Guessing games are more fun than sure things, and last night the awards handed out by the Screen Actors Guild added some fun uncertainty to the Oscar race.

When Meryl Streep won best actress for “Doubt,” she said she was so surprised that she hadn’t even bought a dress for the occasion. The Oscar competition in that category now looks like a three-way race betwen Streep, Anne Hathway in “Rachel Getting Married” and Kate Winslet in “The Reader.” (As in the Golden Globes, Winslet won again in the SUPPORTING actress category.)

And Sean Penn’s win for “Milk” stopped the premature awarding of the belt to Mickey Rourke for “The Wrestler.”

So although the late Heath Ledger is still an Oscar lock in the best supporting actor category, i hope people will tune in for the toss-ups (and I hope that the producers are smart enough to save Ledger’s category for the last 15 minutes of the telecast).

By the way, I just found out that my friend Adam Kamil was Penn’s stand-in during the San Francisco shoot of “Milk. ” (See photo of Adam dressed as Penn-dressed-as-Milk, below). Adam worked his way up from the role of a lowly extra. So all you civilians who lined up to be extras in the George Clooney movie, think positive.

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