Sean Penn Fights for Harvey Milk Day

Sean Penn is putting his Oscar to good use, campaigning to honor the character he portrayed with a "day of significance" in California. A new bill sponsored by state Senator Mark Leno would honor Harvey Milk, the slain gay rights activist and San Francisco politician, on May 22nd, Milk's birthday.

Penn appeared at a news conference today with Leno, who says the bill would not give state employees and schools the day off. Rather, the initiative would put special attention on Milk in schools, encouraging them to conduct exercises on Milk's contributions and life.

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Oscars: Best Actor Sean Penn

Best Actor:
Richard Jenkins - The Visitor
Frank Langella - Frost/Nixon
Sean Penn - Milk
Brad Pitt - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Mickey Rourke - The Wrestler Winner: Sean Penn Surprising primarily because of the Academy's history of rewarding the comeback, Sean Penn was truly great in a demanding high-wire act, and the industry truly loves his abilities. This race came down to Penn and Rourke, of course, and while there was more mainstream support for Rourke's storyline, there's clearly something quite powerful in Penn's Harvey Milk.

Oscars: 'Milk,' 'Slumdog' Win Screenplay Awards

Best Original Screenplay:
Frozen River
Happy-Go-Lucky
In Bruges
Milk
Wall-E Winner: Dustin Lance Black - Milk Probably not a real surprise if you've been following the awards season, and as it became more clear that the number of probable Oscars for Milk diminshed, Dustin Lance Black's script became the one award the film could most likely count on. Best Adapted Screenplay:
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Doubt
Frost/Nixon
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire Winner: Simon Beaufoy - Slumdog Millionaire It's the best screenplay in this category, and the first domino to fall, most likely.

The Best Picture Profanity Reel

This is our last Oscar update before tonight's show. (Just a reminder, we've got loads of Oscar coverage for you, including interviews, predictions, and features about the best of the awards).

Someone spent a lot of time putting together the 2009 Best Picture Profanity Reel, which is exactly what it sounds like: Showcasing the bad words in Frost/Nixon, Benjamin Button, The Reader, Slumdog Millionaire, and Milk. We take the language of movies for granted - Scorsese's f-bombs, the c-word in Atonement, of all things - but as we wrote in our Best Best Actresses column, it was only about 40 years ago that Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? couldn't get away with saying "screw." You've come a long way, baby. Check it out if you've got five minutes. Oh - there are some spoilers in these clips, so if you haven't seen all the movies, this might not be for you.

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We'll cover every category in less detail later on today when we give you a chance to predict the Oscar winners for fantabulous prizes, but for the major categories, we thought a little explanation was in order. Here's how we see the Academy Awards playing out this weekend and why.

Best Picture:
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire Should Win: Slumdog Millionaire
Win Win: Slumdog Millionaire Less the crowd favorite than simply the best choice. There was no better film in 2008, top to bottom. If you bet against it, I would say Milk is the dark horse pick, but the night will belong to Slumdog.

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