The 84th Annual Academy Awards

Jean Dujardin, The Artist, Weinstein Company, 2011.

So here we are. Tonight is the night. After an especially rich year in world cinema, all of the industry's quality and quantity films come banging at the gates for sublime validation. Will the Academy vote with their hearts or their copies of Variety hammering into their heads what is good and what is garbage. This year has an unusually ripe selection; in the best picture race alone, there are three spellbinding masterpieces, some of their creator's strongest work (Midnight in Paris, The Tree of Life, War Horse), three excellent films which shine in their creator's ouevres (The Artist, The Descendants and Hugo), one very good sports drama (Moneyball), as well as two of the worst best picture nominees ever; the insultingly simplistic The Help and the painfully bad Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close).

All of this only goes to show what a variegated year we have had.

The Oscar WILL go to:

Picture - The Artist
Director - Michel Hazanavicius "The Artist"
Actor - Jean Dujardin "The Artist"
Actress - Meryl Streep "The Iron Lady"
Supporting Actor - Christopher Plummer "Beginners"
Supporting Actress - Octavia Spenser "The Help"
Adapted Screenplay - The Descendants
Original Screenplay - The Artist
Cinematography - The Tree of Life
Art Direction - Hugo
Costume Design - Hugo
Film Editing - The Artist
Sound Mixing - Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Sound Editing - War Horse
Visual Effects - Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Makeup - The Iron Lady
Original Song - "Real in Rio" from Rio
Original Score - The Artist
Foreign Language Film - A Seperation (Iran)
Documentary Feature - If a Tree Falls
Animated Feature Film - Rango