For a project I’m working on, I had occasion to compile reasonably comprehensive lists of award nominations and winners for the film industry this year. The lists are not as extensive as the lists maintained by the Oscars Guy, but they are pretty decent.

I developed a simple formula that weights the nominees based on how well the associated film has done over all in category, and as a result, find myself with a list of nomination predictions. This is the first year in several that I find myself having only seen one of the films producing probable nominations, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, so rest assured that this represents nothing more than cold, hard mathematics.

Don’t rush out to your bookie or anything, though. I can’t reveal my methodology until after mid-March, unfortunately, so if I’ve made some sort of gross error, we’ll only know on Tuesday when the nominations are announced. The underlying theory is that the Academy voters overlap significantly with many of the voting bases for other awards-season nominations and that generally speaking, a voter in one of the other awards will also favor the film they voted for in the Oscars balloting.

Director:
Alexander Payne – Sideways
Clint Eastwood – Million Dollar Baby
Marc Forster – Finding Neverland
Martin Scorsese – The Aviator
Taylor Hackford – Ray

Film:
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Finding Neverland
Million Dollar Baby
Sideways
The Aviator

Lead Actor:
Don Cheadle – Hotel Rwanda
Jamie Foxx – Ray
Johnny Depp – Finding Neverland
Leonardo Dicaprio – The Aviator
Paul Giamatti – Sideways

Lead Actress:
Annette Bening – Being Julia
Catalina Sandino Moreno – Maria Full of Grace
Hilary Swank – Million Dollar Baby
Imelda Staunton – Vera Drake
Kate Winslet – Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind