Declan Cashin

Writing: the art of applying the ass to the seat

Best Picture:
Unless there’s a gigantic shock coming down the road, then Slumdog Millionaire will carry the day. Simply no other film has had any momentum or buzz all season.

Best Director:
Danny Boyle will take home the gold for Slumdog.

Best Actor:
It’s an impossibly close race between Golden Globe and BAFTA winner Mickey Rourke and Screen Actors Guild recipient Sean Penn. I’m sticking my neck out and rooting for Rourke, who I think will gain the sentimental vote.

Best Actress:
If Kate Winslet doesn’t win this year, she never will. Meryl Streep is the closest competition, having won the SAG, but it looks like it’s the Reading girl’s year.

Best Supporting Actress:
The one category that is genuinely unpredictable and open. Penelope Cruz is the favourite going in, having won the BAFTA two weeks ago. But I’m putting my money on Viola Davis to win for a brief but memorable turn acting Meryl Streep off the screen in Doubt.

Best Supporting Actor:
Is there anything to stop Heath Ledger from winning the first posthumous Oscar since Peter Finch in 1976? It doesn’t seem likely (bookies have paid out on his win already), but if someone else is to emerge victorious, it will be Josh Brolin for Milk.

Best Original Screenplay: Dustin Lance Black will win for Milk, though Martin McDonagh is coming in a close second for In Bruges.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Simon Beoufoy has it in the bag for Slumdog Millionaire.

Best Foreign Language Film: Waltz With Bashir

Best Animated Film: Wall-E

Jack Palance: what a legend. Skip to 1:25…

I just arrived in LA for Watchmen-fest so apologies for the tardy posting! Anyhoo, today’s classic Oscar moment(s) are courtesy of Robin Williams. click here for his rip-roaring rendition of ‘Blame Canada’ (from the South Park movie) at the 2000 awards.

Alec Baldwin on last weekend’s Saturday Night Live. Frickin’ hilarious – how many masturbation jokes can you cram into one clip?

I’m off to LA tomorrow for a few days all in celebration of this movie, which I cannot wait to see. I’ll keep you posted on developments from the Beverley Hilton. It’s a tough job sometimes.

…well, kinda. Click here.

On Saturday night, I was lucky to catch a screening of Dublin-born director Glenn McQuaid’s new horror-comedy I Sell The Dead, starring Dominic Monaghan and Larry Fassenden (who also served as producer). It’s a B-movie pastiche about two 18th century grave-robbers who end up stumbling across some supernatural corpses, incurring the wrath of a rival gang of body-snatchers known as the House of Murphy.

McQuaid obviously has a deep knowledge of and affection for the genre, and he directs with an assured hand, perfectly balancing the laughs, the shlock and the frights, aided in no small part by two game, exuberant performances from his leading men.

ISTD is establishing itself as a firm festival favourite (it was one of the first flicks to sell out in the JDIFF), so here’s hoping it gets a wider release later this year. It has the makings of a true cult classic.

Hilary Swank may be staggeringly inconsistent as an actress, but she’s still joined a very select group of ladies to win two Best Actress Oscars for two devastating performances in Boys Don’t Cry in 1999, and Million Dollar Baby in 2004.

Speaking of Swank, here’s another take on her, er, talents, courtesy of the peerless ensemble from The Office which, FYI, is on fire this season.

Steven Spielberg’s two trips to the podium as Best Director – for Schindler’s List in 1993, and Saving Private Ryan in 1998.

From Saturday’s Independent…

Smear tactics, negative adverts, character assassinations — these are terms normally associated with presidential campaigns, not Hollywood‘s most prestigious awards bash.

But when it comes to the Academy Awards, which takes place next Sunday, Tinseltown’s major movie studios will often resort to any means necessary to bag an Oscar for one of their films or stars, even if it means resorting to underhanded methods to trash their rivals.

Continue here.