humorous, well-acted and warmly personal cinema. Relating the relatively slight story of a family who take over a recently closed restaurant and in the process discover much about themselves, Penélope Cruz is very much the star here, her performance radiantly funny, her character immensely likeable.
Well, that’s it for now. See you later in the week for our Oscar post.

With the 79th annual Academy Awards only two weeks away (that would be Sunday, February 25th, and we’re making preparations, even as you read this), VanRamblings is attempting to publish a comprehensive set of reviews of the films up for Oscar consideration, as we began here and here.
At some point in the week prior to the Oscar ceremony, VanRamblings will publish our predictions of those who are likely to emerge as winners at the 2007 ceremony at the Kodak Theatre, along with a set of links and much speculation by other observers who spend, as VanRamblings does, far too much time on something quite so inconsequential as Tinseltown nonsense.
But still …
In this posting, we take a look at four more Oscar contenders …

With Leonardo DiCaprio up for Best Actor, Blood Diamond has deservedly won greater prominence in the Oscar sweepstakes, and at the box office, than otherwise might have been the case. Although, initially, the film has about it a whiff of ‘good for you’ advocacy filmmaking, by movie’s end this look at the bloody underbelly of the international diamond trade emerges as an entirely involving, wonderfully acted and thoughtful history lesson, even if it’s not quite up to the standards of The Constant Gardener.
The pick ‘o the bunch is Robert DeNiro’s The Good Shepherd, one of the most literate and engaging films of 2006. Woefully overlooked by the Academy (particularly Matt Damon, for Best Actor), this remarkable study of the corrosive effects of fear and power focuses on the life of a top CIA officer, from the inception of the CIA in WWII through the Bay of Pigs disaster in 1961. Even at nearly three hours, this tour-de-force film involves from beginning to end.
If there was any justice in the world (or within the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences), The Lives of Others (also championed by The New York Times’ A. O. Scott) would walk away with the Best Foreign Film award. Offering an unflinching look at East Germany under the Communists in the decade prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, this is supremely intelligent, historical filmmaking at its very best. Due to open in Vancouver this coming week, you’ll want to rush right out to see it as soon as it hits town.
A British kitchen-sink drama — except this time it’s set at Buckingham Palace and those standing around in the kitchen are Queen Elizabeth, Princes Philip and Charles, and Prime Minister Tony Blair — we would like to be excited about The Queen (because it’s up for Best Picture, and Helen Mirren is a lock for Best Actress), but we can’t muster much enthusiasm. The movie seems little more involving than a TV drama, but Best Picture? We think not.
C’mon back early next week for four more reviews (including Letters From Iwo Jima), and later that same week for our all-encompassing Oscar post. You’ll be glad you did (we think …).