Dreamgirls may blow everyone away on Wednesday and sweep aside all the weak sister Best Picture competitors (two of which happen to be Flags of Our Fathers and World Trade Center… sorry but it’s true) but this is a bottom-line fact: Pedro Almodovar‘s Volver and Florian Henckel- Donnersmarck‘s The Lives of Others are profoundly good films — first-rate heart movies that portray how tough life can be in jarring, vibrant terms — and they’re connecting with people all over (I ‘ve been hearing and feeling this). The foreign- tongue, foreign-produced thing will, I suppose, work against them but they definitely deserve full-on consideration for the Best Picture Oscar. The best of the year are The Departed, The Lives of Others, Babel, Volver, Little Miss Sunshine, Pan’s Labyrinth and United 93, in that order,