BEST PICTURE:
Babel
Letters from Iwo Jima
Little Miss Sunshine
The Departed(WINNER)
United 93

BEST DIRECTOR:
Guillermo del Toro,"Pan's Labyrinth"
Clint Eastwood,"Letters from Iwo Jima"
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu,"Babel"
Paul Greengrass,"United 93″
Martin Scorsese,"The Departed"(WINNER)

BEST ACTOR:
Leonardo DiCaprio,"Blood Diamond"
Ryan Gosling,"Half Nelson"
Peter O'Toole,"Venus"
Will Smith,"The Pursuit of Happyness"
Forest Whitaker,"The Last King of Scotland"(WINNER)

BEST ACTRESS:
Penelope Cruz,"Volver"
Judi Dench,"Notes on a Scandal"
Maggie Gyllenhaal,"Sherrybaby"
Helen Mirren,"The Queen"(WINNER)
Kate Winslet,"Little Children"

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:
Alan Arkin,"Little Miss Sunshine"
Jackie Earle Haley,"Little Children"
Djimon Hounsou,"Blood Diamond"
Eddie Murphy,"Dreamgirls"(WINNER)
Mark Wahlberg,"The Departed"

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:
Cate Blanchett,"Notes on a Scandal"
Abigail Breslin,"Little Miss Sunshine"
Jennifer Hudson,"Dreamgirls"(WINNER)
Rinko Kikuchi,"Babel"
Meryl Streep,"The Devil Wears Prada"

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY:
Michael Arndt,"Little Miss Sunshine"(WINNER)
Guillermo Arriga,"Babel"
Guillermo del Toro,"Pan's Labyrinth"
Paul Haggis & Iris Yamashita,"Letters from Iwo Jima"
Peter Morgan,"The Queen"

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY;
David Arata, Alfonso Cuaron, Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby & Timothy J. Sexton,"Children of Men"
Todd Field & Tom Perotta,"Little Children"
Patrick Marber,"Notes on a Scandal"
Aline Brosh McKenna,"The Devil Wears Prada"
William Monahan,"The Departed"(WINNER)

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE:
Cars
Happy Feet(WINNER)
Ice Age: The Meltdown
Monster House
Over the Hedge

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM:
After the Wedding – Denmark
Days of Glory – Algeria
Pan's Labyrinth – Mexico(WINNER)
The Lives of Others – Germany
Water – Canada

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE:
Alexandre Desplat,"The Painted Veil"
Alexandre Desplat,"The Queen"
Philip Glass,"Notes on a Scandal"
Javier Navarette,"Pan's Labyrinth"
Gustavo Santaolalla,"Babel"(WINNER)

BEST ORIGINAL SONG:
"I Need To Wake Up" – An Inconvenient Truth(WINNER)
"Listen" – Dreamgirls
"Love You I Do" – Dreamgirls
"Our Town" – Cars
"Patience" – Dreamgirls

BEST SOUND(EDITING & MIXING):
Apocalypto
Blood Diamond
Flags of Our Fathers
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest(WINNER)
Superman Returns

BEST ART DIRECTION:
Pan's Labyrinth(WINNER)
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Superman Returns
The Good German
The Prestige

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY:
Children of Men
Pan's Labyrinth(WINNER)
The Black Dahlia
The Illusionist
The Prestige

BEST MAKEUP:
Apocalpyto
Click
Pan's Labyrinth(WINNER)
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
The Prestige

BEST COSTUME DESIGN;
Curse of the Golden Flower
Dreamgirls
Marie Antoinette(WINNER)
The Devil Wears Prada
The Queen

BEST FILM EDITING;
Babel
Blood Diamond
Children of Men
The Departed(WINNER)
United 93

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS:
Eragon
Pan's Labyrinth
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest(WINNER)
Poseidon
Superman Returns

BEST PICTURE:
Babel
Letters from Iwo Jima
Little Miss Sunshine
The Departed(WINNER)
United 93

BEST DIRECTOR:
Guillermo del Toro,"Pan's Labyrinth"
Clint Eastwood,"Letters from Iwo Jima"
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu,"Babel"
Paul Greengrass,"United 93″
Martin Scorsese,"The Departed"

BEST ACTOR:
Leonardo DiCaprio,"Blood Diamond"
Ryan Gosling,"Half Nelson"
Peter O'Toole,"Venus"
Will Smith,"The Pursuit of Happyness"
Forest Whitaker,"The Last King of Scotland"(WINNER)

BEST ACTRESS:
Penelope Cruz,"Volver"
Judi Dench,"Notes on a Scandal"
Maggie Gyllenhaal,"Sherrybaby"
Helen Mirren,"The Queen"(WINNER)
Kate Winslet,"Little Children"

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:
Alan Arkin,"Little Miss Sunshine"
Jackie Earle Haley,"Little Children"
Djimon Hounsou,"Blood Diamond"
Eddie Murphy,"Dreamgirls"(WINNER)
Mark Wahlberg,"The Departed"

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:
Cate Blanchett,"Notes on a Scandal"
Abigail Breslin,"Little Miss Sunshine"
Jennifer Hudson,"Dreamgirls"(WINNER)
Rinko Kikuchi,"Babel"
Meryl Streep,"The Devil Wears Prada"

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY:
Michael Arndt,"Little Miss Sunshine"(WINNER)
Guillermo Arriga,"Babel"
Guillermo del Toro,"Pan's Labyrinth"
Paul Haggis & Iris Yamashita,"Letters from Iwo Jima"
Peter Morgan,"The Queen"

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY;
David Arata, Alfonso Cuaron, Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby & Timothy J. Sexton,"Children of Men"
Todd Field & Tom Perotta,"Little Children"
Patrick Marber,"Notes on a Scandal"
Aline Brosh McKenna,"The Devil Wears Prada"
William Monahan,"The Departed"(WINNER)

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE:
Cars
Happy Feet(WINNER)
Ice Age: The Meltdown
Monster House
Over the Hedge

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM:
After the Wedding – Denmark
Days of Glory – Algeria
Pan's Labyrinth – Mexico(WINNER)
The Lives of Others – Germany
Water – Canada

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE:
Alexandre Desplat,"The Painted Veil"
Alexandre Desplat,"The Queen"
Philip Glass,"Notes on a Scandal"
Javier Navarette,"Pan's Labyrinth"
Gustavo Santaolalla,"Babel"(WINNER)

BEST ORIGINAL SONG:
"I Need To Wake Up" – An Inconvenient Truth(WINNER)
"Listen" – Dreamgirls
"Love You I Do" – Dreamgirls
"Our Town" – Cars
"Patience" – Dreamgirls

BEST SOUND(EDITING & MIXING):
Apocalypto
Blood Diamond
Flags of Our Fathers
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest(WINNER)
Superman Returns

BEST ART DIRECTION:
Pan's Labyrinth(WINNER)
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Superman Returns
The Good German
The Prestige

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY:
Children of Men
Pan's Labyrinth(WINNER)
The Black Dahlia
The Illusionist
The Prestige

BEST MAKEUP:
Apocalpyto
Click
Pan's Labyrinth(WINNER)
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
The Prestige

BEST COSTUME DESIGN;
Curse of the Golden Flower
Dreamgirls
Marie Antoinette(WINNER)
The Devil Wears Prada
The Queen

BEST FILM EDITING;
Babel
Blood Diamond
Children of Men
The Departed(WINNER)
United 93

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS:
Eragon
Pan's Labyrinth
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest(WINNER)
Poseidon
Superman Returns

I really don't see the point of voting against a person assuming they already have enough support unless you don't want them to win. I can understand that mentality in a nomination process, but in the winner process, you are voting for ONE person to win. I doubt many voters say, "Oh, Adele has enough support, so I'm going to throw my vote to Bon Iver," not unless they feel that Bon Iver are more deserving than Adele. I'm sure the Grammy committee stresses to vote for the person you think deserves it most.

So, while I'm aware there are shockers every year, I seriously doubt the Grammy voters went against Adele in several of these categories.

However, I do not see Adele's 21 winning Album of The Year at all. It's too predictable, and the Grammy's have been known recently to go against what's completely expected to win. I honestly believe this award is going to either Foo Fighter's Wasting Light or Lady Gaga's Born This Way.

Best Dance Recording should undoubtedly go to Robyn. She truly deserves it.

I could undoubtedly see Tony Bennett sweeping the night in his categories, too.

Nicki Minaj and Bon Iver are the only worthy competitions for the Best New Artist award, but even with that, the Grammy's may try to go against the predictable norm and give the award to The Band Perry.

Kanye will definitely sweep the Rap categories. There is no question on that.

Record of the Year
Will win:"Rolling in the Deep" – Adele
Should win:"Rolling in the Deep" – Adele

Album of the Year
Will win: "21″ – Adele
Should have been nominated and win: "MBDTF"- Kenye West
Should NOT have been nominated: "Loud" – Rihanna

Song of the Year
Will win:"Rolling in the Deep" – Adele
Should win: "Rolling in the Deep" – Adele

Best New Artist
Will win:Nicki Minaj
Should win: Bon Iver

Best Pop Solo Performance
Will win:"Someone Like You" – Adele
Should win:"Someone Like You" – Adele
Possible upset:"Firework" – Katy Perry

Best Pop Duo/Group Performance
Will win:"Body and Soul" – Tony Bennett & Amy Winehouse
Should win:"Body and Soul" – Tony Bennett & Amy Winehouse
Possible upset:"Pumped Up Kicks" – Foster the People

Best Pop Vocal Album
Will win: "Born This Way" – Lady Gaga
Should win: "21″ – Adele
Possible upset: Doo-Wops & Hooligans – Bruno Mars

Best R&B Performance
Will win: "Far Away" – Marsha Ambrosius
Should win: "Far Away" – Marsha Ambrosius
Possible upset: "Pieces of Me" – Ledisi
Should have been nominated and win: "Rolling in the Deep" – Adele (its genre-mixing worked to its disadvantage. Yet, its vocal performance deserved recognition)

Best R&B Album
Will win: "F.A.M.E." – Chris Brown
Should win: "Love Letter" – R. Kelly
Should have been nominated and win: "4″ – Beyonce

Best Rap Performance
Will win:"Otis" – Jay-Z & Kanye West (featuring Otis Redding)
Should win: "Otis" – Jay-Z & Kanye West (featuring Otis Redding)
Possible upset: "Look at Me Now" – Chris Brown featuring Lil Wayne & Busta Rhymes

"Firework," Katy Perry

For the sake of argument, though, I wonder who Adele's biggest threats are. I kinda thought Bon Iver or Kanye West might stand a chance for AOTY (in light of Arcade Fire's surprising win last year), but they weren't even nominated. Rihanna has no chance, and Bruno Mars and Foo Fighters are the darkest of dark horses. I also thought Lady Gaga could pose a threat, mainly due to the fact that she's riding a historic third nomination in a row, but Born This Way is increasingly being viewed as a polarizing album that underperformed. Actually, of the general field, I feel like "All of the Lights" has the best chance of pulling the upset in Song (a la "Single Ladies" a couple years back), but even that's a stretch.

Gaga could pose a huge threat, as will Bruno Mars (who will go home virtually empty-handed should Adele clean house). And don't count out critical darlings Bon Iver (his Grammy diss came after the final ballots were submitted) and Mumford and Sons. Adele should at least win "Record of the Year", if nothing else. But expect Best Pop Vocal Album to go to Gaga as a consolation for her snubs in Record and Song of the Year, and a potential loss in Album of the Year. And Song of the Year goes to Kanye, for his snob in the Album of the Year field (which he should have not only received a nomination, but a win).

Adele will never measure up to

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyaVt0dcrjY

'Nuff said.

I regret that I can't take your recommendation urging me to stop making any comparison between the scale of human ruin caused by the last forty years of drug prohibition in American and other genocides. I see a relevant avenue of reflection and comparison. I see something systemic and comparable in the process that underlies both tragedies.

Your reduction of the actual substance of the points of relevant comparison in the film to semantic nonsense for purposes of a counter-argument are hyperbolic and simplistic: "You see that guy over there walking, that reminds me of the Holocaust." "You can't have a genocide of poor people." "Oh yeah, it's a genoicide minus that nasty killing part."

No one made such statements. Or argued anything similar. To raise them as strawman versions of the more nuanced and careful discussion at hand — and then knock them down with flippant semantics does nothing to contribute to the depth of any discussion.

First, let me address your suggestion that the Holocaust can only be taken as a whole — that one can't address oneself to the origins and growth of the Holocaust, to the rationalizations that allowed it to proceed, to the actual history of genocidal movements in general. If this were true, then by your logic, there is no way to look at what is happening in any actual human dynamic and INTERVENE prior to the building of concentration camps and the commencement of mass killing. By your stringent view of when genocide becomes relevant for discussing the brutalization of hundreds of the thousands and the incarceration of millions and suggesting when we might be on a path to something worse, we can NEVER invoke the genocidal until it finally happens. This is a recipe for, well, the tolerance of injustice up to and including mass murder. Presumably, when it is too late to challenge the growth of a mass brutalization, then you would be tolerant of the comparison. And not before. The absurdity (and tragedy) of this outlook is self-evident and, frankly, disturbing.

Secondly, in speaking of a "genocide of the poor," the film itself — and my comments specifically — note that the drug laws have been used to disproportionately target black and brown people. That is evident from all relevant statistics of drug use by race, incarceration by race, the disparate length of sentences by race, and indeed the structure of drug laws themselves and their application with intended racial bias (crack v. cocaine disparity in sentencing guidelines, use of opium laws against the Chinese in the last century, etc). This was the premise of the film, supported by historical and empirical fact. Rather than direct your argument that, you instead suggest that it was simply suggested that the poor were targeted as the poor. Not so. They are targeted because they are poor, because they are no longer necessary to the American economy, AND because minority groups and recent immigrants are always decidedly the "other" and because the drug laws have always been utilized to target the feared minorities of any given era. Again, that was some dishonest semantic stuff on your part.

Lastly, let me address the notion that I have somehow insulted people and their families who were in fact victims of the European Holocaust. Consistently, this argument that wraps itself in the uniqueness of the Holocaust beyond all comparison or reference never fails to assert itself at the first opportunity. The best that can be said for this reasoning is that it seeks to preserve for the Holocaust a unique and incomparable place in the annals of human depravity, so much so that the Shoah eventually bears no relevance to any campaign of human brutality that didn't kill six million people with gas chambers and crematoria. The exceptionalism that such a standard requires is intended, I know, to preserve an extraordinary place for the stark horrors of European Jewry's destruction.

But instead, as time passes — and as man's inhumanity finds new and different ways to isolate and destroy undesired populations (Uganda, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, the drug war) — the net effect is just the opposite. The claims of exceptionalism made on behalf of the Holocaust actually make the lessons of that nightmare LESS accessible and LESS relevant to the repetition of mass brutality, mass incarceration, mass murder. By holding the Holocaust separate and apart fom any possible antecedents, those who wish to make the Jewish experience relevant and important to the preservation of human ideals instead manage only to marginalize its importance.

True, the Holocaust reached a level of mechanization that was extraordinary, and its horrors are at the extremity of man's inhumanity to man. (All of this was stated in the film, directly, by myself and others). But to suggest that any brutalities that do not reach the point of a Final Solution are not even to be considered against the early stages of dehumanization and isolation, that the Holocaust is so unique that it's origins, growth and implementation can't even be used as a yardstick of other injustices is, I think, self-defeating for those who understand the Holocaust and its importance.

You would argue that to use it so is sacrilege. I grew up taught precisely that, in a Jewish household in which the Holocaust occupied a unique pinnacle of injustice But having lived through more and more of the horror that the last half of the last century held, and seeing little to suggest that the coming century offers cause for easy optimism, I have slowly become persuaded to the opposite viewpoint. The Holocaust is extremely important, and if its careful and nuanced invocation makes anyone, anywhere cognizant of a mass injustice that is destroying the lives of multitudes — in any context in which human life is being systemically devalued and destroyed in large numbers — then the relevance and power of the Holocaust and its memory is affirmed. I see no insult whatsoever.

No one involved in the documentary — not myself, not the others who made the same connections — said the American drug war was comparable in scope or scale to the Holocaust. And pains were made to note that the human carnage of the drug war did not have an overt racial or religious origin. But at this point, you do not even bother to dispute that hundreds of thousands in America and Mexico alone have been the victims of violence rooted in drug prohibition, that millions of non-violent addicts and streetcorner sellers of drugs have been incarcerated for longer and longer periods, that this occurs against a ghettoization that consigns the populations most affected by this horror to places in which the legitimate American economy no longer operates. And further that the privatization of the prison-industrial complex creates an economic incentive to expand the destruction and increase the level of incarceration to rates never before seen in even totalitarian states. If the drug war is not a plan to destroy the American underclass, it is nonetheless working about as well as any plan one might want to consider short of an outright killing machine. That you find this level of human ruin unsuitable for comparisons to even the earlier stages of previous inhumanities that began with ghettoization and mass incarceration is telling in a way that I don't think you intend. Again, you are saying that until someone actually builds a gas chamber and openly urges the mass murders of niggers, immigrants and poor white trash, no one is allowed to suggest that anyone should worry aloud that we might be headed toward such a horrifying future nevertheless.

By such semantics, the Holocaust doesn't retain its exceptionalism and its meaning. By such semantics, the Holocaust and its victims are denied importance, relevance and meaning, If the Shoah means anything to the human collective, its origins, its expansion and its rationalizations should be discussed with every mass abuse of humanity.

DS

I don't buy it. And

BEST PICTURE:
Babel
Letters from Iwo Jima
Little Miss Sunshine
The Departed(WINNER)
United 93

BEST DIRECTOR:
Guillermo del Toro,"Pan's Labyrinth"
Clint Eastwood,"Letters from Iwo Jima"
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu,"Babel"
Paul Greengrass,"United 93″
Martin Scorsese,"The Departed"

BEST ACTOR:
Leonardo DiCaprio,"Blood Diamond"
Ryan Gosling,"Half Nelson"
Peter O'Toole,"Venus"
Will Smith,"The Pursuit of Happyness"
Forest Whitaker,"The Last King of Scotland"(WINNER)

BEST ACTRESS:
Penelope Cruz,"Volver"
Judi Dench,"Notes on a Scandal"
Maggie Gyllenhaal,"Sherrybaby"
Helen Mirren,"The Queen"(WINNER)
Kate Winslet,"Little Children"

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:
Alan Arkin,"Little Miss Sunshine"
Jackie Earle Haley,"Little Children"
Djimon Hounsou,"Blood Diamond"(WINNER)
Eddie Murphy,"Dreamgirls"
Mark Wahlberg,"The Departed"

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:
Cate Blanchett,"Notes on a Scandal"
Abigail Breslin,"Little Miss Sunshine"
Jennifer Hudson,"Dreamgirls"(WINNER)
Rinko Kikuchi,"Babel"
Meryl Streep,"The Devil Wears Prada"

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY:
Michael Arndt,"Little Miss Sunshine"(WINNER)
Guillermo Arriga,"Babel"
Guillermo del Toro,"Pan's Labyrinth"
Paul Haggis & Iris Yamashita,"Letters from Iwo Jima"
Peter Morgan,"The Queen"

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY;
David Arata, Alfonso Cuaron, Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby & Timothy J. Sexton,"Children of Men"
Todd Field & Tom Perotta,"Little Children"
Patrick Marber,"Notes on a Scandal"
Aline Brosh McKenna,"The Devil Wears Prada"
William Monahan,"The Departed"(WINNER)

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE:
Cars
Happy Feet(WINNER)
Ice Age: The Meltdown
Monster House
Over the Hedge

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM:
After the Wedding – Denmark
Days of Glory – Algeria
Pan's Labyrinth – Mexico(WINNER)
The Lives of Others – Germany
Water – Canada

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE:
Alexandre Desplat,"The Painted Veil"
Alexandre Desplat,"The Queen"
Philip Glass,"Notes on a Scandal"
Javier Navarette,"Pan's Labyrinth"
Gustavo Santaolalla,"Babel"(WINNER)

BEST ORIGINAL SONG:
"I Need To Wake Up" – An Inconvenient Truth(WINNER)
"Listen" – Dreamgirls
"Love You I Do" – Dreamgirls
"Our Town" – Cars
"Patience" – Dreamgirls

BEST SOUND(EDITING & MIXING):
Apocalypto
Blood Diamond
Flags of Our Fathers
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest(WINNER)
Superman Returns

BEST ART DIRECTION:
Pan's Labyrinth(WINNER)
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Superman Returns
The Good German
The Prestige

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY:
Children of Men
Pan's Labyrinth(WINNER)
The Black Dahlia
The Illusionist
The Prestige

BEST MAKEUP:
Apocalpyto
Click
Pan's Labyrinth(WINNER)
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
The Prestige

BEST COSTUME DESIGN;
Curse of the Golden Flower
Dreamgirls
Marie Antoinette(WINNER)
The Devil Wears Prada
The Queen

BEST FILM EDITING;
Babel
Blood Diamond
Children of Men
The Departed(WINNER)
United 93

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS:
Eragon
Pan's Labyrinth
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest(WINNER)
Poseidon
Superman Returns

I'm sorry, but you can't isolate one part of the Holocaust or a genocide without sounding insensitive and absurd to the general public. They are an entire package, and when you make a comparison to genocide or to Holocaust, you are invoking the whole thing. Examples:

"Oh yeah, it's a genocide, minus that whole nasty killing part." Then it's not a genocide.

"I'm an unpaid intern, man I feel like a black slave during the 1800s… No, not the racial or physically abusive part, just the working for free part." Not the same thing

"You see that guy over there walking, that reminds me of the Holocaust. Not the killing part, the part when they walked." Again, not the holocaust.

The last one is a more extreme/bizarre analogy, but that's basically what you're doing when you make that kind of comparison.

By the standards with which the film makes the comparison, any injustice in our daily lives could be compared to the Holocaust, which does a disservice and is an insult to all the people who were murdered and their families. It dilutes the significance of the Holocaust, rather than raise awareness of the condition of those marginalized by the War on Drugs (which I believe is the intention)

The other thing is that you can't have a genocide of poor people. There will always be poor people and there always have been poor people. If you kill all the current poor people, then the middle class becomes the new poor people, because the rich people would need the middle class to then provide the services that had been previously supplied by the poor people. You can destroy a race, but you can't really destroy a socioeconomic condition that is the result of a capitalist society.

Poor people are treated better in our society today than they ever have in the history of the world. If imprisoning drug dealers is genocide, what was Feudalism? Serfdom? Slavery? You dilute the meaning of the word genocide if you use it as liberally as you do in this instance, and you hurt your own argument.

Even if you still believe that the absurd comparisons you made are true, I would recommend that you stop making them, because you then lose the support of normal people.