Oscars 2010: My Predictions

Right now, though, we don't even know who's been nominated. At this very moment, nominations are being counted for their announcement on Tuesday. Here are my predictions for the nominees and winners for this year's Academy Awards.

Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker has been taking most of the big critics circles' Best Picture awards, but the recent Golden Globes Best Picture win for Avatar showed that the Iraq War thriller's place isn't solid. I don't agree with the judgement - it's not that James Cameron's sci-fi epic is a bad film, it's just that The Hurt Locker was the best of the category. I only hope those unpredictable Oscar voters share my view.

That Cameron won Best Director at the Golden Globes, however, wasn't as much of a disappointment. Out of the nominees, Cameron was probably the most deserving winner for the effort he put into Avatar's creation and for what he achieved on the film, pushing the envelope for effects alone. Plus he's been working on the damned thing since 1994, he deserves something to show for it.

This year, the number of nominees for Best Picture has been increased from five to ten, and undoubted to be featured in those ten are some definite contenders - The Hurt Locker, Avatar, Precious, Inglourious Basterds and Up In The Air have been either nominated or won awards in all the major events lately, so they are dead certs.

There have also been calls for Up to join them in the list - personally, I didn't think it was the best Pixar had to offer and should remain, like all animated films, in the Best Animated category anyway. The only reason it should be taken out would be to give the year's other animated efforts a chance for a change - Pixar has had a slightly unfair dictatorship over the category for years.

Thanks to The Hangover's surprise Golden Globes win for Best Picture (Musical or Comedy), it could also see a (in my opinion deserved) nomination. Still, The Hangover, or any other comedy for that matter, will perhaps not feature in the Best Picture category, as those DEADLY SERIOUS Academy voters do their best to pick out the films with the heaviest subject matter in favour of those that are any fun.

Take a look at last year's Best Picture nominees: poverty weepie Slumdog Millionaire, holocaust drama The Reader, murdered-politician biopic Milk, the recreation of a political interview in Frost/Nixon and the depressing Brad Pitt-ageing-backwards historical epic Benjamin Button. Not one of them will make you laugh. It's rare to see a comedy even nominated, never mind win. Still, the Academy is going to have to fill up all ten places somehow, and there are only so many stern films out there released in 2009.

Of those other films that may be showing their faces in the Best Picture category, it seems that former sure-fire nominee Nine, after some extremely negative reviews and poor box office, will probably only get a nomination by default at best while the Coen brothers' A Serious Man should feature - the Coens have been golden in the eyes of Hollywood since No Country For Old Men.

Aside from those, the other possibilities include The Lovely Bones, Clint Eastwood's Invictus (because it's Clint and it's a biopic, so why wouldn't it be nominated) and A Single Man.

I'm also rooting for (500) Days Of Summer to get one of the Best Picture nominations - it was nominated for Best Picture (Musical or Comedy) at the Globes, was a surprise critical and box office hit last year and would fill the Academy's yearly quota to include an indie comedy/drama (e.g. Juno, Little Miss Sunshine) in their Best Picture noms.

In the acting stakes, Jeff Bridges looks like he will finally win the Best Actor Oscar after four previous nominations and a lifetime of being one of the coolest men to walk the Earth. Despite being the firm favourite, though, he has competition from George Clooney and Colin Firth, who apparently gives the best performance of his life in A Single Man, which isn't hard considering every other performance in his career has been exactly the same. I hope we don't see a repeat of last year's debacle when a never-better Mickey Rourke was beaten by Sean Penn - just give Bridges what he deserves and get out, Academy voters.

Fighting for Best Actress, Gabourey Sidibe from Precious will undoubtedly face-off against Oscar-munching behemoth Meryl Streep, who we'll definitely see turning up for her yearly nomination. I'll be rooting for Carey Mulligan to beat Streep (it's not like she needs another) for her tremendous performance in An Education.

The Best Supporting Actor category is perhaps this year's easiest to predict - critics have been talking up Christoph Waltz's performance in Inglourious Basterds for an Oscar since the film screened at Cannes in March last year. Regardless, I hope to see a pair of deserved nominations for The Messenger's Woody Harrelson and for Jake Gyllenhaal giving his best performance yet in Brothers.

The nominations for Best Director, the second biggest award of the night, should see some star names included.

James Cameron will, of course, be nominated for Avatar, with Clint Eastwood certain to get what now seems his obligatory-nod for Invictus and Cameron's former wife, Kathryn Bigelow, up for The Hurt Locker (that'll be an awkward after-party).

Jason Reitman will also likely see a nomination (for Up In The Air), with motor-mouthed movie nerd Quentin Tarantino rounding off the nominations in the category (for Inglourious Basterds). Although Tarantino is probably the most unique and individual auteur working in Hollywood today, until he makes a melodrama or biopic minus his usual violence or confusing structure, he will likely go the way of Scorsese and receive a pity Oscar at the end of his career for lesser work. No big deal - like Hitchcock, Kubrick and Altman, Tarantino doesn't need awards recognition in order to go down in cinema history.

No, it's safe to assume that the Academy will, as usual, favour a director of more worthy material - the two most obvious choices, then, are Clint and Bigelow. Clint has already won before, however (four times, as a matter of fact), and Bigelow has two major reasons to be leaving clutching Oscar gold - firstly, The Hurt Locker was probably the most critically-acclaimed American film of last year and, secondly, was a drama that finally, finally, successfully addressed the hottest topic in America right now: the Iraq War.

A final mention must go to the Best Foreign Film category - although I am assured Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon is a great piece of work, I can only hope that the Academy hand their award to A Prophet, France's official entry to the competition. As good as The White Ribbon may be, master filmmaker Haneke needs no further recognition and A Prophet is, quite simply, a crime masterpiece and one of the best foreign films ever made.

See the trailer for The Hurt Locker, my favourite to win the Best Picture Oscar, below.