Longshot: For (moronic) double reverse back flip reasons, "Munich" will win the Oscar for Best Picture. This is the self-hating Jew in me who always cringes during the Oscars. Mark my word: "Munich" —a super stupid movie—will win.

For starters, why was it even nominated?

It may not get art direction honors, but Pride and Prejudice will win the Oscar for best costume design. Academy voters are suckers for costume dramas, especially when the costumes include bursting or tightly corseted female cleavage on good girls.

If Brokeback Mountain Wins Best Picture, it will also win for (moronic) double reverse back flip reasons.

The only race I can bring myself to care about is Best Actor, because Philip Seymour Hoffman will win, and doesn't deserve to. Heath Ledger had the harder job, and did the better work.

Philip Seymour Hoffman was amazing, Heath Ledger was even more amazing.

i don't think munich has a chance. but we shall see.

i think heath ledger was excellent as well, but i'm betting the academy doesn't want a sweep, just an elegant nod. and i actually thought hoffman was more excellent than ledger—but just barely.

i think memoirs of a geisha will get costumes, because it was a shitty movie but cost too much to ignore.

"Munich" hasn't got a chance in hell, and if this slogging contraption wre rigged to accept bets, i'd put my money where my mouth is.

The nomination was weird enough; a win would be from outer space.

Love story - love story. I think some straight folks are more enraptured my BB Mountain than cynical, jaded and self oppressed queers.

It is a winner.

Love stories in time of war and stress, even better.

Unrequited love stories, universal, maybe more so than found love and happily ever after.

My cynical moment.

My Navy story - many elements of BB Mountain. I still think of him every day, Gogo, short for Gomez. ............. sigh.

Actually, Josh Feit--the one who made the dismissive remarks about "Brokeback Mountain"'s best picture odds--is a real, live straight person.

As for Josh's statement--"If Brokeback Mountain Wins Best Picture, it will also win for (moronic) double reverse back flip reasons"--it's one of the least knowledgable things I've ever heard him say.

I won't ride him too hard over a quick-turn Slog comment, but if "Brokeback" wins (and it will), it won't be because Hollywood is cowing to the queers, but because there's finally a queer movie that Hollywood can unabashedly love.

Hollywood doesn't need to be guilted into giving Best Picture Oscars to good, sturdy love stories that aren't necessarily the best pictures of the year; they've done it for decades, of their own volition.

David,

1. You guys are probably right, "Brokeback" will win and "Munich" will not. They already zapped me by even nominating "Munich." I mean: What?!? And there'll be plenty of room for embarrassment and cringe factor when they play the clip at the ceremony and faux fawn over it and Spielberg's "courage."

2. As for "Brokeback," the double reverse backflip is just as you say: "there's finally a queer movie Hollywood can unabashedly love." There'll be all kinds of speechifying that will echo the theme Annie Wagner tried to debunk in her original review of the movie— the comfy, cloying idea that this is a universal love story, that, hey, just happens to be about queers. And doesn't that prove that queers are people too and—oooooh—fuck you Christian right, from....Hollywood!

To go there, rather than in the other direction: This isn't only a love story, it's a gay love story, and gay love is specific and legit...misses the point, no? I want to see Hollywood acknowledge that gay love is Oscar-worthy in its own right. Instead, they will contort themselves, which reads as cowing to the uppity gays.

If they didn't contort themselves, and just said: great movie about gay love, it would be a better statment because that's the more honest endorsment. And that wouldn't read as cowing, it would read as acceptance.