The awards season is officially over! A few hours ago, Clint Eastwood's boxing drama emerged as the winner of Best Picture along with Best Actress (Hilary Swank), Best Supporting Actor (Morgan Freeman) and Best Director for Eastwood. However, The Aviator-which led the roster with 11 nominations-was still the big frontrunner in the ceremony with 5 statuettes, including Best Supporting Actress for Cate Blanchett's accurate portrayal of the late thespian Katharine Hepburn as well as for Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Art Direction, and Best Costume Design. Poor Martin Scorsese, once again, he gets snubbed by the Academy just as he was so close to victory! He now holds a 0-5 win-loss record in the Best Director category, which he shares with Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Altman. What's interesting about the results was that every Best Picture nominee won in at least one category (its been a while since that happen). Aside from the awards won by Million Dollar Baby and The Aviator, the comedy Sideways won for best adapted screenplay, Finding Neverland won best score, and even Ray managed to win another award beyond the already-assured Best Actor win for Jamie Foxx (it won for sound). Chris Rock was surprisingly good in his first gig as host, I especially laughed when he likened USA invading Iraq to Gap invading Banana Republic. And although I was a bit skeptical a bit earlier about the changes planned for the show (like the way they hand out the awards from the audience), I thought it was still executed very well. Anyway, let's see how accurate my predictions fared in (Asterisks denote a win, in some cases, the real winner is enclosed in parenthesis):

Best Picture
Will/should win: The Aviator (Million Dollar Baby)

Best Actor
Will win: Jamie Foxx, Ray (*)
Should win: Johnny Depp, Finding Neverland
Honorary mention: Leonardo DiCaprio, The Aviator

Best Actress
Will win: Hilary Swank, Million Dollar Baby (*)
Should win: Kate Winslet, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Best Supporting Actor
Will/should win: Morgan Freeman, Million Dollar Baby (*)

Best Supporting Actress
Will/should win: Natalie Portman, Closer
Honorary mention: Cate Blanchett, The Aviator (*)

Best Director
Will/should win: Martin Scorsese, The Aviator (Clint Eastwood, Million Dollar Baby)

Best Original Screenplay
Will/should win: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (*)
Honorary mention: The Aviator

Best Adapted Screenplay
Will win: Sideways (*)
Should win: Finding Neverland
Honorary mention: Before Sunset

Best Foreign Language Film
Will/should win: The Sea Inside, Spain (*)

Best Animated Feature
Will/should win: The Incredibles (*)

Best Original Score
Will win: Jan A.P. Kaczmarek, Finding Neverland (*)
Should win: Thomas Newman, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
Honorary mention: John Debney, The Passion of the Christ

Best Original Song
Will win: "Accidentally In Love", Shrek 2
Should win: "Learn To Be Lonely", The Phantom of the Opera
Honorary mention: "Believe", The Polar Express
(The real winner: "At Otro Lado Del Rio", The Motorcycle Diaries)

Best Cinematography
Will win: The Aviator (*)
Should win: The Passion of the Christ
Honorary mention: House of Flying Daggers

Best Film Editing
Will/should win: The Aviator (*)
Honorary mention: Collateral

Best Sound Mixing
Will win: The Aviator
Should win: The Polar Express
Honorary mention: Spider-Man 2
(The real winner: Ray)

Best Sound Editing
Will win: Spider-Man 2
Should win: The Polar Express
(The real winner: The Incredibles)

Best Art Direction
Will win: The Phantom of the Opera
Should win: Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
Honorary mention: The Aviator (*)

Best Costume Design
Will win: The Aviator (*)
Should win: Finding Neverland
Honorary mention: Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events

Best Makeup
Will win: The Passion of the Christ
Should win: Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (*)

Best Visual Effects
Will/should win: Spider-Man 2 (*)

Best Documentary Feature
Will/should win: Super Size Me (Born into Brothels)

This just in! Sad and terrible news to writers and journalists everywhere.

From Yahoo! News:

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Author Hunter S. Thompson Kills Himself

By CATHERINE TSAI, Associated Press Writer

Hunter S. Thompson, the acerbic counterculture writer who popularized a new form of fictional journalism in books like "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," fatally shot himself Sunday night at his Aspen-area home, his son said. He was 67.

"Hunter prized his privacy and we ask that his friends and admirers respect that privacy as well as that of his family," Juan Thompson said in a statement released to the Aspen Daily News.

Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis, a personal friend of Thompson, confirmed the death to the News. Sheriff's officials did not return calls to The Associated Press late Sunday.

Juan Thompson found his father's body. Thompson's wife, Anita, was not home at the time.

Besides the 1972 drug-hazed classic about Thompson's visit to Las Vegas, he also wrote "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72." The central character in those wild, sprawling satires was "Dr. Thompson," a snarling, drug- and alcohol-crazed observer and participant.

Thompson is credited with pioneering New Journalism — or, as he dubbed it, "gonzo journalism" — in which the writer made himself an essential component of the story. Much of his earliest work appeared in Rolling Stone magazine.

"Fiction is based on reality unless you're a fairy-tale artist," Thompson told the AP in 2003. "You have to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have to know the material you're writing about before you alter it."

An acute observer of the decadence and depravity in American life, Thompson also wrote such collections "Generation of Swine" and "Songs of the Doomed." His first ever novel, "The Rum Diary," written in 1959, was first published in 1998.

Thompson was a counterculture icon at the height of the Watergate era, and Richard Nixon once said he represented "that dark, venal, and incurably violent side of the American character."

Thompson also was the model for Garry Trudeau's balding "Uncle Duke" in the comic strip "Doonesbury" and was portrayed on screen by Johnny Depp in a film adaptation of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."

Other books include "The Great Shark Hunt," "Hell's Angels" and "The Proud Highway." His most recent effort was "Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness."

"He may have died relatively young but he made up for it in quality if not quantity of years," Paul Krassner, the veteran radical journalist and one of Thompson's former editors, told The Associated Press by phone from his Southern California home.

"It was hard to say sometimes whether he was being provocative for its own sake or if he was just being drunk and stoned and irresponsible," quipped Krassner, founder of the leftist publication The Realist and co-founder of the Youth International (YIPPIE) party.

"But every editor that I know, myself included, was willing to accept a certain prima donna journalism in the demands he would make to cover a particular story," he said. "They were willing to risk all of his irresponsible behavior in order to share his talent with their readers."

The writer's compound in Woody Creek, not far from Aspen, was almost as legendary as Thompson. He prized peacocks and weapons; in 2000, he accidentally shot and slightly wounded his assistant, Deborah Fuller, trying to chase a bear off his property.

Born July 18, 1937, in Kentucky, Hunter Stocton Thompson served two years in the Air Force, where he was a newspaper sports editor. He later became a proud member of the National Rifle Association and almost was elected sheriff in Aspen in 1970 under the Freak Power Party banner.

Thompson's heyday came in the 1970s, when his larger-than-life persona was gobbled up by magazines. His pieces were of legendary length and so was his appetite for adventure and trouble; his purported fights with Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner were rumored in many cases to hinge on expense accounts for stories that didn't materialize.

It was the content that raised eyebrows and tempers. His book on the 1972 presidential campaign involving, among others, Edmund Muskie, Hubert Humphrey and Nixon was famous for its scathing opinion.

Working for Muskie, Thompson wrote, "was something like being locked in a rolling box car with a vicious 200-pound water rat." Nixon and his "Barbie doll" family were "America's answer to the monstrous Mr. Hyde. He speaks for the werewolf in us."

Humphrey? Of him, Thompson wrote: "There is no way to grasp what a shallow, contemptible and hopelessly dishonest old hack Hubert Humphrey is until you've followed him around for a while."

The approach won him praise among the masses as well as critical acclaim. Writing in The New York Times in 1973, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt worried Thompson might someday "lapse into good taste."

"That would be a shame, for while he doesn't see America as Grandma Moses depicted it, or the way they painted it for us in civics class, he does in his own mad way betray a profound democratic concern for the polity," he wrote. "And in its own mad way, it's damned refreshing."

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A Wikipedia article on Thompson can be found here.

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P	Principled
A	Ambitious
T	Tender
R	Radiant
I	Inspirational
C	Confused
K	Keen

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