How the Golden Globes affect Oscar prediction

The Golden Globes, like the majority of precursor awards, are good at indicating the Oscar winner in certain categories but bad at others.

Where the Globes stand out are Best Director, Best Actor (Drama), Best Actress (Drama), Best Supporting Actress and Best Screenplay.

Best Director: This bodes well for Julian Schnabel who has been largely overlooked so far as Best Director with the Coen brothers taking the majority of awards. The Globes are outstanding at predicting this award and so we now have a real battle.

Best Actor (Drama): Daniel Day-Lewis was already pulling away on the Oscarpred charts and the winner of this Globe rarely fails to win in Oscarland.

Best Actress (Drama): Julie Christie is in a similar position to Daniel Day-Lewis. She has dominated the awards so far and with four of the last five winners here repeating at the Academy Awards she has every chance.

Best Supporting Actress: Three out of the last five years the winner here went on to win the Oscar so that goes well for Cate Blanchett. Amy Ryan though has been dominating proceedings and it looks like a race between these two now.

Best Screenplay: Which ever writer wins the Globe has gone on to win the Oscar three of the last four years. As No Country For Old Men has also won many other awards for the writing the Adapted Screenplay Oscar looks to be going their way.

Where the Globes struggle in predicting the winner are in the Best Picture, Best Actor (Musical/Comedy), Best Actress (Musical/Comedy) and Best Animated Feature Film.

Best Picture: Both the drama winner, Atonement, and the comedy/musical winner, Sweeney Todd, have done very well to beat off the opposition but are a long way off winning the Oscar. In the last five years the Globes have sent ten Best Pictures to the Academy only to win on two occasions. The buzz may be now that Atonement has a great chance but the stats don't lie.

Best Actor and Actress (Comedy/Musical): It is very rare one of these ends up with the Best Actor or Actress Oscar and so Johnny Depp and Marion Cottilard should enjoy their success now before they have to deal with failure.

Best Animated Feature Film: The Globes have only ever gave one award out before this year and that was for the Disney film Cars which lost to Happy Feet last year. Can they go one better this year? All indications are that Ratatouille is a lock and so the Globes may well be 1 from 2 after this year.