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Screengrab Predicts the Oscars: The Winners (Part Five)

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And the nominees are...

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Eric Roth and Robin Swicord
Frost/Nixon - Peter Morgan
The Reader - David Hare
Slumdog Millionaire - Simon Beaufoy
Doubt - John Patrick Shanley

Paul Clark Predicts: Slumdog Millionaire

It’s the Best Picture nominee, so it’ll win here too.

Andrew Osborne Predicts: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Ugh.

Leonard Pierce Predicts: Slumdog Millionaire

It’s a good rule of thumb that the Screenplay Oscars go to the movies that deserve a Best Picture nomination but aren’t going to get one. This year, the screenplay adaptation category mostly consists of movies that, deserving or not, have already received Best Picture noms, leaving the popular and critically acclaimed (and I'd argue overhyped) Slumdog Millionaire to take home the Screenplay Oscar as a consolation prize because it’s not going to get anything else.

Should Win: John Patrick Shanley, Doubt
Will Win: Simon Beaufoy, Slumdog Millionaire

Screengrab Review: Milk

Following the 2005 release of Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, there was some excitement over the possibility that more high-profile gay-themed movies would follow, a development that didn’t really pan out. Now, three years later, Hollywood has once again decided to tackle gay-friendly subject matter, this time the life of slain San Francisco politician and activist Harvey Milk- directed by the openly gay filmmaker Gus Van Sant, no less. But while the film has attained a certain amount of contemporary relevance with its parallels to California’s recently-passed Proposition 8, Milk biggest breakthrough may be the idea that the lives of gay heroes can be boiled down to the Hollywood biopic formula just as easily as their straight counterparts.