Just under the wire, here are my predictions for this year. I skip most technical categories and any category where I’ve seen less than 2/3 of the films (I was bad with foreign films this year and only saw two of the five nominees).

Actor in a leading role

Who should win: Colin Firth
Who will win: Colin Firth

Actor in a supporting role

Who should win: Geoffrey Rush
Who will win: Geoffrey Rush

A win for Bale would be great since he was equally excellent, but tie goes to the better film.

Actress in a leading role

Who should win: Natalie Portman
Who will win: Natalie Portman

To quote myself from elsewhere: She went down the “How to Win An Oscar” list and checked every box. Lost an unhealthy amount of weight for the role? Check. Straight actor doing same-sex love scenes? Check. Commenting on a comfortably damnable subject? Check.

Actress in a supporting role

Who should win: Hailee Steinfeld
Who will win: Hailee Steinfeld

There were some very weak contenders in this category. Steinfeld is the only sane choice.

Best motion picture of the year

Who should win: Black Swan, True Grit or The Social Network
Who will win: The King’s Speech

Anything but Inception will do, really.

Achievement in directing

Who should win: Tom Hooper or Darren Aronofsky
Who will win: Tom Hooper

Sometimes, precision and reserve can win the day. The lack of a nomination for Nolan seems to indicate that the Academy is feeling that way this year.

Adapted screenplay

Who should win: The Social Network
Who will win: The Social Network

Honestly… they made a movie about a website gripping and intense.

Original screenplay

Who should win: The Kids Are All Right
Who will win: Inception

I just have a bad feeling about this one. I hope I’m wrong.

Best documentary feature

Who should win: Exit Through the Giftshop
Who will win: Inside Job

EXtG was amazing. A Banksy acceptance speech would be potentially mind-blowing. But Inside Job lets Hollywood think it’s super-duper-important, so it’s got a leg up there.

Best animated feature film

Who should win: How to Train Your Dragon
Who will win: Toy Story 3

Not a great showing this year for this category. Toy Story 3 was deeply mediocre, especially by Pixar standards. HtTYD was at least wacky fun.

Achievement in art direction

Who should win: Inception
Who will win: Inception

I think Inception will pick up a lot of the more technical awards and get snubbed in all of the major categories.

Achievement in cinematography

Who should win: Black Swan of The King’s Speech
Who will win: Inception

People seem to think that CGI, slo-mo and practical gags Kubrick pioneered in the 70s are a revolutionary visual styling.

Achievement in costume design

Who should win: True Grit
Who will win: The Tempest

Not much thought going into this one. Alice in Wonderland shouldn’t win because it was pure CGI rubbish. The Tempest has Shakespeare on its side and sometimes that seems to help. True Grit had cowboys and I like cowboys. Meh.

Achievement in film editing

Who should win: Black Swan
Who will win: Black Swan

That movie scared the bejeezus out of me. Mostly due to its editing.

Spoiler-free review:

Inception is a very good film. If you’re one of the handful of people who haven’t seen it yet, you should make time to do so. It’s well-acted, tightly-directed and provides a story that unfolds in a generally satisfying way. Its most successful moments are almost entirely visual and those portions of the film are truly unique and compelling and make it a worthy effort entirely on their own.

That being said, I found its core philosophical and narrative challenges to be rather uninspired and some of the story’s choices (particularly near the end) were disappointingly shallow. Inception is a movie defined by new vistas, but not new ideas.

In my view, it exists on the film spectrum occupied on one end by The Matrix and on the other by Dark City. In fact, it felt very much like a movie that has been written and re-written numerous times in the shadow of those earlier films. The result is a partial success – it is better than The Matrix and not as good as Dark City.

Spoilers follow from this point forward:

Consider this your obligatory spoiler warning.  Proceed at your own risk.

This amuses me (play them simultaneously – the sound isn’t really important):

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