"The King's Speech" will win six Academy Awards on Sunday, double the number for the runner-up, "Inception." "The Social Network," "The Fighter" and "Toy Story 3" will each take home a pair, with the rest of the statuettes divided up between several other films.
With the polls closed and the vote-counting underway, those are my predictions. And I ought to feel good about them: I mean, last year I correctly predicted 20 out of the 24 categories, and the year before that I scored a personal-best 22 out of 24 (though I didn't publish those predictions anywhere, so only my family can vouch for me).
But I have to say, I don't have a good feeling about this year. For every category that feels like a sure thing, there's another that seems completely up in the air. For every Colin Firth, an unassailable frontrunner you can take to the bank, there's a Melissa Leo, her once-formidable momentum dissipated and the trophy that once seemed to be hers now up for grabs.
And for every Best Picture, where the winner seems (relatively) clear, there's a Best Foreign-Language Film, which strikes me as a near dead heat between a trio of films.
Also read: The Odds' Oscar Ballot: Javier Bardem, 'Black Swan' & Michelle Williams Get Our Vote
I think this is the toughest year for predicting the entire field in some time, and I don't expect to score in the 20s this time around. But for what it's worth, here are my predictions.
The order is the same as on the Oscar ballot.
Best Picture: "The King's Speech"
It felt like an Oscar movie back in early September, when I called it as the winner before I saw it. It burnished its credentials in Telluride and Toronto, endured the unprecedented onslaught of critics' awards that went to "The Social Network," and roared back into frontrunner status when the critics stopped voting and the Hollywood guilds started.
As I wrote back in January, "In 'The King's Speech,' you have a great narrative; two personable and likeable spokespeople in a director and screenwriter willing and eager to articulate the ways in which the historical is actually personal; a charismatic leading man who's due; an impeccable supporting cast; and a film that moves almost everybody who sees it. Did we really think for a second that Harvey Weinstein and crew wouldn't know how to play that hand?"
Weinstein knew how. And when you throw in a voting system that rewards films that are well-liked across the board, "The King's Speech" has the kind of Oscar clout that makes all those critics awards for "The Social Network" almost irrelevant.
Is an upset possible? Sure. Is it likely? No way.
Best Actor: Colin Firth, "The King's Speech"
Let's ask the same question about a different race: Is an upset possible? Nope.
