I’ve already said my piece about how very disappointed I am with this year’s crop of nominees. What’s more, I still haven’t forgiven the Academy for taking the cinematography award from The Tree of Life last year, or for unfairly denying David Fincher and The Social Network their due the year before that. I wish this could be the year when I ignore the awards race entirely, but even a lowly amateur film blogger like myself must hold himself to standards of some kind. For better or worse, the Academy Awards is the closest thing movie geeks have to a “championship game.” It’s arguably the biggest annual event in Hollywood, which means that I’d be remiss not to cover it.

And also, as much as I’m loathe to admit it, I’d be lying to say that I don’t get caught up in who wins and who loses. It’s an old established rule that horse races are only truly addictive when you have a horse to bet on. As someone who’s seen almost all of the Oscar-nominated films this year, you’d better believe I have some horses to bet on.

Today, I’ll be combing through expert opinions and drawing up a set of Oscar predictions so you won’t have to. Of course, there’s a wrinkle this year: Traditionally, Oscar forecasters would be wise to start their final list by looking at the Director’s Guild Awards. Whoever wins top honors at the DGAs will take home Best Director, and the picture that wins Best Director will win Best Picture. Nine times out of ten, that’s how it goes. This year, however, is guaranteed to be that one time when it doesn’t work, since the DGA’s big winner (Ben Affleck) wasn’t even nominated for Best Director. Call it another sign of the Oscars’ growing irrelevance, but that’s a story for another time.

The point is that this is an unusual situation, but I’m going to try my best anyway. I’ve done this twice before and correctly guessed roughly two out of three awards both times. Hopefully, this will be the year I get three out of four. Fingers crossed.

For those of you who are relatively new to the blog, here’s how it works: I put my predictions down in black text with minimal commentary a week before the actual ceremony. On the night of February 24th, I’ll be live-blogging the results and my commentary in red text. When all is said and done, there will be three movies listed for each category: The one that should win, the one that will win, and the one that actually did win.

Here goes nothing:

Best Picture:

Should Win: Beasts of the Southern Wild

Will Win: Argo

 

Best Director:

Should Win: Benh Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild

Will Win: Steven Spielberg, Lincoln

 

Best Actor:

Should Win: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln

Will Win: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln

 

Best Actress:

Should Win: Quvenzhane Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild

Will Win: Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook

 

Best Supporting Actor:

Should Win: Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master

Will Win: Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln

 

Best Supporting Actress:

Should Win: Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables

Will Win: Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables

 

Best Original Screenplay:

Should Win: Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola, Moonrise Kingdom

Will Win: Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained

 

Best Adapted Screenplay:

Should Win: Chris Terrio, Argo

Will Win: Tony Kushner, Lincoln

 

Best Animated Feature:

Should Win: ParaNorman

Will Win: Wreck-It Ralph

 

Best Foreign Language Film:

Should Win: No preference

Will Win: Amour

 

Best Documentary Feature:

Should Win: Searching for Sugar Man

Will Win: Searching for Sugar Man

 

Best Production Design:

Should Win: Hugh Bateup & Uli Hanisch, Cloud Atlas

Will Win: Sarah Greenwood & Katie Spencer, Anna Karenina

 

Best Cinematography:

Should Win: Roger Deakins, Skyfall

Will Win: Claudio Miranda, Life of Pi

 

Best Costume Design:

Should Win: Eiko Ishioka, Mirror Mirror

Will Win: Jacqueline Durran, Anna Karenina

 

Best Film Editing:

Should Win: Dylan Tichenor and William Goldenberg, Zero Dark Thirty

Will Win: William Goldenberg, Argo

 

Best Makeup:

Should Win: Peter Swords King, Rick Findlater and Tami Lane, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Will Win: Peter Swords King, Rick Findlater and Tami Lane, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

 

Best Score:

Should Win: Alexandre Desplat, Argo

Will Win: Mychael Danna, Life of Pi

 

Best Original Song:

Should Win: Adele, “Skyfall”

Will Win: Adele, “Skyfall”

 

Best Sound Editing:

Should Win: Eugene Gearty and Philip Stockton, Life of Pi

Will Win: Paul N.J. Ottoson, Zero Dark Thirty

 

Best Sound Mixing:

Should Win: Andy Nelson, Mark Paterson and Simon Hayes, Les Miserables

Will Win: Andy Nelson, Mark Paterson and Simon Hayes, Les Miserables

 

Best Visual Effects:

Should Win: Richard Stammers, Trevor Wood, Charley Henley and Martin Hill, Prometheus

Will Win: Bill Westenhofer, Guillaume Rocheron, Erik-Jan De Boer and Donald R. Elliott, Life of Pi

 

Best Animated Short:

Should Win: No preference

Will Win: Paperman

 

Best Documentary Short:

Should Win: No preference

Will Win: Open Heart

 

Best Live Action Short:

Should Win: No preference

Will Win: Curfew

***

Thanks for reading. I hope to see you back at my home blog on Oscar night. Until then, good luck with your betting pool!

For more Movie Curiosities, check out my blog. I’m also on Facebook and Twitter.