Very important thoughts on very important matters.

Opinions for you to merciless judge tomorrow morning:

Bold = will win
Italics = should win

Best Live Action Short Film

33% Tuba Atlantic
27% The Shore
20% Raju
5% Time Freak
5% Pentecost

Oscar shorts tend to come in two varieties: set-ups for single punch lines (Time Freak and Pentecost) or didactic narratives aimed at the afternoon special crowd (Raju). For whatever reason, the winner has trended towards the left-field candidate in the past few years. Thus even though The Shore has star wattage (Ciarán Hinds) and a unusually restrained emotional palette for a short, I'll bet Oscar voters remembered the off-kilter Tube Atlantic at the ballot box.

Best Animated Short Film

30% The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
25% La Luna
15% Dimanche
15% A Morning Stroll
15% Wild Life

I skipped the Animated Shorts this time around as they couldn't secure the rights for all of the nominees this year around (thanks Pixar!) so I am going to take an educated guess and pick The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore as it was a free download on iTunes. Clearly some secretive SuperPAC is running its Oscar campaign. Or it will just be the Pixar one. I couldn't tell you because Pixar clearly thought that adding its Animate Short to the iTunes collection would hurt box office receipts for its next big tent pole project. Clearly.

Best Foreign Language Film

33% In Darkness (Poland)
30% A Separation (Iran)
20% Monsieur Lazhar (Canada)
16% Footnote (Israel)
1% Bullhead (Belgium)

The Best Foreign Language Film winner is always a disappointment. In a Better World over Incendies? The Secret In Their Eyes beating out A Prophet AND The White Ribbon? Don't even get me started on Departures. So even though A Separation is morally challenging, thematically dense, and narratively complex - and thus better than just about every single Best Picture nominee - the Oscar is probably going to the Holocaust film (which I haven't seen mind you). Monsieur Lazhar has an outside chance in that its sophomoric message is most similar to last year's winner. Footnote is a delightful crowd pleaser that could have been a frontrunner until it got capsized by its languid third act. Bullhead has no chance of winning: it is the only movie I have ever seen that has actually made me physically nauseous. I can only imagine how Academy votes reacted.

Best Supporting Actor

70% Christopher Plummer (Beginners)
20% Max von Sydow (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)
5% Kenneth Branagh (My Week with Marilyn)
3% Nick Nolte (Warrior)
2% Jonah Hill (Moneyball)

An embarrassment of riches. All five nominees were outstanding… well, at the very least I assume Max Von Sydow was too but you couldn't pay me to see this year's Oscar pariah. Plummer will win the lifetime achievement award that the Academy is so fond of (and I can't imagine two Oscars going to silent protagonists in one year) but I think I found more delight in watching Hill playing against type and Branagh relishing the opportunity to play his dramatic idol. Then again, I am a sucker for Branagh.

Best Supporting Actress

64% Octavia Spencer (The Help)
25% Bérénice Bejo (The Artist)
5% Melissa McCarthy (Bridesmaids)
5% Janet McTeer (Albert Nobbs)
1% Jessica Chastain (The Help)

Comedic performances have become increasingly shortchanged by the academy. It seems like decades ago… okay, I guess it was two decades ago that Marisa Tomei and Jack Palance won for such illustrious films as My Cousin Vinny and City Slickers. Not that I favor the Golden Globes award dichotomy but it is a shame that roles now need the requisite pathos to get more than the token honorable mention.

Best Actor

50% Jean Dujardin (The Artist)
40% George Clooney (The Descendants)
5% Gary Oldman (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy)
3% Brad Pitt (Moneyball)
2% Demián Bichir (A Better Life)

I think the press is making this out to be more of a horse race than it actually is. Unless the ghost of Roberto Benigni still haunts the academy, Dujardin has to win because The Artist is inconceivable without him. I love Clooney but I found nothing particularly revelatory about his performance in The Descendants. And the only person who mugs for the camera better than him is Dujardin.

Best Actress

40% Viola Davis (The Help)
35% Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady)
15% Glenn Close (Albert Nobbs)
5% Rooney Mara (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo)
5% Michelle Williams (My Week with Marilyn)

I can't comment too much on this category because I skipped out on Albert Nobbs and The Iron Lady, two movies that seem to exist only for their lead actresses. Viola Davis is the frontrunner here but you can never rule out Meryl Streep.

Best Director

70% Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist)
15% Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life)
10% Alexander Payne (The Descendants)
4% Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris)
1% Martin Scorsese (Hugo)

The only intrigue to emerge from this category is whether or not Malick and Allen will be in attendance. I actually think Scorsese did the best directing job with Hugo but he won not too far back and do you honestly believe that the Academy would deign to award a kid's movie?

Best Picture

The Artist - 50%
The Help - 20%
The Descendants - 15%
Midnight in Paris - 5%
Hugo - 4%
The Tree of Life - 3%
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - 2%
Moneyball - .99%
War Horse - .01%

Any movie that didn't receive a Best Director nod is dead in the water -- with The Help being the obvious exception. Maybe I am just being purposefully contrarian but there is no way The Descendants could possibly be in first, let alone second place. Do you know anybody who actually loved this movie? It is the Mitt Romney of Best Picture nominees: unloved and begrudgingly voted for (which I goes makes The Tree of Life Ron Paul). The Help at least has middlebrow precedents in Driving Miss Daisy and Crash, particularly if The Artist's long standing frontrunner status has curdled academy support.

I understand that The Artist is a Weinstein production and thus immediately presumed to be Oscar-bait but let's take a levelheaded view: It is in black and white. It is silent. The main actors are unknowns to American audiences. It is French. The team behind it is most notable for a series of James Bond spoofs. This would be like Mel Brooks winning the Oscar for Silent Movie.