Not to already start making excuses for my yet to be published Oscar predictions, but the knives are out for Kathryn Bigelow and "The Hurt Locker." First of all is the "gotcha" campaign against Nicolas Chartier, one of the film's four producers, who sent an e-mail urging Academy members to vote for "Locker" and not for a "$500 million film," an apparent reference to "Avatar."

Photo: Robert Ribera

Any one of the winners and special mentions in this year's 2010 Redstone Festival, the annual contest for student filmmakers held by Boston University's School of Communications, could start working tomorrow for a Hollywood studio -- and that wouldn't be a moment too soon given some of the crap out there now.

PK: You were saying how the Zeitoun movie isn't political. In a sense though "Melvin and Howard," even though it's an entertaining, weird buddy movie, and many other things, is kind of political, a statement on class in America.

PK: So this four year project is all one film or a series of portraits?

JD: My dream is that it's going to be a historic, up to the present, reality show on some cable network that will weave these various families, and there are others, in an ongoing way, starting three months after the flood, and could pay off, could deliver at the end, to, arguably, a live visit with everybody.

I don't know what system the Coolidge Corner Theatre uses to select the winner of its annual award, but the choice is always unexpected, eclectic and apt. Past winners have included Meryl Streep, Zhang Yimou and Thelma Schoonmaker. This year's winner Jonathan Demme fits right in. Not only is one of America's best filmmakers, but he's also a great guy.

Except for Ahmadenijad's periodic nuclear boasts and half-hearted denunciations of Iranian tyranny and warmongering by the West, people aren't as worked up about the ongoing tumult in Iran as they are, for example, by Tiger Woods's upcoming press conference. Meanwhile, countless filmmakers, amateurs and ordinary people with cell phones and other recording devices, have been broadcasting images of the repression and resistance on YouTube and elsewhere online.

While Cheney and Biden went mano-a-mano on the news shows yesterday, as we all now the real political dialogue is over movies. And forget about Michael Moore's weeny "Capitalism a Love Story" -- the real controversial ideological hornets nest this year is "Avatar."

Who needs Tea Bagger rallies when you can take a shot at a movie that's made $2 billion? And I thought it just sucked because it had stereotypical characters, awful dialogue, and a totally implausible, trite and half-baked plot.

Though one of my favorite films of 2009, Werner Herzog's "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" didn't get much in the way of accolades. No Golden Globes, no Oscar nominations. It did get nominated for Best Film, Director and Actor by the Chlotrudis people -- we'll find out if it wins at their award ceremony at the Brattle Theatre on March 21, an event I highly recommend.

Every morning that the Oscar nominations are announced my stomach churns with panic and anxiety. One of these days, I know, I will get so many of my predictions wrong that I will have to accept the fact that I've lost all touch with reality, since what can be more real than the Oscars?

So far, though, I've managed an 80%-85% accuracy - in other words, about a grade B.