Pick a winner

Sun., Feb. 12, 2006

By Dan Webster danw@spokesman.com

Oscar just doesn’t seem to gleam as much as he used to.

What with the Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild, MTV Movie and People’s Choice Awards all getting not just media attention but a fair share of air time, Oscar has lost a bit of his luster.

But the Hollywood orgy of self-congratulation held annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences – and viewed by tens of millions of film fans – is still the Super Bowl of movie-award shows.

Just as there doesn’t seem to be a lot of surprises about this year’s individual nominations, which came out Jan. 31, there’s little debate so far about who the favorites are.

Can you say Philip Seymour Hoffman? Reese Witherspoon? “Brokeback Mountain”? Ang Lee?

But, of course, that’s up to the Academy members, who number … well, estimates range from “just under 5,000” to “just over 6,000.”

And in a year in which four of the five films nominated for Best Motion Picture cost less than $15 million to make (a number that wouldn’t match the catering bill for “Pearl Harbor” director Michael Bay), anything is likely to happen.

As we’ve done for the better part of two decades, we’re giving Spokesman-Review readers a chance to make their own guesses about who will walk away with the little statuettes.

At stake in The Spokesman-Review Oscar Contest will be the usual prizes: First place receives $100, second $50, third $25 (all to be paid in movie passes to either AMC Theatres or Regal Cinemas).

Winning will be determined by a simple method: If you correctly guess the most winners in the 24 categories, you win. In case of a tie, the person who guesses the movie that wins the most awards, and comes closest to how many awards it wins, takes the prize.

If all else fails, we’ll flip a coin.

Mail-in entries must be postmarked by Feb. 27. Note the change that we’re instituting this year: No matter whether you enter online (go to www.spokesmanreview.com and follow the instructions) or by filling out the newspaper ballot (sorry, no photocopies), no individual person can enter more than once. If we discover multiple entries from the same person, only the earliest one will count.

We hope you do enter. Oscar may not be beam as brightly as he once did.

But our contest prizes sure do.

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