Due to more holiday shenanigans, the HomeVideodrome podcast will return next week. For real this time!

It’s impossible to watch “The Guard” and not think of the magnificent black comedy “In Bruges,” due to the pedigree of talent behind it. Produced by Martin McDonagh (the man behind “In Bruges”), “The Guard” finds his brother, John Michael McDonagh, making his debut as a writer/director. Drawing on influences as diverse as Sam Peckinpah and Nicolas Roeg, “In Bruges” struck a perfect balance of hilariously dark humor, intense drama and startling violence, so immediately trotting it out as a point of comparison for “The Guard” seems unfair. But given how similar the stories are, it’s unfortunately inevitable.

Brendan Gleeson, the co-star of “In Bruges,” plays a mouthy Irish cop named Boyle, whose favorite extracurricular activities including wanton whoring and dropping acid. While investigating a nasty rash of killings in Ireland’s Connemara Gaeltacht, he’s paired up with Everett, a culture-shocked, by-the-book FBI agent played by Don Cheadle.

Together, they find the murders to be related to a drug-running operation. This standard odd-couple buddy-cop premise seems formulaic on the surface, but it practically plays as a companion piece to “In Bruges,” given the dynamic between Gleeson and Cheadle. It’s like “In Bruges” on the right side of the law.

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I am forecasting a coronation for Slumdog Millionaire (Fox Searchlight) at Sunday’s Academy Awards. My final predictions call for Slumdog wins in 8 of the 9 categories it is competing in including Best Picture and Best Director: Danny Boyle. The only place I think it will fail is in the Sound Mixing category where The Dark Knight (Warner Bros) may trump it.

Slumdog Millionaire is about to win the Hollywood's Grand Prize

The “Battle Royale” of the night is Mickey Rouke from The Wrestler (Fox Searchlight) vs. Sean Penn in Milk (Focus) in the Best Actor category. There have been two ties in major categories in Academy Award history. The first was in 1932 when Frederic March in Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde shared Best Actor with Wallace Beery for The Champ. (March had one more vote, but in that era, any finish within 3 votes was rules a tie.) Then in 1968, Katherine Hepburn for The Lion In Winter and Barbara Streisand for Funny Girl tied for Best Actress. If there was any justice, Rourke and Penn would share the award. In any other year, either of them would be a lock. Forced to make a pick, I’m going with Rourke.

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There was not a great deal of drama surrounding this year’s British Academy of Film & Television Arts Awards, commonly known as the BAFTA Awards. Slumdog Millionaire (Fox Searchlight) is a movie with deep roots in the UK. Director Danny Boyle was born in Manchester, England, lead actor Dev Patel is the star of the popular British television series Skins, and the movie is a gigantic hit in the British Isles with an impressive $20.6M (US dollars) in box office for Pathe, since its release there on January 6.

BAFTA Winner Mickey Rourke

The two major uncertainties entering Sunday’s ceremony were whether Kate Winslet, twice-nominated for Best Actress, would split her own vote and miss out on her second BAFTA Award and who would prevail in the Sean Penn-Mickey Rourke battle for Best Actor. Aside from that, it seemed like a Slumdog sweep, and that’s exactly how it played out.

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