Oscar Predictions: The Major Categories

Every year, we try to outsmart the Academy, and those who compete with us in Oscar pools, by picking a couple of surprises in our Oscar ballot. When Little Miss Sunshine comes out of nowhere, we think, rubbing our hands together with glee, we’ll be the only ones who predict it, and therefore we will win! But of course Little Miss Sunshine doesn’t win. Little Miss Sunshine never wins. And the person who takes home the money in our Oscar pool is the person who just picked the movies everyone thinks are going to win, because the conventional wisdom is almost always right.

So this year we’re picking the chalk nearly everywhere, and saving our minor upsets for minor categories. Will this pay off in our first Oscar-pool victory since we grumpily picked Forrest Gump for everything? Only time will tell!

Related: Oscar Predictions: The Categories Without Famous People in Them

There are cases to be made for There Will Be Blood (so genius!) and Atonement (so Oscary!) and Juno (so lovable!) and Michael Clayton (so unhateable!), but No Country for Old Men looks so unstoppable — and no one will be picking against it, so your ballot is safe either way. After a flirtation with choosing Blood, we’re chickening out and going with the front-runner.

If last year was Marty’s year, this year looks to be the Coens’. At least their acceptance speeches will be mercifully brief.

This has been Daniel Day-Lewis’s race to lose since the fall, and only a moron — or a cheating employee of PriceWaterhouse — would pick against him.

Some talk up the chances of Page or Cotillard, but we think it’s unlikely that Page will become the youngest Best Actress winner ever, or that Cotillard will become only the second actress to win for a foreign-language performance. And seriously — you think the Academy is going to pass up a chance to give an Oscar to Julie Christie?

This might be the toughest major category to predict; Blanchett’s is the most technically accomplished performance, while Ronan and Swinton are their Best Picture–nominated films’ best chances to pick up a major award. And Ruby Dee is like a million years old! But we’re sticking with the critics’ prize winner here, who happens in this case to have given the performance we loved the most in this category: Amy Ryan.

Hey everyone! Is your name Javier Bardem? If not, you are useless to us.