Sunday sees the return of the Oscars, a chance for Hollywood's elite to reaffirm that people do indeed like them, really really like them, and maybe pick up an award or two.
Sticking with our lifelong policy of "everything's better when there's money on it", Londonist has laid out a significant amount of its meagre earnings on what we hope will be the best dogs in show.
Before we get to the choices, we should give you a glimpse into our, not particularly well thought out or historically succesful, gambling theories.
First up, we don't bet on favourites. If we wanted a low return on investment we'd get a high interest savings account. High risk, high return. Oh yes.
We made an exception for The Incredibles purely because we loved the bits with the car, and also, in the same way we never bet on Manchester United winning, any money gained from a result for the execrable Shrek 2 would be tainted.
We think Foxx will get passed over for the Best Actor but get the sympathy vote for best supporting, and 25/1 is just too tempting. Scorsese will probably get best director but the odds are crap and whilst the technical achievement was great, and people peeing into bottles is normally a winner with us, we genuinely think Sideways was better.
Ah yes, Sideways. This is the cinematic basket into which Londonist is cramming many of it's cash filled eggs. Sure, it's resulted in people we know becoming prone to "amusing" outbursts abusing Merlot, but it's a class film and we think it will have generated a lot of goodwill amongst the voters tired of hearing how this is Scorsese’s year.
So it breaks down like this:
Best Actor
Don Cheadle (Hotel Rwanda)25/1
Best Actress
Imelda Staunton (Vera Drake)8/1
Best Actor in a Supporting Role
Jamie Foxx (Collateral)25/1
Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Natalie Portman (Closer)9/2
Best Director
Alexander Payne (Sideways)14/1
Best Film
Sideways7/1
Best Foreign Film
Downfall (Germany)8/1
Best Animated Feature
The Incredibles 1/9
Film to win most Oscars
Sideways 16/1
And although Londonist is not usually given to posting on a weekend, we will be making an exception this Sunday night/Monday morning in order to follow the coverage and post live on the ceremony. If only because we love sleep deprivation and watching people cry.
Wish us luck.
