The hell with it: I’m switching my Best Picture prediction to Little Miss Sunshine.

An older friend told me this morning “it’ll probably be The Departed,” pointing the tendency of older Academy members to shy away from comedies in choosing Best Picture winners plus the lack of Sunshine Best Director and Editing noms, blah blah.

I say throw out the stats. The bottom line is that we’re living in weird times. Everyone knows the world is coming to an early end unless some big changes, and Bill Maher was totally dead-on the other night when he said that if people knew or an absolute fact that not using their TV remotes would eliminate global warming completely, that most people would still use their remotes. And yet people are also quietly freaking inside and want a measure of emotional comfort more than anything else when it comes to anything and everything, including the matter of Best Picture.

So the hell with the precedents and stats — Little Miss Sunshine is the only “us” movie with a Best Picture nomination. It’s not as moralistic or grounded as Billy Wilder‘s The Apartment, but that was a “dark comedy” that won the Best Picture Oscar 46 years ago. Sunshine is light-ish, yes, but it’s fundamentally a serious comedy about losing, hurting, despair and darkness, but finally about family love and sticking up for one another, and I think it’s going to win because of this combination. I really do. If I’m wrong, screw it….I don’t care.