Oscar Predictions: Part I

On Oscar night, we here at The Cup of Joe predict that Hattie McDaniel, the first-ever African-American winner of an Academy Award for her role in Gone With the Wind, will be smiling down from heaven, celebrating the fact that 75 percent of the acting awards will, quite deservingly, go to a black person.

Here are my predictions:

Best Actor: Forest Whitaker
Best Actress: "Lone Caucasian" Helen Mirren
Best Supporting actress: Jennifer Hudson
Best Supporting actor: Eddie Murphy
Best Director: Martin Scorsese

I just hope that some Academy voters aren't of the mindset, for some strange reason, that they wouldn't vote for THREE black actors in the same year. Would that be a horrible reason, to, say, withhold a vote for Murphy or Whitaker and tilt the balance just enough in favor of another actor?

After today, I will have watched almost everything nominated in the bottom four categories above. Acknowledging that I haven't seen quite everything (like a number of Oscar voters, I suppose), my predictions are exactly the same as the way I'd vote, even though there was nothing "supporting" about Hudson's "leading" role in Dreamgirls.

I'll discuss Best Picture choices in a post tomorrow.