My picks...

Best picture

“War Horse”
“The Artist”
“Midnight in Paris”
“Moneyball”
“The Descendants”
“The Tree of Life”
“The Help”
“Hugo”
“Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close”

Best supporting actress

Berenice Bejo, “The Artist”
Jessica Chastain, “The Help”
Melissa McCarthy, “Bridesmaids”
Janet McTeer, “Albert Nobbs”
Octavia Spencer, “The Help”

Best supporting actor

Kenneth Branagh, “My Week With Marilyn”
Jonah Hill, “Moneyball”
Christopher Plummer, “Beginners”
Nick Nolte, “Warrior”
Max von Sydow, “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close”

Best actress

Glenn Close, “Albert Nobbs”
Viola Davis, “The Help”
Rooney Mara, “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”
Meryl Streep, “The Iron Lady”
Michelle Williams, “My Week With Marilyn”

Best actor

Demian Bachir, “A Better Life”
George Clooney, “The Descendants”
Jean Dujardin, “The Artist”
Gary Oldman, “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”
Brad Pitt, “Moneyball”

Best director

Michel Hazanavicius, “The Artist”
Alexander Payne, “The Descendants”
Martin Scorsese, “Hugo”
Terrence Malick, “Tree of Life”
Woody Allen, “Midnight in Paris”

Best original screenplay

“The Artist”
“Bridesmaids”
“Margin Call”
“Midnight in Paris”
“A Separation”

Best adapted screenplay

“The Descendants”
“Hugo”
“The Ides of March”
“Moneyball”
“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”

They would be nuts to give The Oscar to Tree of Life. If they want to go that direction they should think about Hugo or The Artist, which I don't think are that mainstream accessible, either. Most people in the industry would probably count Hugo and The Artist among their favorite movies of the year, I would imagine. I'm at a very particular spot in my career where Hugo was a particularly emotional watch, surprisingly so for me.

Tree of Life made $13 million, which is even worse than The Hurt Locker. The Oscars are Hollywood's way of patting themselves on the back in front of a huge TV audience. I just can't see them giving The Oscar to a movie that made so little money.

I think Hugo was an amazing adaptation, everything an adaptation should be, although I never read the book. Sorkin probably won't win for Moneyball after winning for The Social Network, last year. So, I really hope Hugo wins that category. I also think The Artist was an absolutely amazing screenplay. As a nearly silent film, the story pulls you in amazingly by the end of the first third of the movie. It was as good of an experience at a movie theater as I can remember (I don't see a lot of movies in the theater).

If Hill wins in that category, he should print up business cards that list the nominees names (without movie titles), bold himself as winner, and hand them out. It would be that big of an upset, and a career achievement for him that he would never have imagined, and would be impossible to match.

Because of how poorly all of the movies have done at the box office (The Help is the box office winner by a mile), I think this is a particularly hard year to pick. There are no "sexy" picks, unless you consider The Help to be a sexy pick. There wouldn't be a public outcry about it winning, because a lot of people saw it (I didn't), but I just really don't think it will happen.

Thinking about it now, I thought the last Potter book was good enough to get a Best Picture nomination if executed well. Unfortunately, David Yates evidently has no real emotional center, and ruined most of the best scenes in the book. Everything he did in the movies seemed so anti-climactic, to me. It was like a dead person directed those.

I think the "safest" big movie pick is Hugo, but that movie is also kind of a Hollywood wet dream. There were some definite cringeworthy moments, where I felt it was really talking down to the audience when explaining some of the history. It's made more money than a lot of the nominees made, and it proves that Scorsese isn't a sociopath...lol. The secondary pick I'd go for (also didn't see) is Midnight in Paris. I would be extraordinarily happy if The Artist wins for BP, but it's too huge of a risk for them. They'll get rewarded elsewhere. I also don't think BP/Director are as attached these days as you think. Generally, whoever wins the DGA Director Award is considered the frontrunner, and I think wins more often than not.

Yeah, it's pretty interesting that the numbers didn't really shake out the way I thought they would (it was the last piece of research I put in). I was thinking about considering the host (Crystal killed it nearly every time he hosted), but the only numbers that I think were really affected by the host was the Steve Martin year. Goldberg's numbers didn't really fluctuate that much.

The best years for movies that a lot of people saw were:

1. 1998 (Titanic)
2. 2001 (Gladiator)
3. 2004 (Return of the King)
4. 2005 (Million Dollar Baby)
5. 2000 (American Beauty)
6. 2011 (The King's Speech, since it's 10 movies I don't know where to rank this, but 7 of 10 crossed the threshold, maybe it belongs above 2000)

Except for last year, all of those were the highest rated telecasts since 1996.

People, Hill is not winning supporting actor. That Oscar has Christopher Plummer written as clear as day. Plummer is a veteran who has been doing roles in Hollywood for 50 years. He was the ****ing father in Sound of Music. This year he is nominated for coming out as an old gay man. That is the definition of Oscar gold.

heh....first time I've indirectly contributed to a meme

this plus a million. The only thing that may slow the Plummer train is that they may want to give Nolte a career Oscar, instead.

That's why I said this.

I hope the Academy agrees, I was one of the editors on that one.

Congrats, man! Is that your first Oscar nomination?

although the last few years were awful, and prolly worse,
it looks like he has done just that.

I'll say both 2010 and 2009 were worse. But after that I have to go all the way back to 1995, which still beats 2011. 1992, 1991, 1989, 1983, 1981 are a bit weak. Pre 1981 it looks like every year will beat 2011, the weakest years being '63, '60, '55.

I used this for reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy..._Picture#2010s

and didn't really bother to look at what other non BP nominated movies were made durring those years. But just from skimming I see many are omitted (Kubrick, Cassavetes, foreign). The last three years, in my opinion, are amongst the worst ever. I think the AFI nominated list for top 100 movies of all time, consisting of 400 films, is a much better list to work off of than the Academy Aaward BP nominees. http://www.travelin-tigers.com/zfilms/afi400y1.htm It only goes till 1996

I wonder how much nominating HP7.2 would have boosted the ratings. I believe it was over 95% on RT, near universal acclaim, boffo box office. Certainly more deserving than the Hanks tripe.

Not me, my two supervisors, but I was on the crew.

That is still an outstanding accomplishment. Are you a freelancer?

I really think the final HPs were hurt by being split into two movies. I thought, on its own, HP7 P2 was a really good movie, but it was a major step down from the book, in my opinion (major issues I had were Dobby at the end of P1, the casual treatment of big deaths, Neville's treatment, and Snape's backstory). I'm not sure if those differences played into its lack of a BP nomination, but it might have.

If it had been nominated, there certainly would have been some kind of ratings bump, but I don't think it would have changed the world in relation to ratings. After all, it really is a foreign film, and I don't think the Academy wants to get into the habit of letting mostly foreign films be major nominations in the Best Picture category. I also think it would have had a better chance at a nom, if it had been released in November (November, 2010 was the original finish date of the franchise, but it got pushed about 8 months somewhere along the way).

Sure it was a foreign film, but didn't it lead the domestic box office? Still, good points.

It totally did. Interestingly, it didn't get a BAFTA nomination either, even though there are only 5 nominees. If they had 10 nominees, I'm sure HP7 P2 would have been up for it. The only big box office movies that I think could fit the blockbuster mold from last year (to appease the fans) were Sherlock Holmes and Rise of the Planet of the Apes (didn't see either, yet), which both had British directors. MI4 would have been blatant audience pandering, so I couldn't see that happening.

More interesting is that I think The Oscars like to blow things up every 5 years or so, just for funz, to see what happens to the ratings maybe.

That's awesome! My favorite movie of the year. What was it like working on it?

WHen you break it down, HP 7.1/7.2 was a cash grab and nothing more. They could have made the final HP a 140-150 minute film. I enjoyed them all but couldn't help but feel 7.1 was merely filler to setup the finale. 7.1 could have been accomplished in an hour or less. A great closure to the franchise, but hardly Best Picture worthy.

Cro, I think that was part of the problem, for sure. I don't there's any universe where Warners would have put out a 3 hour and 20 minute Potter, which would have been about right, based on the book, I think. So, they had to break it somewhere, and put in a lot more of the book material than they probably wanted. I didn't read the other books before seeing the movies, but I couldn't wait 2 years after Harry Potter 6 to find out what happened. As I said, I thought it was a very good movie, and that it could have been BP material had the source material been executed properly (I didn't have a lot of confidence in Yates' ability to do that, to be honest). I felt the movie was only about 60-65 percent as good as the book.

If anything, I think Rowling was pretty brilliant with how she constructed the final book. It was clear that she was trying to drive the movie making process with it (maybe it was her form of venting?). I kept reading certain things in the story and thinking it would be a $400 or $500 million budgeted movie if it were one movie, and if it were done similar to the way she did the book. Instead, I think they made a $150 million movie (it's been awhile so I can't remember how much screen value there was) and probably a $210 million movie, which helped them feel like they were better controlling their costs. Even though the movie had great visual effects overall, I think the vision was realized a lot differently than in the book (especially the whole grail sequence, which I saw completely differently in my head, and on a much more enormous scale). I think they actually invented a process for what they did with the grails (the popcorn effect), if I remember correctly.

It was very cool, great vibe. It's always fun working on a project that is doing a totally different style than what you'd expect. We got to try a lot of auditory things that you wouldn't really be able to do in a more straight forward film. It's great it became such a sleeper hit, hope that helps our chances.

Also, in a lot of scenes it was the lack of or minimal sound that was so great.

hugo was terrible

drive was terrible

Cool starry bra! Thanks for contributing