FRANK LANGELLA and MICKEY ROURKE will wrestle it out for next year's (09) Best Actor Oscar, while FROST/NIXON, MILK and THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON are musts for Best Film nominations, according to Academy Awards experts.
Revered movie awards watchers at GoldDerby.com have teamed up with a panel of top U.S. film critics for the first Oscars prediction list of the year.
The team agrees Harvey Milk biopic Milk and Brad Pitt's new movie Button will compete for the Best Film prize with the movie adaptation of hit play Frost/Nixon, while Rourke and Langella have emerged as the critics' favourites for Best Actor for The Wrestler and Frost/Nixon respectively.
All of the critics' other forecasts are split.
In the Best Picture race, Slumdog Millionaire is also a favourite of the expert panel, while Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire), Cate Blanchett (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), Michael Sheen (Frost/Nixon) and Michelle Williams (Wendy and Lucy) all garner at least one vote in respective Best Actor and Best Actress categories.
The Oscar nominations will be announced on 22 January (08).