Academy Awards Winners & Losers

It's no Fantasy Baseball, but the tradition of trying to game the Academy Awards is alive and well. As we pore over our ballots, trying yet again to figure out what exactly is the difference between sound editing and sound mixing, perhaps there's also a way to play this Hollywood spectacular in the stock market.

Clearly, the movie houses with nominated films have a lot at stake. Warner Bros., a division of Time Warner(TWX Quote), is a co-producer of top-film nominee The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, along with Viacom's(VIA.B Quote) Paramount Pictures division. NBC Universal, a subsidiary of General Electric(GE Quote), is up for best picture with Frost/Nixon, produced by its Universal Studios arm, as well as Milk, produced by its Focus Features division. Disney's(DIS Quote) got Wall*E in the top-animated-film category, and DreamWorks(DWA Quote) has Kung Fu Panda. Even News Corp.(NWS.A Quote) is in on the action with a best costume design nod for Australia, produced by Twentieth Century Fox.

But let's look outside the obvious. After all, the winning Oscar ballot is often determined by that dark-horse play, notably 1999's Best Picture upset by Shakespeare in Love over assumed shoe-in Saving Private Ryan and Roman Polanski's 2003 surprise Best Director triumph for The Piano.

Up for Best Picture this year is Milk, the story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California. Dean Foods(DF Quote), one of the country's top milk companies, closed down a penny on Friday at $19.85. And you can't have milk without cookies; Kraft(KFT Quote), which makes the oh-so-dippable Oreo, closed down 82 cents, or 3.4%, at $23.51, hitting a new 52-week low of $23.28 earlier in the day....