Here are my latest predictions for who’ll get nominated in the eight main Oscar races on Feb. 2. My Best Picture picks are immediately below; the other seven categories are after the jump.
Best Picture
Avatar
District 9
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Invictus
Precious
Star Trek
Up
Up in the Air
Oh, how much easier this would be if there were only five Best Picture nominees this year: It’d be Up in the Air (which won the National Board of Review prize), The Hurt Locker (winner of the Producers Guild, Directors Guild, and Broadcast Film Critics awards), Golden Globe and box-office champ Avatar, film-festival winner Precious, and SAG Award victor Inglourious Basterds and we’d call it a day. It’s those other five slots that are tougher to suss out. An Education has strong support from actors (witness its SAG nod for best cast) and across-the-pond voters. Invictus has the necessary prestige to make the cut, while Best Animated Feature front-runner Up should manage to break out of the cartoon ghetto. If voters want to go the populist route, the top contender is the adult romance It’s Complicated. But since it’s the No. 1 and No. 2 votes on the Academy’s ranked ballots that truly count, films with a smaller cult of enthusiastic followers—think District 9 and Star Trek—is poised to become a spoiler. Which means the flashy, filled-with-Oscar-faves musical Nine may fall victim to its nasty reviews and lackluster box office. I’m also increasingly worried for the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man, which seems to be fading a bit. As for Golden Globe winner The Hangover, it’s now an outside contender for one of the 10 slots but by no means a sure thing.
Check out the rest of my predictions after the jump.
Only two men in Oscar history have ever received acting nominations for two different performances in the same year: Al Pacino (for 1992′s Scent of a Woman and Glengarry Glen Ross) and Jamie Foxx (for 2004′s Ray and Collateral). Though I don’t expect anyone to join that list this year, I do find it funny that good buddies George Clooney and Matt Damon are competing against each other in this season’s Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor categories. In the lead race, Clooney headlines Up in the Air with a quintessential star turn, while Damon shows off his droll comedy stylings in The Informant! And in the supporting contest, there’s Clooney’s goofball performance in The Men Who Stare At Goats, while Damon gets serious as a South African rugby player in Invictus. I’ve only seen three of these four performances, but my hunch is that Clooney’s stronger shot is for Best Actor while Damon seems a better bet for Best Supporting Actor. But that doesn’t mean a little trash-talking isn’t in order. Back in Toronto, Damon told me how he plans to take down his pal as the awards season progresses.
Earlier this week I posted about 
There’s only one film opening this weekend with any awards chances to talk about: The Coen brothers’ latest quirkfest, A Serious Man. Their last two films either won Best Picture (No Country for Old Men) or at least managed a Best Comedy nod from the Golden Globes (Burn After Reading); this one will probably fall in the middle somewhere.
