Blogging Oscar: Prologue

Do I have any last-minute additions or deletions to my Oscar predictions? Not really, though I may have been too facile in describing Atonement as "the sort of glossy Brit period piece that often gets the grand prize..." Actually, Joe Wright's intimate epic (masterfully adapted by Christopher Hampton from Ian McEwan's acclaimed novel) is an exquisitely crafted and eloquently acted romantic tragedy about the fatal power of words and the terrible caprices of fate, building inexorably toward a final sequence that vividly illustrates both the irresistible impulse to rectify the past thorough art, and the immutable truth that some wrongs can never be righted. Could it pull an upset? We'll soon find out.