Lock up your daughters, it's that time again...

PHIL PREDICTS THE OSCARS 2006

This is now the third year I've done this, and goddammit I WILL get 8 out of 8 this time around. No, really, I mean it...

PICTURE: Brokeback Mountain (or 'Homo on the Range', as I prefer to think of it)

DIRECTOR: Ang Lee

ACTOR: Philip Seymour Hoffman

ACTRESS: Reese Witherspoon

SUPPORTING ACTOR: George Clooney

SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Rachel Weisz

SCREENPLAY: The Squid and the Whale

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Brokeback Mountain

Can I just say how hard it is to make accurate Oscar predictions when the BBC are showing baby polar bears getting lost in the snow. I haven't seen anything so sweet since I paid good money to go on a luxury cruise to Cozumel, only to shut myself in my cabin and watch a documentary on meerkats for an hour and a half.

But that aside, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "The Squid and the Whale?????". Well, unless you're watching this documentary on BBC1, in which case you're probably more concerned with the fate of that antelope.

But yes, I'm going for 16-1 outsider 'The Squid and the Whale' for one reason, and one reason only: it's written by Noah Baumbach. His chances of winning may be about as genuine as Tessa Jowell's marriage break-up, but I have spent THE PAST TEN YEARS (dammit) putting forward Mr Baumbach's first film 'Kicking & Screaming', (which he wrote when he was 25, damn him) as my idea of the perfect script, despite the fact that no one's ever heard of him, or it, and everyone thinks I'm slightly unhinged. (Although to be honest, that may have nothing to do with my taste in films).

Anyway, I still maintain that the finest line ever written in cinema history is:

"Oh I've BEEN to Prague. Well... I haven't 'been to Prague' been to Prague, but I know that thing."

... and despite the fact that that line doesn't work in the slightest, taken out of context like that, and I'm only confirming everyone's opinion of me here, I feel that Noah's arcing victory in tonight's Oscars will go some way towards compensating me for all these years of ridicule, and prove that I can spot scriptwriting talent a full decade before anyone else.

Although obviously he's going to lose out to 'Crash'.

Dammit.