Oscar night is just a few days away and many consider the race for best picture simply too close to call. On the latest edition of Movie City News' Guru's o' Gold, I'm picking "Babel" as the Oscar winner for best picture, with "Little Miss Sunshine" as the #2 choice, but over the weekend I've been second-guessing myself. I'm starting to feel like "Little Miss Sunshine" will ultimately win the big prize...But what about all the buzz for "The Departed," and the talk that "Letters from Iwo Jima" may surprise everyone... I'm heading to L.A. tomorrow, so maybe the word on the streets out in California will help my predictions.

Meanwhile, there are a number of blogs to follow for the latest insights. The best new one is Gold Lies by Peter Knegt (who worked with us in Toronto this year, as I recall its part of a university project...his first post is required reading for all Oscar fans), and of course there's all the popular ones like David Carr's The Carpetbagger (my all-round fav), David Poland's The Hot Blog, Jeffrey Wells' Hollywood Elsewhere, Sasha Stone's Oscar Watch, Tom O'Neill's The Envelope, Kris Tapley's InContention, and, of course, the official Oscar.com (a site I worked on for four years back in mid-90s when I was at ABC TV).