Oscars Betting Odds: Is Babel Really The Best Picture?

Oscar night 2007 is now so close that Eva Longoria is probably being stitched into whatever moronic outfit she’s chosen to wear as we speak; but that would be forgetting the real message of the Oscars - making money out of the winners by betting on them.

This year hasn’t been a good one for Oscars betting - you know that Helen Mirren, Forest Whitaker and Martin Scorsese are going to win Oscars and so does everyone else, that’s why the odds have been so stupidly teeny. But the Best Picture Oscar is so up in the air that any of the five nominated movies could feasibly win the prize. That means good odds, and that means you’ll make more money when you win. Marvellous, huh?

Here’s part one of this year’s Best Picture Oscars betting odds - for The Queen, Letters From Iwo Jima and Babel - with help from Paddy Power…

The Queen - The Queen has been the one true constant during this year’s awards season, but not really for the film itself. It’s been Helen Mirren’s turn as Elizabeth II that has won all the plaudits, with The Queen itself only really winning a Bafta - and that’s only because it’s such a British subject matter. Will Americans be so keen to vote for a film about a posh dour-looking woman being glum because that bulimic woman died in her car? We wouldn’t have thought so ourselves. And anyway, doesn’t The Queen look like just about the dullest film ever made in the history of the universe? Current Best Picture Oscars betting odds - 12/1

Letters From Iwo Jima - In decades to come, many a Sunday afternoon will be spent complaining that Letters From Iwo Jima is on TV again, because Letters From Iwo Jima is a great big unashamed war epic just like they used to make. Except the Americans are the baddies in this one. And it’s all subtitled. And it’s so crushingly serious that anyone’d think the war was kind of grim. Letters From Iwo Jima seems to have peaked at the nominations stage at all the awards ceremonies this year, so we don’t hold much hope for it here. However, the Oscars do love miserable Clint Eastwood films… Current Best Picture Oscars betting odds - 10/1

Babel - Of course, Letters From Iwo Jima doesn’t hold a candle, misery-wise to Babel. Babel is just as miserable as you’d expect a film by the man who made 21 Grams to be. There’s desperate mute Japanese schoolgirl sex that’s 95% less erotic than our description implies, a Mexican immigrant sobbing indiscriminately at everything she sees and - of course - Brad Pitt weeping into a telephone. Miserablism aside, though, what does Babel really have to offer the world? Not a bloody lot, and we’ve been brought up to mistrust any film where each scene in the final act ends in hugging. Current Best Film Oscars betting odds - 10/3

Tomorrow - More Oscars. But if that’s too long to wait - or you feel like making more money than you know what to do with - head right over to the Paddy Power Oscars betting odds page to see the latest, and best, betting odds.