Today's American Cinema Editors nominations for drama mirror those films chosen by both the Directors Guild of America and the Producers Guild of America. And as every Oscarologist knows, the winner of the Golden Eddie can be the best indicator of which film takes home the best picture at the Academy Awards.

The ACE nominees for drama are: "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" — Angus Wall & Kirk Baxter; "The Dark Knight" — Lee Smith; "Frost/Nixon" — Mike Hill and Dan Hanley; "Milk" — Elliot Graham; and "Slumdog Millionaire" — Chris Dickens.

The ACE nominees for comedy or musical are: "In Bruges" — Jon Gregory; "Mamma Mia!" — Leslie Walker; "Tropic Thunder" —- Greg Hayden; "Vicky Christina Barcelona" — Alisa Lepselter; and "Wall-E" — Stephen Schaffer.

Since 1990, the film that comes up ACE has gone on to be the eventual best picture winner in 12 out of 17 years. In three of the five years when the ACE barometer was wrong, the editing winner was at least a contender for best picture. The exceptions — last year when neither "The Bourne Ultimatum" nor "Sweeney Todd" made the final five at the Oscars and 1999 when the same fate befell "The Matrix" and "Being John Malkovich."

While ACE has a good track record as a best picture predictor and a great one for forecasting who will win the editing Oscar (15/17 years), it is surprising that it is not all knowing when it comes to the editing Oscar nominations. Since 1992, when the Eddies went to five nominees from three, 65 of the 80 Oscar nominees for editing had first gotten a Golden Eddie nod. While this track record appears impressive enough, ACE had doubled their chances of getting it right when they split into separate kudos for dramas and comedy/musicals in 1999.