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Twenty Bold Predictions on the 2011 Oscars* 1) The Artist will shock absolutely no one by winning Best Picture. It’s a silent movie and there are a lot of old heads in the Academy who will feel really good about themselves by carrying it to a Best Picture Oscar.
2) There will be a shocker in the Best Actor category. George Clooney already has an Oscar and people will not want to vote for the French guy who didn’t do any talking (Jean Dujardin). The vote will be split between Gary Oldman for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Brad Pitt for Moneyball. This leaves the winner as Demian Bichir, star of the little-seen Bicycle Thieves rip-off A Better Life.

3) Just kidding. Brad Pitt will win. And people will forget who Demian Bichir is approximately 5.83 seconds after the ceremony concludes.
4) With Albert Brooks somehow left off the ballot for his vicious criminal turn in Drive, Christopher Plummer (Beginners) will cruise to his first Oscar win. Meanwhile, one person will vote for the acting marvel that is Jonah Hill. That person will be blackballed from polite civilization.
5) There will be another wild vote split in the Best Actress category. People will not know who to vote for! “Do I vote for Viola Davis’s steely determination as a long-suffering maid in The Help?” “Or do I cast my ballot for the astonishing Margaret Thatcher mimicry Meryl Streep executed in The Iron Lady?” Voters will think long and hard about this quandary. They will suffer over the decision for weeks. What to do? Reward the accomplished character actor Davis or Streep, the unquestioned queen of the American cinema. They will weigh all the factors. And then they will give the award to My Week with Marilyn’s Michelle Williams because she has better breasts.
6) With Davis losing, the Best Supporting Actress statue will be given to The Help’s Octavia Spencer. Why? Because Hollywood screwed over black actors for so long, requiring them to play only pimps, drug-dealers and (wait…) maids, that now they feel duty-bound to give at least one person of color an Oscar every year.
7) Someone will wake up and realize that, if Melissa McCarthy can be nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Bridesmaids, Zach Galiafanakis probably should have gotten a Lifetime Achievement Award for The Hangover.
8) I will turn my TV off at least one time during the 84th Academy Awards ceremony: It will be when Oprah Winfrey receives her Honorary Oscar. Please! Spare me the plaudits for Ms. O, whose filmography, by the way, is about as worthy of recognition as Rodney Dangerfield’s.
9) Someone will realize how stupid it is to have nine nominees for Best Picture. First of all, they should have stayed with five. But if you are going to go with more, not sticking to a round number just seems asinine. If you can include sentimental claptrap like Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, you can surely find one more alsoran to take us to double digits.
10) Whoever made Cars 2 will put a contract out on Larry the Cable Guy for spoiling Pixar’s good will. Wow! They can’t make the cut and respective somethings called A Cat in Paris and Chico & Rita can? That movie must have been an absolute piece of garbage.
11) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 will win an Oscar for…something. Honestly, I have not seen one of these movies in its entirety, nor have I read the books, but the Academy will want to reward them for sticking around as long as they did. I mean, they even managed to turn the last book into two parts to milk their fans for even more money. Good job, Harry! If I were to go with my gut, I would say that their win will be in…hmmmm, Makeup. Whatever it looked like, it is probably good enough to outlast Glenn Close dressed up to look like a man and Meryl Streep dressed up to look like a woman who looks like a man.
12) The Tree of Life will win the award for Best Cinematography because it was probably the most beautiful film of the last 50 years (thinking maybe Lawrence of Arabia looked better). If it doesn’t win a) someone should be shot or b) The Artist will win and it will signal an awars-night landslide or c) War Horse will win because people just like to shower Steven Spielberg with awards in case he doesn’t have enough to decorate his 15 yachts.
13) Someone will look at the list of nominees for Best Costume Design and realize that there is a film directed by Madonna (W.E.) up for an Oscar. They will then immediately call the people at the Razzies and castigate them for hacking into the ballot box.
14) It doesn’t happen all the time, but the winner of the Best Picture Oscar usually sees its director pick up the Best Director prize. That will not happen this year. No way Michael Hazanavicius (The Artist) wins it when there is such incredibly legendary competition. So the award could go to Martin Scorsese (Hugo) for the second time, or Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris), which would also give him a set of Oscars. Still, something tells me the mood is right for something crazy to happen. As happened in 2002 with Roman Polanski and The Pianist, a great director will get his first Oscar as a sort of Lifetime Achievement Award. That’s right. Terrence Malick, it’s your year.
15) Malick will not show up to accept the award as he has seemingly not left his house for anything other than directing movies in 40 years.
16) Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory will win Best Documentary Feature. After going on stage to accept the award, the night will take a turn when one of the recently released and exonerated murder suspects strangles Nicolas Cage. For this crime, the trio will not receive jail time. They will receive an award for “positive contributions to American cinematic culture.”
17) The Foreign Language Film award will go to [redacted]. (I can’t give this info. It's a slam dunk and I don’t want to blow my chances to win the ballot competition we hold during our Oscar party.)
18) The Academy will rename the Music (Original Score) Oscar the John Williams Memorial trophy…and then decide to only give it to John Williams. Until he dies. At which point, they will give it to whatever demon spawn deems to show up to pick up his trophy. Seriously, two nominations for War Horse and The Adventures of Tintin. I don’t care if the two scores sound like Mozart threw them together during a break between operas. Spread the wealth around!
19) Annie Mumolo & Kristen Wiig, the writers of Bridesmaids, will pull off a slight upset, beating Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris for Best Screenplay. Why? Because the voters know that even if Allen were to win, he wouldn't show the f*ck up to receive his award. So why not hand it to someone who gives a damn?
20) Someone at my Oscar party will pull some nonsense out of their behind, getting both Short Film (Animated) and Short Film (Live Action) correct, leading them to defeat me in the ballot prediction competition. This person will then get kicked the f*ck out of my house and I will break something like a remote, a childrens' toy, or a slightly expensive piece of furniture.
*I reserve the right to change all of this stuff roughly five seconds after it's published. Labels: Academy Awards, Brad Pitt, Christopher Plummer, Gary Oldman, George Clooney, Hugo, Martin Scorsese, Meryl Streep, Michelle Williams, Octavia Spencer, Oscars, The Artist, Viola Davis, Woody Allen

