Infinitive Splitter

I spent part of a snow day last week watching Crash, the last of last year’s Best Picture nominees I had yet to see, and it was exactly as over-hyped and Hollywooden as everyone said it was.

This year’s Oscars ceremony is on Sunday, and once again I haven’t seen nearly enough of the nominees to make predictions or recommendations of my own (of those nominated for major awards, I’ve only seen Little Miss Sunshine, An Inconvenient Truth, The Departed, and Borat). But cheat sheets are out there, and I have to admit to availing myself of one of them in making my office-pool picks today. For the awards too obscure or mysterious to merit mainstream odds, I did what I imagine even some of the lazier Academy voters do — I checked random boxes.

There’s no need to announce all of my picks (except to say that I think The Departed should earn Scorsese his long-overdue Best Picture), but I do want to use this space to make one caveat about my choice for Best Actor. In accordance with conventional wisdom and overwhelming odds, I chose Forest Whitaker, but I can’t help thinking that Peter O’Toole might ride in on a dark horse and take it away. Oscar voters are notoriously sentimental, and many of them surely remember O’Toole’s reaction upon hearing, in 2003, that he would be honored with the Lifetime Achievement award:

Since I’m still in the game and might win the lovely bugger outright, would the Academy please defer the honour until I am 80?

(He later decided to accept it anyway.) When asked about this year’s nomination last month by the Daily Mail, O’Toole, now 74, gave this answer:

“To be considered is okay, but it’s not enough: it’s winning the bloody thing that matters.

“So if I win the bugger, great. If I don’t, then tant pis. I shan’t lurch around in agony and despair.”

Maybe true, but I would not be at all surprised if the Academy declined to make him prove it.