VINDICATOR CONTEST Our Oscar winner, 'a big film buff,' plans to repeat

Deann Davis of Beaver, Pa., picked winners in 18 of 24 categories.
Forget this week's Academy Awards. Deann Davis is already gearing up for 2006.
"Even now, OK, the Oscars are over, but I'm going to think about what's going to win next year," said Davis, 28, of Beaver, Pa.
Researching for next year's awards will be easy -- and cheap -- for Davis, who is the winner of The Vindicator's annual Cast Your Oscar Ballot contest.
Her prizes include movie tickets to Regal Cinemas and Austintown Cinema, $100 in gift certificates from Family Video and gift certificates from additional contest sponsors Nemenz IGA and Asuka Japanese Restaurant.
Davis picked the correct winner in 18 of the 24 categories that were part of the contest. She predicted who would take home the Oscar in most of the top races, including Best Picture and Best Director for Clint Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby," as well as all of the acting categories.
Research is her key
She said luck had nothing to do with her performance in the contest. Davis carefully researched each of her picks by reading movie reviews and following pre-Oscar awards shows such as the Golden Globes and the Directors Guild Awards.
"I'm a big film buff," Davis said. "I read everything I can get my hands on."
Once Eastwood took the Directors Guild's top award, she figured he had a lock on the Best Director Oscar, though Davis thought Martin Scorsese might have been a sentimental favorite for the Academy, which has never honored the filmmaker of "The Aviator" with its top directing prize.
But sentiment, she said, is no way to pick Oscar winners.
"That's a good way to lose," Davis said.
Despite her analytical prowess, Davis admitted she hasn't seen many of the nominated films, including "Million Dollar Baby."
"I'm kind of a slacker. I've become a little bit more of a homebody than I used to be. I used to go to a movie once a week."
But the numbers don't lie. Of the 233 entries, Davis was the only person to get 18 picks right. Four people got 16 and four got 17, and almost everyone got at least one category right.
Here are some trends we noticed among the contest entries:
Two-horse race: Almost everybody picked either "The Aviator" or "Million Dollar Baby" to win Best Picture. "Ray" came in a distant third with about 35 picks. "Sideways" and "Finding Neverland" each got only a few votes apiece.
Swank by a mile -- Just about everyone correctly picked Hilary Swank to win the lead-actress trophy for her role in "Million Dollar Baby," despite the fact that forecasters predicted a tight race between her and Annette Bening ("Being Julia").
Foxx rocks: Most people correctly picked Jamie Foxx to win the lead-actor category for "Ray," though virtually no one picked him to win the supporting-actor Oscar for his role in "Collateral" (he didn't).
Technicalities: In a competitive year (i.e. one without "The Lord of the Rings"), the smaller awards were tough to predict. Even Davis had trouble with the technical categories, choosing incorrectly for Film Editing, Sound Mixing and Sound Editing.
We get it, you like "The Passion": Scoring the contest's only zero, a woman from Campbell picked "The Passion of the Christ" to win the three awards for which it was nominated (Cinematography, Makeup, Original Score). She left all other categories blank, but selected "Passion" for Best Picture, Best Director (Mel Gibson) and Best Actor (James Caviezel), even though the film was not nominated in any of these categories. Sorry.
Too bad, Michael: On the other end of the cultural divide, we received no write-in votes for Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11."