Oscars

Best Picture

Brokeback Mountain (Focus Features)	Capote (Sony Pictures Classics)	Crash (Lions Gate)	Good Night and Good Luck (WiP)	Munich (Universal)

Should Win: Crash Could Win: Crash Will Win: Brokeback Mountain

Yes, this is indeed a semi-surprise, a big semi-surprise if you like, but for the first time in a long line of Academy surprises, this one is a really good surprise.

There seems to be already a consensus that is hard to contradict: in a year of many political/social movies, the Best Picture will go to a love story. Wait, there is a twist however, the love story is between two men.

Brokeback Mountain however, is indeed the most accomplished movie of the 5 nominees. It is a love story and a drama, one that is told with enough restraint to not become overbearing, and with very strong performances by its two leads. It has won most major precursor awards and the undeniable support was easily visible in the nomination list, being the leader with 8 nods. If Brokeback Mountain doesn't win, it will be a major surprise.

Let's have a look however at the rest of the nominees as well. Crash is my personal favorite, slightly edging Brokeback Mountain. Crash is a drama that builds itself from the intersection of various disparate lives, only to make one of the strongest points made by any movie in recent years: prejudice and racial bias are present everywhere in our society, even where you least expect them to be, and they are the cause of much of our social sorrow. If you have the choice of watching only one of these five movies, Crash is the one I'd urge everyone to see.

Munich has been dissed by many and it may have found its way in the shortlist mainly due to the immense star-power of Steven Spielberg. However, it is also an extremely actual movie, an introspection into the consequences of terrorism but also those of the "eye for an eye" policies. Will a movie change the world's politics? Obviously not. But more and more people may gain a better appreciation of the consequences of various current political actions.

Finally, it is perhaps unfortunate but I have pretty much a similarly cool reaction to both of the other two nominees: Capote and Good Night and Good Luck despite appreciating both on a cerebral level. I would have perhaps appreciated more a depiction of Truman Capote's life as a whole, while the journalistic way of depicting the story about... journalistic integrity is again, a little too distant to the point where it doesn't create any emotional reaction.