I find it interesting that there were no major splits this year. It often happens, when someone is nominated twice in a category (which people suspected might happen with Leo D. for his performances in "Blood Diamond" and "The Departed", and with Clint Eastwood for both "Letters from Iwo Jima" and "Flags of our Fathers") that the person actually loses a lot of steam, because his or her votes get split across the two nominations. This year, though, Leo was nominated for his role in "Blood Diamond" (which was a better performance than his role in "The Departed") and Clint was nominated for directing "Letters from Iwo Jima", which, I'm told, is the better of his two films this year.
It's an interesting Oscar year, though, with lots of variety (none of that "Lord of the Rings" clogging up every category). There are a couple of independently created films ("Little Miss Sunshine" is nominated several times), some comedies (including Borat), war films, and other similarly depressing internationally-minded, ammunition-heavy fare ("Iwo Jima", "Blood Diamond"), and even some great sci-fi ("Children of Man"). Among the bunch, there's a lot of Mexican, Hispanic and Spanish stuff ("Volver", "Pan's Labrynth", "Children of Man", etc.), a sign of the shifting demographics of the film industry, perhaps?
It'll be an interesting contest, I'm sure. Don't want to predict any winners yet (I've got to see more of these films first), but I'm sure it'll be a close vote in some of the categories.
-AzS
