Who's gonna be taking home the little golden guy on Sunday night? Honestly, your guess is as good as mine. But here are my guesses anyway:

LEAD ACTOR
will win: Forest Whitaker
should win: Forest Whitaker

Sometimes we have to celebrate the popularity contest that is the Oscars, for although in recent years the Oscars have seemed lily white, here are signs of progress: Two black actors are nominated in this category. Whitaker is a complete shoo-in -- no one else really even approaches the ferocity of his performance. Unless voters are still having nightmares over his scenery-chewing turn in Battlefield Earth, truly one of the most god-awful movies ever made.

SUPPORTING ACTOR
will win: Alan Arkin
should win: Mark Wahlberg

And here we have another two black actors. But the sympathy vote will go to Arkin: he's been nominated twice before and never won, and you know, he ain't gettin' any younger.

BEST ACTRESS
will win: Helen Mirren
should win: Helen Mirren

As with Best Actor, the win here is foregone. Mirren's performance turns a public figure of stone-cold icon into a warmly human woman -- and voters are likely to have forgotten her cinematic skeleton: the pornographic Caligula.

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
will win: Jennifer Hudson
should win: Adriana Barraza

And lookee here: Three of the five nominees are not Euro-descended white females, and one of those three will win. Jennifer Hudson's showy (if appropriately so) swagger will, alas, trump the far more delicate work of Adriana Barraza, who takes, in one scene, a simple breakdown into tears and wraps it up in a world of social injustice.

ANIMATED FILM
will win: Happy Feet
should win: Happy Feet

The folks at Pixar, rumor has it, are as embarrassed by Cars as many of the rest of us are, fully aware that it represents their last effort, and a halfhearted one at best, in connection with Disney, made to complete a contractual obligation, and for no other reason. Its nomination here is further cause for shame.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
will win: Notes on a Scandal
should win: The Departed

Notes is juicy and deserves some recognition. That will be the reasoning of the Academy votes. But Monahan's script for The Departed so brilliantly distinguishes itself from the Hong Kong film on which it is based that it may be the best foreign-to-American adaptation ever. It actually feels as if it were sweated up off the mean streets of Boston.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
will win: Babel
should win: The Queen

And here's where Babel will get some love, even if its script is a bit too loose and too rangy to really satisfy. But Morgan's script for The Queen is a wonder of economy, insight, and surprising tenderness.

BEST DIRECTOR
will win: Martin Scorsese
should win: Martin Scorsese

It's Scorsese's year, finally. Anyway, the Academy would never give an Oscar to someone who once made a movie called Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, as Stephen Frears did.

BEST DOCUMENTARY
will win: An Inconvenient Truth
should win: An Inconvenient Truth

No word on whether the Oscar handed out for this one will be waterproofed to protect it against rising sea levels. But probably not.

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
will win: Pan's Labyrinth
should win: Pan's Labyrinth

The nominees here play by different rules from the other major categories, and often these films won't have been released in the United States at the time of the ceremony. And even though voters are required to attend special screenings in order to vote in this category -- there are no DVD screeners of these, as there are for other films -- sometimes a film here has already gained such a reputation that it can't lose. This is one of those times.

BEST PICTURE
will win: The Departed
should win: The Departed

It's Scorsese all the way. His Goodfellas should have won Best Picture, if not his Raging Bull. The Academy has to give him an award after so many nominations just to save face. And it really is the best picture of the year ... at least among those nominated.

Coming up: My quick picks in the other categories, even the ones I don't understand (what's the difference between "sound mixing" and "sound editing"?) so we can all play along on Oscar night.

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