In anticipation of the Oscar nominations, five Flak film aficionados did their best to get into the Academy's skull to predict which films would be nominated in the eight major categories. The tabulated results are here, and the actual nominees in those eight categories are here. (The whole roster of nominees can be found at Oscar.com).

How does it all stack up against the Academy's choices? Andy Stilp came the closest in his nominations, hitting the mark 70 percent of the time. Of the things that Flak's writers were unanimous about — A Beautiful Mind and Black Hawk Down for Best Picture, Peter Jackson for Best Director, Russell Crowe for Best Actor, Sissy Spacek and Halle Berry for Best Actress, Ben Kingsley for Best Supporting Actor, Jennifer Connelly for Best Supporting Actress, Memento for Best Original Screenplay and The Fellowship of the Ring for Best Adapted Screenplay — only Black Hawk Down missed the cut.

As far as our longshots are concerned, only Stilp called Renee Zellweger being lauded for Bridget Jones's Diary; Stephanie Kuenn was the lone person that put her support behind Jon Voight in Ali; and Eric Wittmershaus was the sole writer to give props to Amélie's screenplay. But no one foresaw Sean Penn making the cut with I Am Sam or Shrek running away with a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination.

And how did we trend overall versus the Academy? In the major eight categories, A Beautiful Mind got the most nominations from our five fortune tellers — 23 votes in six of the eight categories. Tied for second were In the Bedroom and The Fellowship of the Ring, with 17 votes apiece in, respectively, six and four categories of eight. The last of the outliers at the top was Gosford Park with 16 votes over six categories (three of which were different Best Supporting Actress nominations). Compare this to the Academy: In these eight categories, A Beautiful Mind, Gosford Park and In the Bedroom each got five nominations, with The Fellowship of the Rings close behind with four. (Although Fellowship rules the day when you count technical nominations, which raises its tally to 13.)

Not bad. But we seriously overvalued The Man Who Wasn't There (ten votes across five nominations) and A.I. (eight votes across three nominations), which didn't appear at all in these categories (the films were nominated only for cinematography and score, respectively), and The Royal Tenenbaums (seven votes in three categories), which only got a screenplay nod. And while at least three of us voted for supporting turns by Jude Law in A.I., Cameron Diaz in Vanilla Sky, Carrie-Anne Moss in Memento and Steve Buscemi in Ghost World, they were all shut out. In our own defense, writers who predicted Judi Dench for Best Actress for Iris were nudged to make it a Best Supporting Actress nomination instead, following with how the Golden Globes had fallen; the Oscars, however, elected her for Best Actress.

Andy R.'s picks
Andy S.'s picks
Eric's picks
Sean's picks
Stephanie's picks