Ladies and Gentlemen, your Oscar winners for 2011: Colin Firth for Best Actor, Natalie Portman for Best Actress, Christian Bale for Best Supporting Actor, Hailee Steinfeld for Best Supporting Actress, and "The Social Network" for Best Picture.
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(mark wahlberg in "the fighter")
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Okay, we know the Oscars haven't been given out yet, the nominations haven't even been announced, but as we wrote last year, there are so many movie awards which are given out now before the Oscars, that it almost becomes a foregone conclusion who will win the Oscars by the time the winners are actually announced. In other words, there are almost never any surprises any longer.
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(hailee steinfeld and barry pepper in "true grit")
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In the past few days, three more critics groups, the Kansas City Film Critics Circle, the Phoenix Film Critics Society and the Online Film Critics Society, announced their 2010 film award winners. All three groups selected Colin Firth, Natalie Portman and Christian Bale in the Actor, Actress and Supporting Actor categories, respectively. They disagreed slightly over Supporting Actress and Best Picture; Kansas City and the Online folks picked Hailee Steinfeld and "The Social Network", but Phoenix picked Melissa Leo and "The King's Speech".
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(geoffrey rush and colin firth in "the king's speech")
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With these newest awards, the latest tally for critics groups wins stands at "The Social Network" having won 22 of 27 awards; Colin Firth having won 14 of 27 awards; Natalie Portman at 14 of 26; Christian Bale at 16 of 25; and Hailee Steinfeld at 8 of 25.
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And thus, our confidence in announcing, now, who will win the Oscars. That's not to say that the Oscar voters always vote the same way that movie critics do, hardly!, but at this point, peer pressure starts to have an effect. In other words, if one actor has won the bulk of praise from the country's critics, it becomes really difficult for a lowly Oscar voter, who might be an actor or film editor who hasn't worked in two years, to claim that they know better than the nation's critics. Another reason why the Oscar Awards sometimes resemble an election for junior high prom queen.
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(natalie portman in "black swan")
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However, and this is a big "however", one force that is always present at the Oscars is sentiment. And Oscar sentiment is a hell of a force. Sentiment means that Oscars voters often like to reward actors for "career achievement" or simply for their overwhelming popularity. You have to look no further than last year's wins for Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock to see the results of Oscar sentiment. Not that Bridges and Bullock weren't good in their roles, but you'd be hard pressed to find many film critics who really thought Bridges was better than Colin Firth last year, or Bullock was better than Meryl Streep.
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(jackie weaver and joel edgerton in "animal kingdom")
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So at this point, you can pretty much count on Colin Firth, Natalie Portman and Christian Bale wins. Annette Bening might upset Portman, but it's doubtful. And "The King's Speech" might upset "The Social Network", but that looks doubtful, too. The only major race that's still in contention is for Best Supporting Actress. Steinfeld, Melissa Leo and Jackie Weaver have split the critics votes three ways, but not nearly as many people will see Leo's and Weaver's movies as they will see Steinfeld in "True Grit", and Oscar voters will also want to reward the Coen Brothers' film with at least one acting award. Also, don't forget, Oscar voters are suckers for rewarding child actors, i.e. Patty Duke, Tatum O'Neal, Anna Paquin, etc.
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Next up are the industry awards, i.e. The Screen Actors Guild Awards, The Producers Guild Awards, etc. And these people, unlike the nation's film critics, actually belong to the Oscar Academy, which means they actually vote for the Oscars. So their selections over the next few days will really give us an even more accurate prediction of who will take home the most coveted naked man in Hollywood.
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