OUR OSCAR EXPERTS EXPOSED

Amazing as it may seem to those who know them, HITS amateur movie experts Lenny "Twizzler" Beer and Roy "Milk Dud" Trakin proved that they actually know a thing or two about a thing or two. In this case, we're talkin' ‘bout the Oscars.

For those who follow hitsdailydouble—and shouldn't you be working?—you know that Beer & Trakin pulled an Ebert & Roeper and threw down with Oscar predictions in a dozen of the major categories. Against all odds, our own odd couple each scored an impressive 7-5 record.

For the most part, in winning and losing, Beer & Trakin presented a unified front, which worked great for them in the Best Actor (Russell Crowe), Actress (Julia Roberts), Supporting Actor (Benecio Del Toro), Song (Bob Dylan's "Things Have Changed"), Original Screenplay (Cameron Crowe for "Almost Famous") and Adapted Screenplay (Stephen Gaghan for "Traffic") categories. But their combined brain-power still led them down the wrong path in the Supporting Actress (Kate Hudson), Director (Ang Lee), Score (Hans Zimmer for "Gladiator") and Cinematography ("Gladiator") categories. The winners were, respectively, Marcia Gay Harden, Steven Soderbergh, Tan Dun ("Crouching Tiger…") and Peter Pau ("…Hidden Dragon").

Beer even tipped his strategy in successfully navigating the Documentary Feature category—Trakin's solo mistake. "Always bet on the Holocaust in this category," Beer wrote, predicting the Oscar-winning trajectory of "Into The Arms Of Strangers: Stories Of The Kinder Transport."

To even things out, Trakin guessed right by picking "Gladiator" for Best Picture, while Beer opted for "Traffic."

At times Beer & Trakin's combined logic for choosing the winners may have been suspect. For instance, in choosing "Gladiator" as Best Picture, Trakin cited the Academy's love for seeing "young male, bare-chested warriors in sheet metal short-shorts"—which, to us, sounds like Trakin's projecting. However, that same logic—"that and all the half-naked guys running around"—failed Beer as he applied it to "Gladiator" winning a Cinematography Oscar.

While Beer & Trakin accurately predicted Dylan would win in the Best Song category, they laid down no predictions about whom he would thank—Dylan gave shoutouts to Thomas Mottola, Donny Ienner and Larry Jenkins, among others.

They also failed to give any predictions about how first-time host Steve Martin would fare—he was hilarious—or how much he would lay into Russell Crowe—a lot—or how little Crowe would find it amusing—he sat stone-faced while everyone else laughed.