In the Best Actress category Cate Blanchett is powerful and convincing once again playing the over-dressed Queen of England in Elizabeth: The Golden Age but as good as she is in this sequel, it's not good enough to win this year.

Laura Linney is both whiney and compelling in The Savages, playing a dysfunctional daughter and dysfunctional sister. It's a wonderfully written film but Linney has a slim to none chance of winning this year for Best Actress.

Canadian actress Ellen Page does have an outside chance and she is certainly a movie-goers favorite for playing the outspoken pregnant teenager in Juno. But a win in this category for Page would be one of the biggest upsets in Oscar history and it likely won't happen.

French actress Marion Cotillard is so good playing legendary singer Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose you feel transported into another space in time. Her performance is good enough to win and she's been winning awards in Europe but the Oscars are a different story.

This year the Oscar goes to legendary British actress Julie Christie for playing an elegant woman suffering from Alzheimers in Away From Her . She gives a luminescent performance in a profound, beautiful film that is wise beyond its years.

George Clooney leads a strong cast of Best Actor nominees and gives a movie star performance as Michael Clayton - you can't take your eyes off of him. He recently won an Oscar for Syriana but another Clooney win this year would be a big surprise.

Texas actor Tommy Lee Jones is so real as the grieving father in In The Valley of Elah, it hurts just watching him on screen. ones does have an outside chance to win but it's outside at best.

Viggo Mortensen has taken his game to a higher level and the result is a scary, understated performance as a low level Russian mafia man in Eastern Promises. The more I think about Mortensen's performance in Cronenbergs shocker, the better it gets, but this is not his year.

Johnny Deep knocks me out as Sweeney Todd, a violent aquired-taste of a film based on Sondheim's award winning musical. Depp has become an accomplished, daring actor but this year he's up against a frieght train of a performance and won't win.

And that acting freight train arrives in the form of Daniel Day Lewis , playing a maniacal man who stops for nothing in his quest for oil, giving one of those career-defining performances. Lewis won this award in 1990 for My Left Foot, and he wins again this year.

E-mail gcogill@wfaa.com.