Oscar Picks His Nose

The title pretty much sums it up.

My feelings toward this year's Academy Awards amounts to Much Ado About Nada. It is basically an uninteresting selection of nominees. Once the academy upped the number of Best Picture contenders, the scramble went on to fit ten slots. This year, it's down to nine since they got screwed by a weak entry from Pixar. (I should note that, as of this writing, I've only seen two of the nine nominees. That's a moot point since this is all based on my expert analysis. Ahem.)

Therefore, since I don't have a dog in any of the fights, I'm just going to sit back and try to enjoy the show, a tall order indeed. (Hey, is James Franco going to be a presenter?) If Billy Crystal pulls it off this time around, he will be the undisputed champion of Oscar hosts.

So for better, nah, for worse, here are my best guesses for the winner on Feb. 26, 2012:

The Artist wins: Picture, Actor, Director, Screenplay and Score. (No screenplay award for Midnight in Paris. Woody is still seen as a New York filmmaker no matter where he makes his movies)

Hugo wins in most technical categories: Cinematography, Art Direction, Costume Design, Visual effects, Sound Mixing and Sound Editing.

The Help: Actress and Supporting Actress.

Beginners: Supporting Actor. (though it was worthy of a best picture nom in this weak group and the unsung Mary Page Keller for supporting actress)

The Descendants: Adapted screenplay (good movie. payne is incapable of making a bad film, just not up to his previous work)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: Film editing (longshot I'll go with since David Finscher's films are some of the best edited out there)

A Separation: Foreign language film

Rango: Animated feature

Paradise Lost 3: Documentary

Man or Muppet: Song (Two nominees and neither one gets a performance. Granted, this is usually the weakest part of the show, but this is an insult)

Harry Potter and the Long-Ass Title Part Two: Makeup (throw it a bone, for muggle's sake!)

The Barber of Birmingham: Doc short

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore: Animated short

The Shore: Live action short

By the end of Sunday night, we'll see how well I fared this year. Then I'll just switch over to The Walking Dead. We'll see which show has more zombies.