Best Animated: 

-Wreck-It Ralph was by far the best animated movie this past year and I think it will be recognized as such on Oscar Sunday. It’s a unique, thoughtful, engaging combination of two often underappreciated art forms—animated film and video games. If there is an upset, I have a suspicion it will be Frankenweenie. No award for Pixar this year. – MB

–Brave. It’s Pixar. Deal with it Paranorman.- JL

Best Picture:

–Lincoln. Argo has been steamrolling through awards seasons, but the odds simply aren’t in favor of a Best Picture winner without a Best Director nomination; Driving Miss Daisy (1989) is the last to do it.- TB

– NO PICK. This has been the first year where there’s really no standout winner. Personally I don’t think anyone in the batch is better than Beasts of the Southern Wild. If I have to take a stab, Argo will probably catch this one despite failing to garner a nom for Best Director. Spielberg is always a contender, and the liberal nature of Hollywood (be it good or bad) also suggests Zero Dark Thirty has a decent shot.- JL

Best Director:

–Steven Spielberg. If Ben Affleck, who won the Directors’ Guild Award for Argo, was nominated, then this would be a very different story. – TB

–Steven Spielberg. Experiment time. Picture if you will this line-up of nominees: Ben Affleck, Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Kathryn Bigelow. That is a line-up for the ages; none of those directors were nominated this year. – MB

Best Actor: 

–Daniel Day-Lewis. No actor has won three Academy Awards for Best Actor. Day-Lewis is about to become the first.- TB

– Daniel Day-Lewis. Not sure how I feel about that considering he already has two, and his Lincoln for the most part struck me as an old storyteller rather than a deep three-dimensional look at one of America’s most beloved presidents. That being said, he certainly had a fun collection of entertaining stories in Lincoln, and is one of the few actors on this list besides Bradley Cooper I saw in action.- JL

Best Supporting Actor:

–Tommy Lee Jones. As always, there’s a glut of talent in the Best Supporting Actor pool. Jones’ performance is hardly my favorite of this past year, but he looks hard to beat right now.- TB

–Christoph Waltz. Waltz put in a great performance as the dentist turned radical abolitionist in Django and arguably stole the show in a movie with award worthy acting all around. Seymour Hoffman and Tommy Lee Jones are also very worthy candidates but I think Waltz just edges them out.- MB

Best Actress:

– Jessica Chastain, burgeoning young actress that she is, will likely take home the Oscar on this one. I would love to see this one go to Quvenzhane Wallis, now ten years old, of Beasts of the Southern Wild, a film all of you should see.- JL

–Jennifer Lawrence. Because why not? No one in this category jumps out at me; that does not mean that any of the nominees aren’t worthy, but that I do not see a true favorite. I think it will come down to Lawrence and Jessica Chastain. – MB

–Jennifer Lawrence. Thanks to her SAG win, she is in the pole position for this one; it’d be hard to choose between Lawrence and Jessica Chastain otherwise.- TB

Best Supporting Actress: 

–Anne Hathaway. This one is gift-wrapped. – TB

– Anne Hathaway. The closest thing to a guarantee this year. Her turn as Fantine is simply sublime. I don’t see an argument as to why any of the other nominees deserve the award more than Hathaway. -MB