Academy Awards Hollywood Stock Exchange My Predictions

Hollywood Stock Exchange predicts the following:

• Best Picture: Brokeback Mountain
• Best Actor: Phillip Seymour Hoffman
• Best Actress: Reese Witherspoon
• Best Supporting Actor: George Clooney
• Best Supporting Actress: Rachel Weitz
• Best Adapted Screenplay: Brokeback Mountain
• Best Screenplay: Crash

And all of these are clear front-runners: not a real horse race in the bunch.

I don't disagree with any - as much as I would like Heath Ledger to win for Brokeback. (Still think that he, in some way, had the hardest role to find. Three of the five roles - Capote, Murrow (David Straithorn), Johnny Cash (Joaquin Phoenix) - had to be "impersonated" first before they could be believed. The fourth role - Terence Howard in Hustle and Flow - is a contemporary character that the audience sees/ has seen in other media or in real life. Ennis DelMar is completely fictional situated/trapped in a very specific time and place, and there is nothing in the setting, costuming, music, etc. for the audience to use to put the action in a historical perspective. It is all the actors and the director who do that.) However, in the spirit of throwing out surprises in the lesser, major categories (i.e. Marisa Tomei), I think that Amy Adams for Junebug may have a shot at Supporting Actress.