Finally, Someone Handicaps the 2009 Oscars

It’s hard to believe that with a mere 364 days until the 2009 Oscars, no one in the awards blogosphere had peeked into his crystal ball. Happily, And the Winner Is’s Scott Feinberg has remedied that travesty, as he is the first (as far as we can find) to make spitballed predictions for next year’s ceremony. Even with all the proper caveats (“Not only have none of us seen the films, but some of them have not yet even gone into production!�), it’s still a hilarious exercise, but one that gets us kind of excited about the coming year.

Among the films Feinberg highlights: John Patrick Shanley’s adaptation of Doubt, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Meryl Streep; Steven Soderbergh’s Che Guevara twofer, The Argentine and Guerilla (both starring Benicio Del Toro); Fernando Meirelles’s Blindness, based on the Jose Saramago novel and starring Julianne Moore; and David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The one we’re most excited about, of course, is Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York, which we can pretty much guarantee (a) will be awesome and (b) will be nominated for Best Original Screenplay but not for Best Picture.

And after the unadulterated run of success that has been our Oscar predicting thus far (almost half of the awards right, baby!), who are we not to weigh in on the 2009 Academy Awards? Vulture’s picks for Best Picture:

1. Doubt
2. The Young Victoria
3. Defiance
4. Some indie comedy no one’s ever heard of yet, possibly from Sundance, definitely written by someone with a heartwarming and almost unbelievable story
5. Something terrible — maybe Sex and the City?

And So It Begins [And the Winner is…]