“The Artist” may have been the big winner last night, but for better or worse, Viola Davis’s surprise Best Actress loss to Meryl Streep is set to remain the principal talking point of this year’s Academy Awards — and it’s one that is already provoking a range of critical and political reactions. Jesse Washington studies conflicted reactions in the black community to Davis’s defeat, and finds many dismayed for the actress while still unable to get completely behind the character she plays in “The Help.” One response everyone should be able to agree with, however, comes from diversity consultant Monika Brooks: “The problem is not that Davis played a maid. The problem is there’s not more black people in really good roles.” [Associated Press]

John Anderson wonders if, after last year’s failed bid for youth appeal, this year’s Oscars went too far in the other direction. [CNN]

Tom Shone agrees, slyly noting the “fabulously long In Memoriam section,” but agrees with me that Emma Stone was the night’s MVP. [Taking Barack to the Movies]

With ratings for the Oscarcast up from last year but still modest, does the Academy just need to accept that this is as good as it gets? [New York Times] 

Sasha Stone offers an evocative, somewhat melancholy reflection on her first ever trip to the Oscars. [Awards Daily]

Tom O’Neil, one of the few pundits who predicted Meryl Streep’s upset win, breaks down how it happened. [Gold Derby]

Guy Adams examines what’s next for the winning team of “The Artist,” who are keen to hold onto their Frenchness. [The Independent] 

Iranians celebrate the Oscar success of “A Separation,” as their government continues to regard the film warily. [The Guardian]

Thrilled by the success of “The Artist,” Kenneth Turan gives it up for Harvey Weinstein. [LA Times]

Having enjoyed last night’s show, Leonard Maltin is sick of the complaints that dog the Academy Awards every year, whatever form the ceremony takes. [IndieWire]

Now this is interesting: journalist Chris Heath returns to a Gary Oldman interview he conducted three years ago… but hasn’t been allowed to print until now. [GQ]

Welcome to Oscar Talk.

In case you’re new to the site and/or the podcast, Oscar Talk is a weekly kudocast, your one-stop awards chat shop between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood. The podcast is weekly, every Friday throughout the season, charting the ups and downs of contenders along the way. Plenty of things change en route to Oscar’s stage and we’re here to address it all as it unfolds.

As of last night, the season is over. There are no more predictions to make, no more logic to peddle, no more considerations of how voters are responding to this or that. We know how they responded. Now it’s time to pick over the rotting carcass of the season. So, with Guy Lodge in tow once more this season, let’s see what’s on the docket for today…

The Oscars happened, in case you hadn’t heard. And there were a couple of surprises throughout, though not too many.

One of them, of course, was Meryl Streep upsetting friend and former co-star Viola Davis in the Best Actress category. Naturally we chew on that for a bit.

There was also “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” popping up in the Best Film Editing category with a show of support from the Academy, clearly being the place where members focused their love.

There was of course the actual show, which was safe and reserved and signaled an overall retreat from the embarrassment of Brett Ratner in November. How did Billy Crystal do? We discuss.

And finally, there is a whole other year of filmmaking to look forward to. What will we be talking about this time next year? Well, we don’t get into it too much, but we offer up some things we’re certainly looking forward to.

Have a listen to the new podcast below and listen to our final calls. If the file cuts off for you at any time, try the back-up download link at the bottom of this post. And as always, remember to subscribe to Oscar Talk via iTunes here.

“Can’t Truss It” courtesy of Public Enemy and Def Jam/Columbia.

“It’s a Process” courtesy of Mychael Danna and Madison Gate Records.

My first foray into the realm of the Oscar blogger has yielded varied results. I have a sharper set of skills with which to run the metaphorical pool table, but a deeper sense of bemusement in regards to the AMPAS and the awards circuit.

The Oscars are a horse race. Or rather, the Oscars are a series of races on one grandiose and glitzy track. It represents millions of dollars in PR and marketing expenditures alone, a potential revenue increase for the nominated films, and is easily one the of the entertainment industry”s most significant events.

And yet, it remains its own unique niche. In general terms, there are public relations specialists who handle awards, there are marketing strategists who design and unveil awards campaigns. And then, there are Oscar bloggers, those whose business it is to track, judge, evaluate and predict the outcome of the awards season. But there are still people that have, and do, work in various capacities in this industry who do not have a full handle on how or why the season unfolds as it does.

I myself have spent time in various and sundry aspects of entertainment, acquired what was to become an Oscar nominated documentary at a small film festival in my acquisitions capacity for a distribution company, have worked for several years as a film journalist and yet I, too, am still familiarizing myself with the somewhat “Alice in Wonderland” logic of this business of Oscar.

Last night I attended an Oscar party with several film bloggers and industry professionals in attendance and, for the first time in my Oscar-viewing history, soundly crushed the competition in the Oscar pool with a 20/24 score (insert maniacal laughter here). I was later deemed a “ringer” and forced to relinquish my booty to the second place winner, but still, we all know who dominated.

I took a bookie”s approach to my selections and based the odds on what I had been able to track in the precursor season. That likely seems like a “yeah, duh” approach to most of the In Contention readership. But the truth is, one can have a strong understanding of the medium of film, and yet still be relatively naïve about how to place Oscar bets.

For example, I noticed that the lion”s share of my colleagues continued to refer to Jean Dujardin”s “potential” win over Clooney as an upset, when in my mind, it has been a foregone conclusion for at least the last few weeks. It was a perceived upset, I suppose, because Clooney was painted as a lock several months ago, before any of the “data” was really in, and for the most part, people stuck with that hype.

What is clear to me is that predicting an Academy Award win has little or nothing to do with perceived buzz or perceived merit, and it certainly has nothing to do with one”s personal preferences. It has to do with tracking the tide, with a closer eye than most are willing to devote. (But, of course, it’s also about talking to Academy members and gauging the winds as closely to the source as possible.)

In general terms, watching the evolution of the awards season alone can make you an effective better. Sadly, you really don”t even need to see the films. Indeed, I fear the smaller festivals have become so focused on becoming accurate “Oscar predictors” that they have, to some degree, lost track of their true purpose. It becomes a cyclical relationship whereby the orginizations that ought to be serving films that the AMPAS inevitably will not, choose instead to be a part of the race, and then, in turn, become a part of said mainstream hunt, just another place for punditry to look to in order to pontificate on this or that horse”s chances.

My takeaway from last night is that the process of getting to know the process has, in a way, left me even more befuddled by the final selections. I feel as though I can track the wins, and yet, unlike a true athletic event, I cannot fully trace the logic behind them.

I”ve not seen “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” since its release, and though I am certain that the editing was strong, I don”t recall walking away with that element top of mind in quite the way I did with “The Social Network.” I”d like to screen the film again before I make a categorical assessment, but as it stands now, I legitimately believe that “Moneyball” represents the more skillfully crafted and challenging film from an editorial standpoint. Similarly, as we have said previously, it was a tremendous feat on the part of screenwriters Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin to take Michael Lewis”s book about statistics and transform it into a compelling, richly textured and deeply human story. Alas.

One field where the precursor season seemed to have it right was Best Actress. I will confess that I am slightly disappointed with Viola Davis”s loss, which is not to take anything away from Meryl Streep’s win necessarily, but simply to mourn the Davis loss. She is a journeywoman. I had believed that she would win on merit, but it is also nice to see a real working actor (meaning someone who has dug in to deliver tremendous performances in large and small roles over an extended period of time in theater, television and film) reach the heights that Davis has this year. She was, in my mind, the working actor”s champion.

“Your job is to get material, good or bad, and make something of it,” Davis said at the Santa Barbara film festival last month where she accepted the award for Outstanding Performer of the Year. “If we all waited for ‘Sophie’s Choice,’ we’d be waiting a long time. It’s about how you take a role that serves a function and humanize it.”

As Kris noted in his post-show “Off the Carpet” column, Davis and Streep are friends, so, there is likely no bad blood between them as it were. Nor do I begrudge Streep formal recognition. As an outside observer, and circling back to a sports analogy one more time, I think it must be what it feels like for those outside of New York City when the Yankees win. As objectively speaking as is possible, I believe the Davis loss may become one of Oscar”s most lasting and heartbreaking misses.

Ultimately, though, what makes the Oscars unique is that they are a race, a game that is based in the artistic realm. Though I do believe that there are marketing, PR and frankly high school popularity contest elements at work, we are, at the end of the day, talking about a subjective arena where one person”s aesthetic simply may not match that of another”s, or even that of the viewing audience at large.

So, on to 2012, where I hope my horses will stand a better chance and I can place my final bets with  my heart as well as my mind.

For year-round entertainment news and commentary follow @JRothC on Twitter.

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Having had a few hours to quite literally sleep on last night’s Academy Awards after blearily turning in at 5.30 in the morning, I’ve woken up with a post-Oscar feeling that is unfamiliar to me, or at least has been for several years: sincere, sober, slightly stricken disappointment.

That is, I admit, a selfish and somewhat irrational response to an evening in which one of the most singularly delightful films of the year — and comfortably my favorite of the nominees — won Best Picture; in which, for the first time in far too long, the routinely dismaying Best Foreign Language Film award somehow found its way to a work of genuine consequence and artistry; in which “Academy Award winner Bret McKenzie” became a legit combination of words for future use and enjoyment; in which, after two straight years of getting it mortifyingly wrong, the Academy managed to stage a swift, entertaining if not especially imaginative show.

On balance, I’m happier with the results than I was last year, when a film I actively dislike claimed the top prizes. So why is my heart a little heavier than it was on post-Oscar morning last February? Two words, and I think you can guess what they are: Viola. Davis.  

I’m leading with last night’s Best Actress award not only because it was the night’s one outcome to truly rattle me personally. However you slice it, and whatever your own allegiance, it was the moment of the night: the biggest upset in a lead acting race since, oh, Adrien Brody’s 2002 Best Actor win, the one that resulted in the most clipreel-ready acceptance speech of the ceremony, the one in which the Academy passed up one landmark victor of sorts for another. Most of all, it was the one that, however accidentally, encapsulated the meme for this year’s entire awards race: the lure of the known.

There was little reason to bet against Viola Davis this year. The stage-reared, 46-year-old character actress has accrued nothing but goodwill (and a handful of prizes) since giving the performance of her career in “The Help,” a notably problematic but encouragingly popular late-summer sleeper that itself stole enough hearts in Hollywood to crack the Best Picture category. The roaring standing O that greeted her Screen Actors’ Guild victory said everything, or seemed to: hampered by the industry’s deeply ingrained demographic biases, a marvelous actress had waited far too long for the opportunity to carry a film, had done a selflessly beautiful job when it eventually came, and was now reaping her due reward.

Even without the added attraction of doubling the number of non-white Best Actress champs in a single move, Davis’s nomination offered the Academy the chance to reward the right actress for the right role at the right time, potentially elevating a career in the process. For her part, Davis played the campaign game with a mixture of good-humored grace and provocative intelligence, somehow pointedly reminding voters of what they stood to gain from rewarding an actress like her without ever sounding entitled to their votes in the process. How could they resist?

By voting for Meryl Streep, as it turns out.

On the face of it, how does one begrudge America’s Greatest Living Actress™ a third Academy Award? Few would deny that Streep deserves as many statuettes on her mantel as Jack Nicholson or Ingrid Bergman. Streep has been no less engaged, generous and professional a presence than Davis on the campaign circuit; more to the point, she has maintained this behavior for 13 consecutive nominations over 29 years that, until last night, had all ended in cheerily smiling defeat.

Lest you think this was a capitulating award for good sportsmanship, it wasn’t: critics can argue in circles about whether it was a feat of inspired artistry or heartless technical precision, but there’s no denying that Streep’s performance in Margaret Thatcher in “The Iron Lady” is one that wowed many on its own terms, one that could as easily have won the actress an Oscar at her first nomination or her seventeenth. 

So, two popular, talented actresses, both giving commanding performances in films somewhat less than deserving of their efforts. What difference does it make which one of them wins, right? Flip a coin, call a tie, horses for courses, no correct answer, right? Why, then — besides the fact that I found Davis’s work more moving and persuasive, and that we came this close to a refreshingly biopic-free slate of acting winners for the first time in 14 years — am I left with the feeling that the Academy made a grave error last night?

Let’s optimistically posit that, even with demographic trends firmly against her, Viola Davis didn’t need this win to secure more meaty roles and A-list projects in the future; that further Oscar nominations and potential wins await. But by allowing her to lose to her esteemed friend and former co-star last night, Academy voters arguably did themselves the greater disservice: prioritizing the familiar over the future, endeavor over initiative, closing ranks over opening doors. If we suggest for a minute that neither performance is better than the other, rewarding Streep’s Thatcher over Davis’s Aibileen, after a season of the industry all but instructing otherwise, was the Academy’s own Conservative vote. For better or worse, this is what the Academy knows, and they’re sticking to it.

I’ve spent rather too long on this one award, since it’s hardly alone among last night’s results in reflecting this dispiriting safety-first approach. Though I predicted it would happen, my heart still sank precipitously when the very first envelope of the evening was opened, and Robert Richardson won a third Oscar for his perfunctorily handsome lensing of “Hugo,” making a bridesmaid once more of the brilliant Emmanuel Lubezki, whose luminous, form-busting work in “The Tree of Life” was, if you’ll forgive me being this emphatic, the only artistically sentient choice in the category.

Putting aside for a moment my concerns of how many voters never saw Terrence Malick’s demanding opus in the first place, this was a case of Academy members embracing work they could comfortably get their arms around — as was the case with “Hugo”‘s second most egregiously undeserved technical win of the night, as its unremarkable-to-creaky visual effects bested those of “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” which only created exciting, uncharted new options for filmmakers and actors alike. 

Voters similarly had their eye on the rear view mirror in the screenplay categories, handing Alexander Payne a second Oscar, and Woody Allen a fourth, for snugly narrow creations that fall well short of the tonal and structural innovations of either writer-director’s best work, perhaps denying the Best Picture frontrunner because they’re not entirely certain how it was written at all. And their cautious streak even extended to the short film categories, usually the preserve of the up-and-coming: thanks to the presence of Terry George and Ciaran Hinds’s established names, the televisual, tepidly sentimental “The Shore” defeated the far sprightlier and more inventive “Tuba Atlantic,” at least ensuring that “The Iron Lady” (I beg your pardon, two-time Academy Award winner “The Iron Lady”) isn’t the worst film to win an Oscar this year.

Perhaps this surfeit of familiar, faintly fusty winners was the Academy’s way of bargaining with themselves for giving three of their top prizes to scrappy, seductively French-accented outsiders whose names would have meant little to most voters this time last year — though many will see these laurels for a retro exercise about Hollywood’s golden age as no less safe and regressive a decision. Maybe so, maybe no, but as I wrote in my pre-ceremony plea for “The Artist” on Saturday, rewarding a silent, black-and-white, French-made comedy was one of the most novel and adventurous options the Academy faced in their year of not living dangerously.

Meanwhile, like “The Artist,” the ceremony demonstrated that revisiting the past has its assets, too. The return of Billy Crystal proved, on balance, a welcome one. His schtick was well-worn, but warm and amusing with it: after a ropey introductory video skit in which his nerves and rustiness were all too evident, his timing picked up, his audience touch returned, his teeth even came out a little. A safe pair of hands, it seems, can still be a spry one.

That said, in a ceremony awash with old hands and old jokes, is it perhaps telling that the most memorable performance of all came from 23-year-old firework Emma Stone? Presenting Best Visual Effects with a comparatively defused Ben Stiller, the gifted young comedienne killed on her Oscarcast debut, riffing with acid zaniness on Hollywood’s expectations of ingenues like her and subtly skewering last year’s ill-fated host Anne Hathaway in the process. Fresh, funky, eccentric, with just a smidge of non-toxic daring, the night’s MVP was everything the Academy at large wasn’t this year: one hopes this is the first of many Academy Award appearances from Stone, and not just as a presenter.

First, however, they owe Viola Davis one. 

For more views on movies, awards season and other pursuits, follow @GuyLodge on Twitter. 

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It”s not usually appropriate for journalists to speak of how their personal experiences affect their views on particular events. But my experience watching the 2012 Academy Awards affects my analysis of it to such an extent that it would be dishonest for me to pretend anything otherwise.

Meryl Streep has been my favorite actress of all time for as long as I”ve had a “favorite actress of al time.” And as much as I loved Viola Davis”s performance in “The Help,” Streep remained my favorite of this year”s Best Actress nominees. Her victory and her speech made me extraordinarily happy last night.

She divided her “thank yous” between her husband, her makeup artist, and her Hollywood family. Notice that second class as a category unto itself. Roy Helland and Meryl Streep have worked together for almost four decades. His win for “The Iron Lady” is oh-so-deserved and I”ll give Streep the utmost in kudos for recognizing the work of the men and women below the line. Recognizing the importance of such work is what we”ve tried to do here at Tech Support.

After “The Iron Lady””s deserved makeup win, I had a hunch that “The Girl With the Dragon Tattooo” would win Best Film Editing. I”m seriously regretting not predicting it, attributing it to an affinity for the American Cinema Editors” choices. Alas, as Kris noted this morning, Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall”s win is the first time since “Bullitt” that a film has won Best Film Editing and nothing else.

Only three of the past 12 winners in this category triumphed in the absence of a Best Picture nomination. Like “Black Hawk Down” and “The Bourne Ultimatum,” “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” is a critically acclaimed genre movie helmed by a previously nominated director. I should have seen this coming.

This is not to say Best Picture nominees didn”t have a great time in the crafts categories: see, for instance, “Hugo.” This is a fine movie, and it deserved its victory in Best Art Direction. But I was sad to have forecast its win in Best Visual Effects early on, a win most people didn”t seem to see coming. And the sound categories? Predictable, maybe, but hardly exemplary. Don”t get me wrong: I like the film well enough, but beyond art direction I view it as, how shall I say it? Just competent in crafts arenas. That said, I was quite happy to see Tom Fleischman with an Oscar in his hand.

My views are slightly more nuanced when it comes to Best Cinematography: Robert Richardson”s work was actually pretty great, but Emmanuel Lubezki”s was the best achievement in the field since his lensing of “Children of Men” five years ago, where he also had an Oscar pulled out from under him.

That said, when Sandy Powell lost Best Costume Design to Mark Bridges, I knew that “Hugo” was not going to sweep. Not only was I pleased with Bridges”s deserving win, it showed the Academy wasn”t blindly ticking off the box for the most showy nominee in each category.

In the realm of putting the final touches on movies, “The Artist””s Ludovic Bource of course won, as we all predicted. Bret McKenzie”s victory for “Man or Muppet” was also a deserved highlight for Kiwis.

Film is frequently referred to as a “director”s medium” as opposed to stage being an “actor”s medium.” But film clearly affects actors” performances in ways that they are not on stage. The director is assisted by the artists who control the camera, the set, costumes, the cuts, the effects, the music and the soundtrack, always feeding new ideas, new ways of changing the outcome of a film, leaving a thousand fingerprints on the whole. They simply couldn”t work otherwise.

It has always been our goal that Tech Support at In Contention highlights the work of these craftsmen where the spotlight evades them throughout most of the media. Whether we succeeded or not (and I think we have, especially as the rest of the media has stepped up its game in this department), they succeeded in providing the public with so many 2011 movie moments.

Here is hoping 2012 provides us with even more luscious treats. But that is ahead of us and we”ll have plenty of time to analyze it. So, for the meantime, to quote the movie Christopher Plummer is so keen to leave behind: “”So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye.”

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Thanks to everyone for joining our Oscar pool at Picktainment for the third-straight season. This year, our victors were (drumroll please)…

First Prize goes to BYRON A. MARTIN, who got 20 out of 24 categories (including picking the Meryl Streep upset) and managed to come dangerously close to the show’s run-time in our tie-breaker.

Second Prize goes to ROBERTO PAULA who got the exact same categories right (both winners missed Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Visual Effects and Best Documentary Feature) and also picked Streep, but came up short in the tie-breaker.

And Third Prize goes to CHRIS SWAN, who, like me, nailed down 19 out of 24 but had the right combination of points to claim that spot all to himself. He missed Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Visual Effects, Best Documentary Feature and Best Documentary Short.

But you guys have to reach out if you want your spoils so drop me a line with your preferred address and we’ll mail out your prizes, a lovely combo of soundtracks and DVDs, ASAP!

So, the Oscars happened.

There were two legitimate surprises at last night’s finale to the 2011-2012 film awards season. “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” became just the 15th (I believe) film to win Best Film Editing without receiving a Best Picture nomination. The last was :The Bourne Ultimatum” in 2007, then “Black Hawk Down” in 2001. And the last film to win ONLY Best Film Editing was “Bullitt” in 1968. And Meryl Streep finally nabbed that third Oscar her fans and supporters have demanded for her with increasing intensity over the last few years.

Someone on Twitter said they thought Streep’s win over Viola Davis will not age well. I don’t know what we’ll think of it in the future, but I do know Streep and Davis are friends who would hate to know there are discussions and column inches being dedicated to this competition.

Still, all I can think is, “How unfortunate.” The snub — after such a long season of kudos for Davis — rings a particularly nasty note for some reason. The final push for Streep touted that “it’s time” stuff, like her third was more important than Close’s first, or Mara’s, or Williams’s or, certainly, Davis’s. But I guess it was. To say nothing of how dissing another leading actress of color just feels strange a week after the Los Angeles Times put numbers to what we already know: the Academy is old and white.

I won’t labor the point. It just strikes me as, again, unfortunate.

“The Artist” ultimately had the night it had hoped for with wins for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor. But early on, nerves must have been fried. “Hugo” came out of the gate to win two awards and then ran through a few more, nailing down Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing and Best Visual Effects. That’s as many as “The Aviator” racked up, more than “The Departed” and more than “Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull” and “Goodfellas” combined. Pretty impressive, and until “The Artist” grabbed Best Original Score, it seemed potentially indicative of a drastically different direction.

But you know the winners. You watched the show. The question is, what does it all mean?

I don’t know if I’m off on my own planet here (quite possible), but everything felt like a great reset for the Academy last night. Everything was about nostalgia, the unofficial theme of the year as it was. The Hollywood & Highland Theatre was decked out like a classic movie palace. The little talking head featurettes in and out of commercial beaks were a great study in introspection, “why we like the movies,” the most sterile of considerations.

When Brett Ratner embarrassed the Academy, they retreated. They went to Billy Crystal, who partied like it was 1999: the opening sketch putting the host in a number of the year’s films, the musical number that could have been written in Bruce Villanch’s sleep (he wasn’t on the staff this year), the safest of roads, all the stuff we’ve seen before. They went to Brian Grazer, who tapped Cirque du Soleil for a bit of added pizazz that fed right into the theme, an easy get since “Iris” was already set up in the theatre.

In the voting, the Academy had it both ways. They gave 10 Oscars to the top two nomination hogs and didn’t feel adventurous anywhere other than the above-mentioned Best Film Editing, which seemed a way of reaching out to what was likely the #10 film in the Best Picture field. Nothing for “The Tree of Life” (even a cinematography award that seemed preordained), nothing for genre (even a visual effects award for “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” that seemed preordained), nothing for the best studio film of the lot, “Moneyball.” No coloring outside the lines.

And speaking of color, well, I already talked about Streep.

I was happy to see Robert Richardson win his third Oscar, even if I felt his colleague Emmanuel Lubezki more deserving. Three Oscars for Richardson and no ASC wins. Two ASC wins for Lubezki and no Oscars. Interesting, that.

I was happy to see Octavia Spencer get that reaction, even if I preferred Jessica Chastain in the field. Hers was a lovely speech, a true moment of humbled appreciation, an air she’s carried so organically all season.

I was happy for the filmmakers behind the incredibly moving “Undefeated,” even if I’d have preferred seeing Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky take the stage and accept an honor for getting a man off of death row.

I was really happy to see Christopher Plummer with an Oscar in his hand, offering the night’s best line. “You’re just two years older than me, darling,” he said to his prize. “Where have you been all my life?” He became the oldest winner of the award to date.

And I was extremely happy for Asghar Farhadi, whose “A Separation” was the best film to win an award last night and managed, despite fears that thinner fare might prevail, to charm the foreign film voters enough to claim its due.

But despite it all, and I mean this, I’m happiest for Harvey Weinstein, even if his film’s dominance this season has chafed considerably. His films netted awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Documentary Feature. He is, most definitely, back, and no one can say he didn’t work hard to get there again.

Nevertheless, nothing about the season, even the supposedly “radical” notion of a (near-)silent film winning a Best Picture prize in 2011 (as if the Academy doesn’t trade in novelties), feels like it will be at all memorable. The best films were left on the season’s cutting room floor, if you will. “Margaret,” “Rampart,” “Shame,” “Take Shelter,” those are the takeaways for me, not the froth AMPAS whisked off the top of the 2011 latte.

A final note on predictions, which I noted yesterday. I scored 19/24, which is a typical range. For a while there it was looking a lot better, though. But it was good enough.

And that was the 84th annual Academy Awards. In six months, the Venice and Telluride film festivals will be flinging us toward the 85th. What will we be talking about this time next year?

Will it be John Hawkes’s turn for “The Surrogate” as he goes head-to-head with his “Lincoln” co-star Daniel Day-Lewis? Will Paul Thomas Anderson be back at the dance in a big way with “The Master” (and Harvey in his sails)? Will genre find a foothold via “The Dark Knight Rises” or “Gravity” or “Prometheus?” Will Malick be back? Will Spielberg? Will Streep?

Let’s not go there just yet, shall we? We just put this one to bed.

More later today as Guy, Gerard and Roth chime in with their thoughts, and Anne and I finally kiss the season goodbye with the final 2011-2012 edition of Oscar Talk.

For year-round entertainment news and awards season commentary follow @kristapley on Twitter.

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I haven’t live-blogged the Oscars in a while. Usually today is like I just got out of jail, so I’m generally boozing it up at this party or that and just soaking it in.

Not today! And lucky you! I’ll be right here at the laptop tap-tapping away as this year’s final kudos are handed out on the stage of the Kod…er…Hollywood & Highland Theatre. Will there be upsets? Will there be intrigue? Will there be blood? Whatever there will be, I will be here. I may also have this or that to say on Twitter.

So let’s get this puppy started…

RED CARPET

2:30pm – Yes, it’s already started. We’re live. I’m on E! and there’s Ryan Seacrest. There’s the carpet. Yep, this is the Oscars. I don’t know how long I’ll last in these earliest stages but at least the post is up and ready for you to comment to your heart’s content.

2:36pm – “The Descendants” star Amara Miller decked out in Valentino. 11 years old.

2:39pm – Muppet sighting! Kermit and Miss Piggy have arrived, prompting me to consider what might have been. Oh, #muppetoscars, how I loved you so.

2:44pm – Penelope Ann Miller is first on the carpet for “The Artist.” Busy weekend for her. She was accepting on behalf of all the film’s winners at yesterday’s Independent Spirit Awards until Air Artist landed from France and a César Awards haul.

3:01pm – So who decides, “I’m gonna be REALLY early to the Oscars?” Milla Jovovich on the carpet now, early, pimping something — I missed it — as well as a new “Resident Evil” movie. How many of those are there now, like, nine?

3:07pm – Kelly Osborne? Oh. Okay. Anyway, there’s Rose Byrne, the VIP of “Bridesmaids” if you ask me. Where do you think it honestly ended up in the Best Picture voting? Ten? Eleven? Twelve? Had to have been below “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and surely “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” too.

3:13pm – “So, Bérénice Bejo, how does it feel to be in the only category ‘The Artist’ can’t win tonight?” I can’t believe Seacrest asked her that!!

3:25pm – I never know how to “judge” fashion or whatever. I’ll always think, “Oh, she’s hot in that.” And then the dress will be savaged. With that in mind, Jessica Chastain is rocking a pretty stellar dress. She’s hot in that. Oh, good, Kelly Osbourne agrees with me. Whew. Being interviewed by Seacrest now. She’s so awesome. I’ve only really bumped into her here and there this year, no proper interviews, but she’s been the embodiment of class and spirit all season.

3:32pm – Were there any “who are you wearing?” jokes at the 1992 ceremony? You know, vis a vis “The Silence of the Lambs?” Had to have been.

3:34pm – Clooney in the house! Is he standing on an apple box or did he tell Stacy Keibler not to wear heels for once? Could he pull out the Best Actor win after all? Probably not. Okay, enough George. Can we please talk to Stacy?

3:42pm – Viola Davis rocking out some hunter green on the carpet. Hair done by her mother, she says. She also says this season has been all about stepping out into her confidence as an actress. She’s had fresh things to offer about this process every step of the way, so I’ll be pleased to see her grab that Oscar.

3:54pm – As Seacrest talks to Michelle Williams and Rooney Mara, Roger Ebert points me to this article: “3 Reasons Why Viola Davis Should Rock her ‘Fro At The Oscars.” Well, she did!

3:56pm – E! viewers are overwhelmingly predicting “The Help” to win Best Picture. Interesting. Meanwhie, P Diddy, fresh off of yesterday’s NBA Slam Dunk Competition, is on the carpet with Coach Bill Courtney from the tearjerker “Undefeated.” Will it pull off the win tonight? A number of us think so. Without question, it’s the most emotional of the nominees. Seacrest asks Courtney what someone can learn from this film. “Don’t give up,” he says.

3:59pm – Side note: I hate typing “E!” With the exclamation point. It makes me sound like I’m excited about it.

4:01pm – Okay, enough slummin’ it with Ryan and Giuliana. Off to ABC and the “official” red carpet show. All 90 minutes of it. You ready?

4:12pm – Red carpet has hit a boring lull. Maybe I should switch back to E! (which, for some reason, still isn’t available in HD for DirecTV). Anyway, Tweet of the day so far goes to my HitFix colleague Dan Fienberg: “I expect Nikki Finke will arrive attached to Sacha Baron Cohen’s head, like those parasitic fish that ride sharks.”

4:16pm – Alright, here we go. Sacha Baron Cohen on the red carpet as “The Dictator.” Here’s the thing: This is a bad precedent. When I heard the Academy had “banned” Cohen from doing this, I immediately said, “Idiots.” Because as far as I could tell by the initial story, it was knee-jerk to the mere suggestion that Cohen do that. That was before it became so obvious that it was set up by Cohen’s camp in cahoots with Deadline.com. That said, what just happened was hilarious. Cohen, carrying an urn he said held the ashes of Kim Jong Il, just doused Ryan Seacrest with its contents. And Seacrest is now covered in ashes. And that’s funny. Still, not worth it for the precedent.

4:19pm – Clearly Seacrest is pissed about this. He’s trying to break away but the girls in the booth aren’t having it. “Do you have any idea how lucky you are that you were the chosen one?” Hilarious. “What are you thinking about right now, Ryan?” It’s like an international incident. Hahaha.

4:25pm – And now Seacrest has to explain what happened to each interviewee. So, circling back to that “Silence of the Lambs” question, I guess “who are you wearing?” takes on another meaning.

4:29pm – Alright, time to start drinking.

4:58pm – I LITERALLY have had nothing to say for the last half hour. Sorry.

5:03pm – So they’ve interviewed both Zach Galifianakis and Bradley Cooper backstage now. I guess there’s a “Hangover” presentation coming. And Cooper says “Hopefully we’re gonna do ‘Hangover 3.'” Hopefully?

5:05pm – I’m happy for Glenn Close, being interviewed on ABC right now. The film didn’t fully work but I never once thought her performance suffered under anything, let alone the material providing her a very internalized character to portray. And while this isn’t in and of itself reason enough to dish out kudos, being with a character and material for 30 years, seeing it through to the screen, producing, writing on all levels, I mean it beats the hell out of what I get out of bed to do every morning. And she looks like a boss.

5:07pm – Meanwhile, there are the PricewaterhouseCoopers guys! Are they handcuffed to the briefcases? They should actually give them neck bracelets or something that will explode if the briefcase gets more than like four feet away from them. “Battle Royale”-style.

5:13pm – Is this Sandra Bullock’s first trip back to the Oscars since, you know…?

5:16pm – So the wings have been ordered. We’re close to 15 minutes away from game time. Best Dressed: Jessica Chastain. No doubt.

5:20pm – Alright, we’re closing in here. Before we get ready to dive into the actual ceremony here, Drew McWeeny is live-blogging the show from an alternate dimension. Meanwhile, Katie Hasty has your Oscars drinking game all sorted out.

5:24pm – Don Mischer gets some face time! You can see the stage on the monitors behind him. Looks classy.

CEREMONY

5:30pm – Alright, let’s do this.

5:33pm – Morgan Freeman takes the stage first to kick things off and we get a classic Billy-Crystal-in-all-the-nominees bit to open the show. We got to see George Clooney plant a kiss on the Academy’s life-saver. Justin Bieber shows up as a nod to blatantly courting the younger audience. We got Crystal in blackface as Sammy Davis Jr., randomly. Etc., etc. Partying like it’s 1999. I love that Tom Cruise was game, though.

5:36pm – As previously reported, “The Beautiful Chapter 11 Theatre” stage is indeed made up to look like a classic movie palace. It’s like even the Academy is screaming “uncle.”

5:43pm – The first award of the evening is BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY. The nominees are: “The Artist,” “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” “Hugo,” “The Tree of Life” and “War Horse.”

5:44pm – And the Oscar goes to… “Hugo.” Robert Richardson accepts his third Oscar to date. He previously won for “JFK” and “The Aviator.” And Anne Thompson owes me $20.

5:45pm – Moving right along, the nominees for BEST ART DIRECTION are: “The Artist,” “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2,” “Hugo,” “Midnight in Paris” and “War Horse”

5:46pm – And the Oscar goes to… “Hugo.” Well deserved, to say the least. You can’t argue this, I don’t think. And that’s two right off the top of the bat for Martin Scorsese.

5:48pm – Alright, now that I have a moment to breathe, let’s look at this. Most were picking “Hugo” to win that art direction honor. It really seemed like the no-brainer of the evening. Meanwhile, virtually everyone expected “The Tree of Life” to triumph in Best Cinematography. I don’t need to bring it up again here. You know I expected Emmanuel Lubezki to get the shaft again, and so he did. I can’t take much umbrage with Robert Richardson winning, though, as his work was beautiful, to say nothing of the 3D employed to great effect. However, most others were expecting “The Artist” to come out on top there. It didn’t, leaving “Schindler’s List” still as the only black and white film in the post-b&w/color category split era to win the cinematography award. But it means “The Artist” isn’t primed to sweep the show, which is a good thing, at the very least, for nurturing the possibility of surprises. Let’s see what else is in store.

5:54pm – Next up, BEST COSTUME DESIGN. The nominees are: “Anonymous,” “The Artist,” “Hugo,” “Jane Eyre” and “W.E.”

5:55pm – And the Oscar goes to… “The Artist.” Another one largely called by most. I have to say, I’m really happy for Mark Bridges here. After toiling away cranking out fantastic work for ages, he finally received his first nomination this year for Michel Hazanavicius’s film. I think Sandy Powell undeniably deserved this for “Hugo,” but this is great for Bridges. Congrats to him. Here is Gerard Kennedy’s interview with Bridges concerning his work on “The Artist.”

5:57pm – The next award is for BEST MAKEUP. The nominees are: “Albert Nobbs,” “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2” and “The Iron Lady.”

5:58pm – The Oscar goes to… “The Iron Lady.” We all (well, okay, not DylanS — I kid) saw this coming. It’s fantastic work on a mediocre film, but the work is what matters. The unfortunate thing, though, is that, given the way the Academy does things, hair designer Marese Langan can’t share in the nomination and eventual win. Here is my interview with Langan and Mark Coulier concerning their work on the film.

6:05pm – On to award #5, which is BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM. The nominees are: “Bullhead,” “Footnote,” “In Darkness,” “Monsieur Lazhar” and “A Separation.”

6:07pm – And the Oscar goes to… “A Separation.” I have to be honest. I was REALLY worried that was going to lose to “Monsieur Lazhar,” even up until Sandra Bullock read the name. It is likely to be the best film to win an award tonight and thank God voters made the right call.

6:09pm – On top the first acting award of the evening, BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS. The nominees are: Bérénice Bejo in “The Artist,” Jessica Chastain in “The Help,” Melissa McCarthy in “Bridesmaids,” Janet McTeer in “Albert Nobbs” and Octavia Spencer in “The Help.”

6:12pm – And the Oscar goes to… Octavia Spencer in “The Help.” Somewhere along the circuit, Spencer became one of the surest bets of the acting contenders. I’ve made my feelings known. I think Chastain is the more deserving contender, but how can you NOT feel so happy for Spencer after getting that standing ovation and nearly being reduced there on the stage. This has been a fairytale for her. Chastain will be back. Perhaps Spencer will, too. But this is a great moment. Congratulations to you, Octavia.

6:22pm – Next up, BEST FILM EDITING. And the nominees are: “The Artist,” “The Descendants,” “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” “Hugo” and “Moneyball.”

6:24pm – And the Oscar goes to… “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” This is the first legitimate surprise of the evening, and it’s a big one. Last year’s Oscar-winning editors of “The Social Network” pick up their second award in a row.

6:25pm – Next up, BEST SOUND EDITING. The nominees are: “Drive,” “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” “Hugo,” “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” and “War Horse.”

6:26pm – And the Oscar goes to… “Hugo.” Ugh. Really surprised about that and now my fingers are SO crossed that “War Horse” doesn’t take Best Sound Mixing, because that will flatline me in the sound categories. These last two are my first misses of the night. But I think we all missed film editing. (Nevertheless, Gerard had a wise hunch about that one.)

6:27pm – Moving right along, the nominees for BEST SOUND MIXING are: “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” “Hugo,” “Moneyball,” “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” and “War Horse.”

6:28pm – And the Oscar goes to… “Hugo.” Okay, well I’m certainly glad I didn’t stick with that “War Horse” call for both categories at the end of the day. I really appreciate the sound in “Hugo” but I’m honestly surprised it was able to win both of these categories. Alas. This basically proves the maxim we’ve been talking about in this space, though. They want to give these two awards to one film if they can because the Academy at large has no friggin’ clue what equates to quality sound. Unless, of course, they’re in the sound branch.

6:33pm – Alright, a second to breathe. And even more since Cirque du Soleil is about to perform. Let me go back to that Best Film Editing category. “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” joins “The Bourne Ultimatum” as the only two non-Best Picture nominees to win that award since “Black Hawk Down” in 2001, and prior to “The Matrix” in 1999, you have to go back to 1988’s “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” before that. So it’s a significant upset. Anyway, Muppets!

6:39pm – Alright, Cirque du Soleil is doing a spin on the “Iris” theme, which had set up shop in “The Chapter 11 Theatre” prior to the Oscars moving in. Danny Elfman music. All about movie love. Etc. I’m not sure it really translates on television, though. There wasn’t a must-watch aspect about that, and that kind of thing just eats into the speech time of gracious people like Octavia Spencer, which is where real Oscar moments happen.

6:41pm – Moving on to more awards (at an incredible pace, I might add), the nominees for BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE are: “Hell and Back Again,” “If a tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front,” “Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory,” “Pina” and “Undefeated.”

6:43pm – And the Oscar goes to… “Undefeated.” You know how difficult this category was to predict this year. It could have easily gone to any of the nominees. At the end of the day, I settled on the film that packed the most emotional punch, the one that eventually won. But I have to say, as amazing as this movie is, I’d have loved to see Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky take the stage and win an award for saving a man’s life. Anyway, good call by the branch, regardless. And by the way, I actually liked that Robert Downey Jr. bit.

6:45pm – Next up, Chris Rock steps out to present the award for BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM. Is there another “Madagascar” movie coming out or something? Anyway, the nominees are: “A Cat in Paris,” “Chico & Rita,” “Kung Fu Panda,” “Puss in Boots” and “Rango.”

6:47pm – And the Oscar goes to… “Rango.” Duh. I’ve certainly had my say on this film this year. Congrats to Gore Verbinski on such a fantastic movie and a well-deserved Oscar.

6:53pm – Coming up, BEST VISUAL EFFECTS. The nominees are: “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2,” “Hugo,” “Real Steel,” “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” and “Transformers: Dark of the Moon.”

6:54pm – And the Oscar goes to… “Hugo.” You heard me belly-aching and struggling with this category in Friday’s podcast, only to be shot down. Well, I have a bone to pick with Anne now. The story here is “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” taking a dive at the last minute. More on that tomorrow. I have a few theories. And Emma Stone (with Ben Stiller) has pulled off the best presenting bit so far.

6:59pm – Alright, gotta shake that off (though I’m irritated — I was so close to changing over to “Hugo”). Anyway, the nominees for BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR are: Kenneth Branagh in “My Week with Marilyn,” Jonah Hill in “Moneyball,” Nick Nolte in “Warrior,” Christopher Plummer in “Beginners” and Max von Sydow in “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.”

7:01pm – And the Oscar goes to… Christopher Plummer in “Beginners.” He gets a richly deserved standing ovation and becomes the oldest actor to win an Oscar. “You’re only two years older than me, darling,” he says to the Oscar statuette. “Where have you been all my life?”

7:04pm – Alright, commercial break. Man am I steaming over that “Apes” snub. And over the fact that I had basically switched my pick and then switched it back at the last minute. (Let it go.) I wonder if the “Artist” peeps are getting nervous. Five Oscars for “Hugo” already? Could Scorsese upset? Could the film?? That’s a big haul, regardless. Already more than “The Departed.” With Best Original Score coming up, keep an eye out. If “The Artist” falls there, well, time to start considering the implications.

7:12pm – Next up, we have BEST ORIGINAL SCORE. The nominees are: “The Adventures of Tintin,” “The Artist,” “Hugo, ” “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” and “War Horse.”

7:15pm – And the Oscar goes to… “The Artist.” Alright, back on track in the techs. I have to say, I was half-expecting to see “Hugo” come out on top there. I’ve been perplexed at the love for this score all year long, and not because of the “Vertigo” thing or anything. It’s just so slight, simplistic, not all that compelling or… well, you know, kind of like the movie.

7:16pm – Moving on to BEST ORIGINAL SONG. The nominees are: “Man or Muppet” from “The Muppets” and “Real in Rio” from “Rio.”

7:17pm – And the Oscar goes to… “Man or Muppet” from “The Muppets.” Duh. What can you add to that? Really happy for Bret McKenzie. Here is Roth’s interview with the “Muppets” songwriter.

7:20pm – Aw, they’re giving out little popcorn boxes in the aisles. Boy, they really ARE embracing this old school movie thing tonight, aren’t they? Anyway, let’s look at where we are. Five wins for “Hugo” so far, which is already more than “The Aviator” and “The Departed,” by the way. Two for “The Artist.” Is that it for “Hugo,” or is it poised to upset in the next category, Best Adapted Screenplay? Is “The Artist” just biding its time before sweeping in the top fields? We’ll see soon enough!

7:25pm – Next on the list, BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY. And the nominees are: “The Descendants,” “Hugo,” “The Ides of March,” “Moneyball” and “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.”

7:27pm – And the Oscar goes to… “The Descendants.” Presented by Angelina Jolie and the slit in her dress. Again, I half-expected “Hugo” to grab that one. I think the “Artist” peeps can breathe a little easier now. I’ve had my say on this script. It’s nominated alongside much trickier adaptations that turned out as deeper, denser films. Alas.

7:29pm – Angie remains on stage for BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY. The nominees are: “The Artist,” “Bridesmaids,” “Margin Call,” “Midnight in Paris” and “A Separation.”

7:30pm – And the Oscar goes to… “Midnight in Paris.” Woody Allen is a no-show, of course. I think most of us expected this, given that “The Artist” is a bit of a special case this year. I’m happy for Woody, though, who wins his first Oscar since last winning in this category 24 years ago for “Hannah and Her Sisters.”

7:39pm – And now, the categories that might make or break a few of us, presented by the cast of “Bridesmaids.” First up, BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT. The nominees are: “Pentecost,” “Raju,” “The Shore,” “Time Freak” and “Tuba Atlantic.”

7:40pm – And the Oscar goes to… “The Shore.” Well, it was either that or “Tuba Atlantic.” I’d say voters caved to name recognition to some extent. It’s the second or third time I’ve gone against that instinct, but I won’t anymore.

7:41pm – Next, BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT. The nominees are: “The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement,” “God is the Bigger Elvis,” “Incident in New Baghdad,” “Saving Face” and “The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom.”

7:42pm – And the Oscar goes to… “Saving Face.” It’s really inarguable. This film swiftly and succinctly tells a story that NEEDS to be told, and it did it with grace and skill.

7:44pm – Finally, BEST ANIMATED SHORT. The nominees are: “Dimanche (Sunday),” “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore,” “La Luna,” “A Morning Stroll” and “Wild Life.”

7:45pm – And the Oscar goes to… “The Fanastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore.” It was the one, again, that packed the most emotion, but it was also incredibly artful and came from a beloved animator in the field. I bet Guy is kicking himself for that last-minute switch.

7:50pm – And now, a big daddy. Michael Douglas comes out to present BEST DIRECTOR. The nominees are: Michel Hazanavicius for “The Artist,” Alexander Payne for “The Descendants,” Martin Scorsese for “Hugo,” Woody Allen for “Midnight in Paris” and Terrence Malick for “The Tree of Life.”

7:53pm – And the Oscar goes to… Michel Hazanavicius for “The Artist.” And so the suspense goes away. “Yes! Thank you!” Says Mr. Hazanavicius. I’ve had my say.

7:55pm – Next up, after Billy Crystal makes some typical comments about how many Oscars Meryl Streep has lost, she comes out to present a package wrapping up October’s Governors Awards. Following this will be the In Memoriam segment.

8:14pm – Alright, we’re getting close. Next up, BEST ACTOR. The nominees are: Demián Bichir in “A Better Life,” George Clooney in “The Descendants,” Jean Dujardin in “The Artist,” Gary Oldman in “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” and Brad Pitt in “Moneyball.”

8:18pm – And the Oscar goes to… Jean Dujardin in “The Artist.” Sigh. Well, I really like the guy at this point. I’m happy for him. I really am. But literally everyone else in the category stacked up better. Alas, an Oscar juggernaut is an Oscar juggernaut. They love what they love.

8:24pm – Full steam ahead! On to BEST ACTRESS! The nominees are: Glenn Close in “Albert Nobbs,” Viola Davis in “The Help,” Rooney Mara in “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” Meryl Streep in “The Iron Lady” and Michelle Williams in “My Week with Marilyn.”

8:29pm – And the Oscar goes to… Meryl Streep in “The Iron Lady.” WOW! Well, there it is. The true moment of the evening. That huge burst of applause, that standing ovation that Streep wanted to stifle, her wonderful speech that we all wanted to hear. It’s very lovely to see her holding her third Oscar, but it IS her third Oscar. So the push to “get Meryl another one” has been just so off-putting. I guess it didn’t rub enough members wrong in the end. Congrats Harvey, er, Meryl.

8:33pm – And finally, Tom Cruise comes out to present the final award of the evening: BEST PICTURE. The nine nominees are: “The Artist,” “The Descendants,” “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,” “The Help,” “Hugo,” “Midnight in Paris,” “Moneyball,” “The Tree of Life” and “War Horse.”

8:35pm – And the Oscar goes to… “The Artist.” #onward

FINAL THOUGHTS

I’ll be back with more in tomorrow’s Off the Carpet column, as well as the wrap-up podcast, but for now, well, there isn’t a lot to say. I’m stewing a bit over that Best Actress result. It’s kind of stunning, really. I think the biggest surprise of the evening was “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” taking the Best Film Editing prize, as at least a few brave souls were picking Meryl here and there.

The other three I missed were “Hugo” for Best Visual Effects (ugh) and Best Sound Editing (which I just couldn’t have expected as it’s such a weird win), as well as “The Shore” for Best Live Action Short.

So the most I likely would have gotten right this year was 21, but I ended up with a 19/24 score, which, as far as I can tell, is good enough for best in show amongst us bone-headed pundits. I’m sure a few of you out there did as well or better, and we’ll get to the poll winner tomorrow. For now, though, cheers to Harvey Weinstein, who had a HELL of a night: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Documentary Feature. Wow.

Once more, check out the full list of this year’s Oscar winners below. And if you’d like to relive the season, you can do so via The Circuit. More tomorrow as we put a final bow on the season.

Best Picture: “The Artist”

Best Director: Michel Hazanavicius, “The Artist”

Best Actor: Jean Dujardin, “The Artist”

Best Actress: Meryl Streep, “The Iron Lady”

Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer, “Beginners”

Best Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer, “The Help”

Best Adapted Screenplay: “The Descendants”

Best Original Screenplay: “Midnight in Paris”

Best Art Direction: “Hugo”

Best Cinematography: “Hugo”

Best Costume Design: “The Artist”

Best Film Editing: “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”

Best Makeup: “The Iron Lady”

Best Music (Original Score): “The Artist”

Best Music (Original Song): “Man or Muppet” from “The Muppets”

Best Sound Editing: “Hugo”

Best Sound Mixing: “Hugo”

Best Visual Effects: “Hugo”

Best Animated Feature Film: “Rango”

Best Foreign Language Film: “A Separation”

Best Documentary Feature: “Undefeated”

Best Documentary Short: “Saving Face”

Best Short Film (Animated): “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore”

Best Short Film (Live Action): “The Shore”

For year-round entertainment news and awards season commentary follow @kristapley on Twitter.

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If you”re looking for a tie-breaker for your pool at tonight”s Oscar party, Yahoo! Movies may have just provided it in the form of a little-known piece of trivia. The Academy”s golden statue is not an amorphous rendering of a vague human ideal; rather, it is modeled after one of the entertainment industry”s early (and slightly lesser-known) directors.

Emilio Fernandez (aka “El Indio”) was forced to relocate to Los Angeles from his native Mexico after being exiled for participation in an attempted uprising spearheaded by Adolfo de la Huerta in the 1920s. He forged a career for himself as both an actor and director, helming over 40 films over the course of the roughly 50 years he spent in Hollywood.

It was in the early part of his career that he came into contact with Cedric Gibbons via Gibbons”s wife, Mexican actress Dolores del Rio. Gibbons was the art director for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, an early AMPAS member and the man responsible for overseeing the design of Oscar”s statuette.

The art director asked Fernandez to pose nude for the sketch that would serve as the template for the statuette”s mold. Fernandez “reluctantly” agreed, thus solidifying his place in cinema history. Artist George Stanley utilized Fernandez”s form to create the sculpture that became the basis for the first Oscar statuette given out in 1929 and an image that has graced the mantles of hundreds of Hollywood”s chosen elite since that time.

Fernandez is notable for his portrayal of General Mapache in Sam Peckinpah”s 1969 classic western “The Wild Bunch” and as the director of “Maria Candelaria,” which starred his old friend del Rio and won the 1946 Cannes Grand Prix for beat feature (among other endeavors). It is the physical inspiration he provided for the Oscar that has burned its way into the global consciousness on the grandest scale, however.

Yesterday a friend and I had joked that the power and er, scope, of Michael Fassbender”s bare body had earned him an “intimidation snub” at this year”s Academy Awards for his truly stunning work in Steve McQueen”s “Shame.” So I find it somewhat delightful to report today that the (seemingly) prudish AMPAS is handing out the immortalized likeness of a man in all his dishabille glory as their highest honor tonight, as they have done every year since 1929.

Viva la au natural!

For year-round entertainment news and commentary follow @JRothC on Twitter.

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(Bringing this back around one more time with all the pertinent stuff for today. Think I’m settled on the points system.)

For the third-straight year it looks like we’ll be using Picktainment’s set-up for our annual Oscar pool. Some of you may still be members of the site from previous years, but if not, you have to first join up here. After you’ve done that, go ahead and go to In Contention’s Oscar pool here and join the group. After that, you’re all ready to make your picks, which you can do by clicking on the “edit my picks” link there.

Meanwhile, HitFix has you all squared away if you’re looking for a printable Oscar ballot. You can download ours here and check off your picks to follow along on Oscar night. You can also join the site-wide Oscar pool here. There will be a separate prize for the winner there.

Lastly, Oscar predictions: mine, Guy’s, Gerard’s, Greg Ellwood’s and my Oscar Talk colleague Anne Thompson’s. See you in the live blog, which will kick off in a few hours.

Tonight brings us the final sparkly conclusion to the 2012 awards season. We”ve mourned the exclusion of films and performances we championed (“Margaret,” “Shame,” “Drive” and so on) and we”ve acquiesced to the inevitable wins and losses of those that were nominated.

Or have we?

As The Guardian notes, Seth Rogen, who”s best known for his work as a broad comedic actor (though he broke some new-ish ground this year with “50/50” and “The Green Hornet”) spoke out in defense of genre films in a recent interview with Film News. “I honestly thought ‘Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” was one of the best movies of the year,” he said. “It got no love from awards, whatsoever. I loved that fucking movie! It was great! And, I thought ‘Drive” was awesome too. That got nominated for an Independent Spirit award, but didn’t get any Oscar nominations.”

Of course, “Drive” did get one nod — in one of the races most people just don’t pay any attention (Best Sound Editing) — but interestingly enough, Rogen”s forte, comedy (which is generally underserved by the Academy) made a strong showing this year. The Best Actor frontrunners are the leads of two dramedies: “The Artist” and “The Descendents” (with the former poised to sweep the Oscars). And “Bridesmaids””s Melissa McCarthy was a strong presence all throughout the precursor season prior to securing a nod for Best Supporting Actress alongside Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wigg for Best Original Screenplay.

However, there is a decided absence of large-scale event films present in the top-tier nominations this year. Genre and Oscar seem to have an ambiguous relationship. Westerns didn”t really begin to make a showing until they were a novelty. It is as if the Academy feels somehow adverse to the inclusion of studio mainstays, which were once westerns and are now largely grandiose comic-book adaptations and actioners.

There are of course a few notable exceptions to the rule. Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy certainly left a footprint on Oscar, as did James Cameron”s “Avatar.” It”s possible that the Academy found that those particular endeavors were simply too big to ignore, or perhaps there is a case to be made that if a genre film has merit (and is reasonably well known) it has a chance of making it to the nominations list. “District 9” might be an example of just such an offering (don”t get me started on “Moon,” though), but undeniably it needed the extra padding of 10 nominees to get there.

And as significant as “Avatar””s (contentious) inclusion was, there is an equally glaring example of what is, for many, an egregious genre omission in the form of “The Dark Knight” in 2008 (which had a big hand in the shift to a larger Best Picture field in the first place).

Ultimately, we are often befuddled by what makes the cut versus what does not and are, with equal frequency, in disagreement no matter the genre. There is a decisive camp that would name “Drive” as the best film of the year. Certainly there was an outcry when Albert Brooks”s name was not called on January 24. Sadly, none of the film”s supporters seem to be voting members of either the Academy or the Independent Spirit Awards. Though I must say that I count “Drive” as more of an art house miss the likes of “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” “Shame,” or “Margaret” than a genre snub.

Kris”s Oscar Talk co-host Anne Thompson named “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” as one of her top 10 films of the year, and I believe that there is a strong portion of the critics” circle that would prefer to see “Rise” in the Best Picture mix in lieu of surprise last-minute addition “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.” We could, ostensibly, count both “Midnight in Paris” and “Hugo” as films with fantasy elements, but those selections also have the weight of Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese, respectively, at the helm.

Part of the purpose of the Academy Awards is to increase the revenue of the films that are nominated, so there may be a subconscious bias against films which are already industry bread and butter staples and don’t need the boost. Or, it may just be that the old(er) white(ish) gentlemen that are running the show are just not hip to the aesthetic merits of the majority of genre fair.

What will be interesting to note is how the Academy and the critical realm at large responds to this year”s crop of genre offerings. If they live up to their perceived potential, “The Dark Knight Rises” and/or “Prometheus” may just be the fanboy films to fight for and win Oscar glory.

Or not.

For year-round entertainment news and commentary follow @JRothC on Twitter.

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It’s Oscar Sunday and by tonight, it’ll all be over but the cryin’, as they say. But as we gear up for today’s festivities, I thought I’d take a look at the box office of this year’s Oscar nominees for the first time this season.

I was happy to quietly do away with our already thin box office coverage a few months back because it’s just not an element of the business I can invest in too much. Often times, even more so than observing an Oscar race, it can be pretty disheartening.

Of course, the biggest box office champ of the year was “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2,” which raked in over $380 million at the domestic box office this year. That was good enough to significantly top the previous top money-grabber of the franchise, 2001’s “The Sorcerer’s Stone,” and it also marked the first time a Potter film topped a “Transformers” entry.

It’s a good thing the film banked that much because I imagine that kind of dough came in handy when Warner Bros. was busy spending a fortune on an ill-fated Oscar campaign on behalf of the film for Best Picture. While part of me thinks, “Man, what a waste,” I guess you kind of have to give it a shot, particularly with big fat passes coming in from the critical fraternity like that.

Speaking earlier of Michael Bay’s giant robots, “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” came in second on the domestic till with just over $350 million in box office receipts. Like “Deathly Hallows: Part 2,” the film scored three nominations in craft categories. Uniquely, Paramount went all out campaigning the film for those areas in phase two, with vibrant commercial spots and big ads in the trades. It was unprecedented, but it was smart, not because it will pay off with a win (though it could in one of the sound categories), but because it keeps certain people happy. Certain people whose movies make the kind of money that allows for the studio to take a bath on a film like “Hugo” that cost over $150 million and only brought back $60 million.

Those two films, along with the non-nominated “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides,” were the only billion-dollar grossers worldwide this year. Naturally.

Moving along, a box office story right before the season began, at the tale end of the summer, was Tate Taylor’s “The Help.” After opening in second place (right behind the second weekend of “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” which, by the way, should be noted along with its $176 million gross in this space), the film shot to the number one spot in its second week and stayed there for three straight weekends. It was a stroke of brilliance, finding that kind of a soft spot in the calendar (nothing of note opened against the film until it took the combined might of “Contagion,” “Drive” and “The Lion King 3D” all opening on the same day to take it down a few notches). By then, though, the story was made.

That’s partly why Viola Davis entered the season as the frontrunner in the Best Actress category. She maintained it throughout the season for various other reasons, but that cash flow injection at the start of things really helped pave the way for the film in general. It settled right around $169 million domestic, which is a considerable victory.

Also finishing up right around $169 million, in fact a little bit lower, was “Bridesmaids.” The late spring/early summer entry didn’t appear to be an awards possibility until Melissa McCarthy surprisingly won the Emmy in September. Then people started talking, particularly about her. Then they started talking about Best Original Screenplay. Then Best Picture. Then the film nailed down nominations from the PGA, WGA, etc. and a (good) campaign was building.

Ultimately, it was McCarthy and Kristen Wiig & Annie Mumolo’s script that would represent the film at the Oscars, a considerable triumph for Universal, while the whole saga inspired a lot of champions demanding, as they did with “The Hangover” two years ago, that comedy get a fair shake in awards season.

Animated films are always noteworthy on a box office piece, and of this year’s nominees, “Kung Fu Panda 2” was on top with $165 million domestic. “Puss in Boots” ($149 million), “Rio” ($143 million) and “Rango” ($123 million) were all around the same tier of the year’s totals.

The only other $100 million grosser of this year’s nominees (though just barely) was David Fincher’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” which was a late bloomer. Or at least, a slow grower. Early dismissals of its fiscal take by the media (including yours truly) ended up off the mark, but I nevertheless think most involved with this global phenom property expected a bigger burst at the box office than that.

“The Muppets” and “Real Steel” only have a single nomination apiece, but I should mention their $88 million and $85 million grosses nevertheless, while the next Best Picture nominee on the chart is Steven Spielberg’s “War Horse,” currently sitting at $79 million (certainly lower than many expected given how strongly it came oout of the holiday gate). That’s just a breath ahead of “The Descendants”‘s $78 million, “The Adventures of Tintin”‘s $76 million and “Moneyball”‘s $75 million.

And then, finally, we come to “Hugo,” knocking on the door of a mere $70 million. Some wonder whether the film’s abysmal showing might be reflected in a reticence to award it very many Oscars. I guess we’ll know in a few hours.

The next film on the list was an undeniable box office story this year. With $55 million in the bank from domestic receipts, “Midnight in Paris” was smartly kept in theaters by Sony Pictures Classics throughout the summer and into the awards season long enough for it to become Woody Allen’s highest grossing movie to date just as all the other awards contenders were coming out for their spotlight at this festival or that press screening.

I lost track of how “The Ides of March” was doing throughout the year, but it looks like it stalled right at $40 million, while “Drive” came to the end of its road at $35 million. Then we come to “The Artist.”

The Weinstein Company played its pony in the old Miramax way yet again, the film’s first significant expansion coming right after the Oscar nominations. “The King’s Speech” had already been on over 1,000 screens for 10 days when the nominations announced last year, but just prior to that expansion, it was sitting on $35 million. Only 200 screens were added for “The Artist” after the Oscar nominations this year and it had nearly $19 million in the bank just before its first expansion to 1,000 screens two and a half weeks ago.

Since then, the film has dropped some screens here, added some screens there, and will likely go out onto even more this weekend with a Best Picture Oscar in tow. It will have about $32 million when that happens, whereas “The King’s Speech” was already on well over 2,000 screens and in $100 million territory by the time the Oscars were held.

These are very different films, of course. So there are very different variations on a similar strategy going on here. I think the box office story on “The Artist” may have a few chapters yet to be written, and it’ll be interesting to see how audiences discover it (and take to it) after this weekend.

Next there’s Scott Rudin’s other film, “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,” which has already expanded to as many as 2,600 screens and retreated to about 500. It’s looking like $33 million is the ceiling for that one as it’s liming toward $31 million currently.

And finally, just to make an exception and step outside the top 100 domestic grossers of the year, the last Best Picture nominee of the lot, “The Tree of Life.” $13 million isn’t a bad get for a film like that and Fox Searchlight was certainly pleased with that. It was a good counter-programming play throughout the summer and here it is, in my opinion, the single best film nominated for an Oscar this year.

That ought to tell you plenty about box office’s correlation to quality.

For year-round entertainment news and awards season commentary follow @kristapley on Twitter.

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I’m usually pretty disciplined about this, but with the Academy Awards only 11 hours away, I couldn’t resist making two, well, eleventh-hour changes to my predictions — both in the perennially tricky short categories.

I initially went with the flow in the Best Animated Short category, siding with most pundits with “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore” on the basis of its careful craft and worthy message, and trying to ignore my own reservations about the short’s tweeness and relative overlength. (It’s the “Hugo” of the animated short category for me: I feel guilty for not liking it more, but there’s something about how very improving it is that keeps me at arm’s length.)

Finally, however safe the choice seems, I just can’t believe in it. So, with memories of 2009’s hip, against-the-grain victory for “Logorama” on my mind, I’m switching my prediction to BAFTA and Sundance winner “A Morning Stroll.” Not the best or most artful of the nominees, but the most amusingly singular — and its triptych of animation techniques is a snazzy gimmick that I expect will tickle some voters.

Meanwhile, I hold out hope that the most visually rich and narratively rewarding of the nominees, Canadian gem “Wild Life,” could somehow come up through the middle. It’s a good category this year — certainly much better than the dismal Live Action Short field, in which I’ve already had my say, and am sticking to it.

As if to balance my new anti-consensus prediction in the animated field, I’m switching to the majority pick in Best Documentary Short — “Saving Face.” Don’t ask me why. I think too much about this nonsense as it is. Anyway, with those adjustments made, here’s my FINAL final predictions list.

Finally, a couple of readers have asked me why I haven’t posted a list of my “should win” picks. I guess I hadn’t thought of it as I’d already made my preferences clear in the Oscar Guide entries I wrote, but here, gathered in one convenient place, are my personal favorites in each category. As you can see, I’m set to have a reasonably happy night. 

Best Picture: “The Artist”

Best Director: Michel Hazanavicius, “The Artist”

Best Actor: Jean Dujardin, “The Artist”

Best Actress: Viola Davis, “The Help”

Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer, “Beginners”

Best Supporting Actress: Jessica Chastain, “The Help”

Best Original Screenplay: “A Separation”

Best Adapted Screenplay: “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”

Best Foreign Language Film: “A Separation”

Best Animated Feature: “Rango”

Best Documentary Feature: (abstain — only four seen, though “Pina” is the best of those)

Best Art Direction: “Hugo”

Best Cinematography: “The Tree of Life”

Best Costume Design: “Jane Eyre”

Best Film Editing: “Moneyball”

Best Makeup: “The Iron Lady”

Best Original Score: “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”

Best Original Song: “Man or Muppet” from “The Muppets”

Best Sound Editing: “Drive”

Best Sound Mixing: “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”

Best Visual Effects: “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”

Best Animated Short: “Wild Life”

Best Live Action Short: “Tuba Atlantic”

Best Documentary Short: (abstain — not seen all nominees) 

For more views on movies, awards season and other pursuits, follow @GuyLodge on Twitter. 

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I was really irritated sitting there in the tent on the beach in Santa Monica this year watching the Independent Spirit Awards unfold.

Things started out great, though. Seth Rogen’s opening monologue killed, even though a number of the people in there apparently weren’t equipped to grasp the humor. I was happy to see Christopher Plummer, however expected, take yet another supporting actor trophy for his performance in “Beginners.”

Even though I called it, I was nevertheless stoked for Will Reiser surprising with a win in the Best First Screenplay category for “50/50.” And even though I’d have much preferred seeing Jessica Chastain get the good will, it was hard not to be happy for Shailene Woodley, who won Best Supporting Female after she was snubbed by the Academy. Then things took a different turn. “The Artist” just started winning everything. Everyone just bowed down. Couldn’t we have this one moment of solace away from that steamroller? Apparently not.

But I really hit the ceiling when Michael Shannon was unceremoniously snubbed in favor of Jean Dujardin in the Best Male Lead category. Are you kidding me? If Shannon can’t win at the Indie Spirits for the year’s single greatest performance, what does he have to do? Indeed, “Take Shelter” went home empty-handed after leading the nominations field along with “The Artist.” Ugh.

First commercial break I could, I moseyed over and made sure he knew I thought that was bullshit. “You haven’t gotten your proper due this year,” I told him. His “Take Shelter” co-star, Chastain, interjected: “I agree. It’s the best performance of the year.”

I love Shannon for legitimately not caring but it really rubbed me wrong. Earlier in the afternoon I was talking to him and “Goodbye, Solo” star Souléymane Sy Savané, and Savané couldn’t stop gushing about the performance. Indeed, I think Shannon is a guy his fellow actors really respect and admire, and much like Viola Davis, I imagine he’ll work his way through the industry for a bit until one day, it’ll just be time. And inarguable, at that.

Anyway, tomorrow’s sure-fire Best Picture winner ran the table, pretty much: Best Feature, Best Director, Best Male Lead and Best Cinematography. Most of the principals, however, were en route from France after having a big night at the César Awards yesterday. Penelope Ann Miller kept accepting honors on its behalf until the Best Director prize was finally presented. The only award it lost was Best Screenplay, which went (just as painfully) to “The Descendants.”

And yet, odd as it sounds, I think this kind of recognition is probably “The Artist”‘s most richly deserved of the year. It is nothing if not a fiercely independent enterprise that found a wonderful Godfather in Harvey Weinstein, like so many films so many years ago. Alas, amid the season’s flurry, this just feels like chafing.

Meanwhile, “Martha Marcy May Marlene” lost yet another Best First Feature award to “Margin Call,” while Michelle Williams yanked the Best Actress prize away from Elizabeth Olsen.

I had to get out of there. Fast. And so I did. We all deal with off years, seasons where the flow of things just couldn’t be more outside your own personal take on things. For me, that’s 2011 in a nutshell. But I guess I can’t argue with John Cassavetes Award winner Dee Rees: “Any Saturday where you get to wear a sparkly hoodie and have two whiskeys before noon is fucking awesome.” Well, I guess I wasn’t wearing a sparkly hoodie. But still.

Check out the full list of Independent Spirit Award winners below. And once more, before tomorrow’s big show, remember to look back at all the ups and downs of the 2011-2012 film awards season via The Circuit.

Best Feature: “The Artist”

Best Director: Michel Hazanavicius, “The Artist”

Best Male Lead: Jean Dujardin, “The Artist”

Best Female Lead: Michelle Williams, “My Week with Marilyn”

Best Supporting Male: Christopher Plummer, “Beginners”

Best Supporting Female: Shailene Woodley, “The Descendants”

Best First Feature: “Margin Call”

Best First Screenplay: “50/50”

Best Cinematography: “The Artist”

Best International Film: “A Separation”

Best Documentary: “The Interrupters”

Robert Altman Award: “Margin Call”

John Cassavetes Award: “Pariah”

Piaget Producers Award: “Take Shelter”

Someone to Watch Award: Mark Jackson, “Without”

Truer Than Fiction Award: “Where Soldiers Come From”

If you want to watch this year’s Film Independent Spirit Awards, they’ll be aired on the IFC Channel at 10pm ET/PT. (Though don’t expect to hear Rogen’s oft-tweeted joke about Elizabeth Olsen — “I can’t believe she was the accident.” — as it was edited from the broadcast. Aw, take a joke, guys.)

For year-round entertainment news and awards season commentary follow @kristapley on Twitter.

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Okay, I’ll level with you. One fairly major reason I want “The Artist” to win Best Picture at tomorrow’s Academy Awards ceremony has nothing whatsoever to do with its lithe charms as a Hollywood fable, its glistening appropriation of a long-dormant screen style, the quicksilver star turn of its leading man or even its eminently adoptable Jack Russell.

It has nothing to do with the film being a silent-cinema gateway for less informed audiences, an all-too-rare foreign crossover, or a witty marker of the distance the medium has traveled in 80-odd years.

It has nothing to do with my relative feelings about its rival nominees, or with the disproportionate critical backlash its success has inspired. Not that these aren’t all factors worthy of consideration, but this reason has nothing to do with the movie at all.

It’s because I have money on it.

Back in September, when the notion of a black-and-white French silent film winning the industry’s most high-profile honor was still deemed sufficiently outlandish by the bookies to merit 20-1 odds, I placed a modest amount on that very outcome — having been convinced since Cannes that it was going to be a heavyweight contender. If it wins, well, we Brits are too proud to talk about money — but suffice to say that two bothersome March expenses, my annual water bill and a new pair of glasses, will be covered. Thanks, Mr. Weinstein, I owe you one.

As it happens, a lot of critics and bloggers covering this year’s awards race might say that new glasses are the very least I require if I’m hypothetically voting for “The Artist” — if you believe some of the more aggressive screeds that have been written against the film in the past few weeks, its fans could use a brain and a soul to go with their freshly unclouded eyes. Criticisms leveled against the film by detractors range in acerbity from the mildly unamused (“thin” is an adjective we’ve heard a lot lately) to the more contentiously damning (it’s artistically regressive, some claim) to the worrying xenophobic (“French” is a description of origin, not a value judgment, guys).

Rarely does an Oscar frontrunner ever cruise to the podium undogged by dissent of some sort, though the novelty factors at play in “The Artist” have made it an easier target of derision than most. Piqued by the belittling tone of many critics’ dismissals of the film — it takes a smart, sensitive writer to charge a film with triviality without making similar implications about its admirers — many pro-“Artist” parties haven’t responded with much more nuance, defensively slapping down the slap-downs with their own accusations of joylessness, while limiting their defenses of the film to vague, snuggly reminders of its puppyish appeal that don’t themselves serve Michel Hazanavicius’s vision very well. By the time such arguments invariably end with Martin Scorsese and “Hugo” getting dragged in as alternative mascots for rear view cinephilia, the film itself has rather been left behind.  

What, then — away from the Oscar race, away from the backlash, away from the external, perception-altering baggage that comes with being a Weinstein property, away from the educational burden that proponents and skeptics alike have placed upon the film — is so great about “The Artist?”

Returning to the review I wrote of the film at Cannes last May, I was surprised to find how completely I agreed with it even at second and third blush: virtues and shortcomings I thought only became more apparent on repeat viewings over six months later had clearly registered at the time, and the film hasn’t grown or shrunk for it.

It is not a film, it should be said, of elusive or opalescent subtext, nor is that a bad thing: the clean lines, open thematics and unmasked sentiment of “The Artist”‘s narrative hearken more tellingly back to classical modes of Hollywood storytelling than the attractive period curlicues of its formal styling. Its simple convex-function story of the fall and rise of George Valentin, an outmoded movie star at the cusp of Hollywood’s uncertain new sound era, forced to learn new tricks from a younger ingenue who has benefited from getting in at the revolution’s ground floor, is, as innumerable observers have noted, a somewhat distorted, water-stained Xerox of “Singin’ in the Rain” and the endlessly remade “A Star is Born.”

Hazanavicius is not pretending otherwise. “The Artist” is a film that operates on the assumption that these narratives have long since entered the public domain, and are ripe for gentle revision if not outright reappraisal — in this case, not by setting them in a new context but by counting on the viewer’s own 21st-century context to assert an adjusted perspective. It’s what we recognize about Valentin’s crisis — the amorphous replaceability of creative beings, the infidelity of audiences, the simultaneous allure and resistibility of social and technological progress — that makes the film slyly a work of its time, though it operates perfectly elegantly as swoonsome pastiche too.  

“The Artist” is a film too excited about the future — both that of its characters and that of its medium — to qualify strictly as a nostalgic exercise. Valentin’s career isn’t destroyed by the arrival or sound, but altered and potentially elevated; as much as Hazanavicius treasures the silvery surfaces, unfashionable romanticism and structural economy of a vast, now underseen bracket of vintage American moviemaking, his film is less a “they don’t make ’em like they used to” elegy than a paean to adaptability and endurance. “We’re still making ’em,” the film joyously says. “We can make anything we want to.”

The film’s playful silent-movie anachronisms — many of them aural, from its cute sound-invasion tricks to its movie-musical gestures to its Bernard Herrmann-interpolating score — may have aggravated certain purists who are missing the point that the film isn’t a precise, postmodern sermon to a single cinematic form, but a celebration of everything that is yet to come in its world.

Though its more specific quirks and references have obviously led its publicity, what Hazanavicius has fashioned here is not a valentine to silent cinema, but a valentine to cinema itself. It’s little wonder that industry peers have latched onto it at a time when head-spinningly rapid developments in 3D and performance capture have them feeling as artistically insecure as George Valentin: not, as detractors suggest, because it buries its head in the sand of reassuring retro sparkle, but because it’s a film with warm, open-armed faith in the future. Most favorable critics have tied the virtues of “The Artist” to its wit and fleetness, and it’s certainly those airier qualities that draw us in, but its kind-hearted trust in art and artists alike to stay the course moved me more profoundly than anything else in the Best Picture lineup. 

As I write this, however, I realize that it might sound over-emphatic in ascribing weight and consequence to a film loved by many simply as an entertainment — as if there’s anything at all simple about entertaining audiences as “The Artist” so coolly and spryly does. Is it redundant at this point to praise the film just for being a delight? It shouldn’t be: there’s as much grace and intelligence in the lickety-split timing of its comedy, the sweetly sincere romantic rapport between Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo and the modest splendor of its visual design as there is in its baitier textual suggestions. It’s a long time since the Academy rallied around something that is this much honest-to-God fun: comedy, even of the smile-rather-than-laugh school, is a regrettably underserved genre in Oscar history, and many observers’ kneejerk equation of lightness with disposability gives us some idea why.

Celebrating the film for what it isn’t, particularly within the Academy’s hall of fame, isn’t the most productive line of advocacy, but it’s hard for me not to be tickled by what an odd duck “The Artist” is in the race, and will surely remain in the list of Best Picture winners — however irrationally cynics suggest that the very patronage of Harvey Weinstein makes it an easy awards grab. It’s not really the film’s achievement, but yes, there’s something cheekily, romantically subversive about a mostly silent, black-and-white comedy — a curio, yes, but a proud and perceptive one — winning the Academy’s top honor at a time when commercial filmmaking is still as firmly in a biggerbetterfastermore state of mind as it was in 1929.

And even if it’s the film’s American setting and cultural history that hits most voters where they live, there’s something excitingly progressive about a French production landing the prize when global financing is making notions of national cinema ever more permeable and heterogeneous: it’s about bloody time a film that doesn’t identify chiefly as American or British won Best Picture, and even if “The Artist”‘s subtitles are still comfortingly English, it’s at least a compromised step in the right direction.

It’s not often the Academy lands upon a frontrunner that allows them to honor traditional Hollywood storytelling, ballsy art house individualism and a touch of world-cinema exoticism in one fell swoop: projecting how the film might age is a fool’s errand, but when the backlash grudgingly subsides, I’d wager that a number of usually opposed Oscar-watching factions will remain quite happy with this one. For now, however, I have another bet on my mind. 

For more views on movies, awards season and other pursuits, follow @GuyLodge on Twitter. 

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It seemed an easy task when I told Guy and Gerard to follow Roth’s lead and help me turn the idea of “Oscar’s big miss” into a quick mini-series at the end of the season. Roth’s pick was undeniable. Gerard’s was inspired. Guy’s was well-spotted. What would I spring for?

Look, the truth is there are a lot of movies the Academy hasn’t properly recognized over the last 84 years, and they go all the way to near the beginning. “Metropolis,” “The Passion of Joan of Arc,” “City Lights,” “King Kong,” “Modern Times,” “Sullivan’s Travels,” “Paths of Glory,” “The Last Temptation of Christ,” “The Fountain,” “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” “Another Year” and if not genre filmmaking in general, the entirety of the western genre surely all made for compelling picks. But what equates to a “big miss” anyway? What does it mean?

Does it mean the Academy looks foolish in hindsight? Does it translate to just an unfortunate opportunity lost? The definition I settled on was merely the concept of not recognizing greatness in its own time, and indeed, I think the test of time is necessary to really gauge.

The sights and sounds of Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly’s “Singin’ in the Rain” endure to this day, not just as registered film memories, but as tattoos on the collective soul of the medium. A showering woman shrieking in terror at the sight of a murderer’s blade, a spaceship lodged in the eye of the moon, a boulder chasing an adventurous archaeologist through a jungle corridor, a flight of attack helicopters charging to the sounds of Wagner, a cut from a tossed Simian femur to an orbital satellite and Gene Kelly atop a street lamp base, arm outstretched, crooning to the heavens. They are are undeniable portraits in the classic wing of film history.

The film grabbed two nods, so it wasn’t completely unrecognized. But a nice notice for supporting actress Jean Hagen and an obvious tip of the hat to the film’s original music was hardly what such an eventual staple of that level deserved. The Best Picture nominees that year were “High Noon” (one of few westerns that ever seemed to garner the approval of the Academy), “Ivanhoe,” “Moulin Rouge” (of the John Huston variety), “The Quiet Man” (featuring “High Noon” detractor John Wayne) and eventual winner, “The Greatest Show on Earth.”

It’s funny, the latter film, Cecil B. DeMille’s Ringling Brothers-inspired tale of a circus company and its leading honcho, has become one of the most infamous Best Picture victors of all time. It inspires a lot of vitriol. I never really feel that toward it, though, probably because it was a favorite of my Dad’s growing up and was always harmless enough. Funny how that works, but I digress.

When the American Film Institute issued its first “100 Years…100 Movies” list in 1997, “Singin’ in the Rain” was the highest ranking film that didn’t receive a Best Picture nomination (#10). No, the AFI isn’t a dictator of objective quality, but it’s significant because if nothing else, that list was a barometer of American cinema’s classic beats. And “Singin’ in the Rain” is just one of those films that somehow wasn’t recognized as great in its time.

The film was one of the first batch selected for preservation by the National Film Registry in 1989. It was tapped right along such films as “Casablanca,” “Citizen Kane,” “Dr. Strangelove,” “The General,” “Gone with the Wind,” “On the Waterfront,” “The Searchers,” “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” “Some Like it Hot,” “Star Wars,” “Sunset Boulevard,” “Vertigo” and “The Wizard of Oz” that year, as well as fellow class of 1953 alum “High Noon.” Not bad company, and indeed, a couple of those films could be spotlighted for a piece such as this.

You watch “Singin’ in the Rain” today and maybe you think it’s hokey. Maybe it has a high key atmosphere that feels safe and warm and not all that challenging, but it tells a wonderful story in inventive ways, a story remarkably similar to the one we’re about to see awarded a Best Picture Oscar this year, in fact. And all I can really think about is all the nominations Donen and Kelly’s film didn’t even receive, while also wondering whether there is a single moment in this year’s eventual victor (or, indeed, any in recent memory) that will ever seem worthy next to that image of Kelly, well, singin’ in the rain.

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(The Oscar Guide has been your chaperone through the Academy’s 24 categories awarding excellence in film. A new installment hit every weekday in the run-up to the Oscars on February 26, with today’s Best Picture finale being the cherry on top.)

And here we are. The 2011 Oscar Guide has finally reached its destination: the nine-film Best Picture category, which saw its biggest surprise in the very fact that it stretched to that many nominees. It became somewhat obvious down the stretch that five films were assured a spot, with another highly likely. The extraneous possibilities seemed to number no more than three or four, but two of them got in.

The question, though, is did the alteration in the Best Picture voting process really do all that much? Did it really breed the suspense it so clearly aimed for? Would it have mattered all that much if a full slate of 10 had remained in place? Well, to “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” or “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” perhaps. At the end of the day, though, the constant tinkering with the process has done little more than keep people considering it and talking about it. Maybe that was the goal and the joke’s on us.

The nominees are…

“The Artist” (Thomas Langmann, producer)

“The Descendants” (Jim Burke, Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, producers)

“Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” (Scott Rudin, producer)

“The Help” (Brunson Green, Chris Columbus and Michael Barnathan, producers)

“Hugo” (Graham King and Martin Scorsese, producers)

“Midnight in Paris” (Letty Aronson and Stephen Tenenbaum, producers)

“Moneyball” (Michael De Luca, Rachael Horovitz and Brad Pitt, producers)

“The Tree of Life” (Sarah Green, Bill Pohlad, Dede Gardner and Grant Hill, producers)

“War Horse” (Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy, producers)

As mentioned, it was probably one of David Fincher and Tomas Alfredson’s chilly adaptations of very different novels that missed out on the tenth spot (most likely the former). But I imagine films like “Bridesmaids” and “The Ides of March” had their champions, as did fringe hopefuls like “Drive.” Alas, this category is again, as always, all about boiling it down to what’s generally agreeable.

And right at the top of that list is the frontrunning French silent ode to cinema’s early days, “The Artist.” Producer Thomas Langmann must be tired (doubt it) of accepting Best Picture honors by now. The film has clearly been the dominant force on the precursor circuit, where even the harshest of critics were somehow swept up by considerable charm despite thin narrative virtue. With PGA, DGA, BFCA, BAFTA and Golden Globe wins in its pocket, how could it possibly lose? You predict against it at your own peril as Harvey Weinstein and his team have played this season like a harp. One more speech, Mr. Langmann.

Things were looking good for “The Descendants” for a while there. People were acting like Alexander Payne‘s film had a real shot at winning the Best Picture prize and then it went and took the drama win at the Golden Globe awards. Well, that might have been the peak of the season for the film, as even George Clooney is looking dicey for a win in the Best Actor field, while the Best Adapted Screenplay category could even slip away (despite a last gasp of awardage last weekend). The film clearly has its fans and will get plenty of votes, but at the end of the day, especially once we got a look at the nominees, this became a two-horse race. And this wasn’t one of the horses. (Payne is nominated alongside fellow producers Jim Burke and Jim Taylor.)

The big surprise for most when the Best Picture nominees were announced was the inclusion of “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.” Though it must have been bittersweet for producer Scott Rudin, as his other hopeful, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” missed the cut. Nevertheless, as we told you here, voters really responded to this film and couldn’t stop talking about it in the lead-up to the nominations announcement. Here it sits, and probably not at the bottom of the stack of possibilities. Nevertheless, it won’t win and it’s happy to be nominated. Onward.

I still maintain that one of five Best Picture nominees in a typical season would have been “The Help,” produced by Brunson Green, Chris Columbus and Michael Barnathan. It might be lacking director, screenplay and below-the-line nominations, but it more than makes up for that in actor approval. SAG handed it three awards like it was nothing and it’s expected to win two performance Oscars at the end of the day. That’s a lot of (somehow underestimated) firepower, and with a campaign built off the back of that and major box office success, it has had a rather pleasing ride throughout the circuit. That all ends tomorrow with a loss in this category, but no one can say it didn’t compete.

Martin Scorsese‘s “Hugo,” co-produced by frequent collaborator Graham King, is the one nipping at “The Artist”‘s heels, if anything is. With 11 nominations, the film led the pack on the morning of January 24 and has burned through a lot of cash on the way to a hopeful upset. Some still think Scorsese has a shot at taking the directing prize, but this season couldn’t be more defined if it were in black and white. I expect the film will do well throughout the crafts categories, and maybe there’s a sliver of hope that it’ll pull the rug out from under the alpha dog of the season. But I highly doubt it.

I was guilty of underestimating “Midnight in Paris” most of the season, but ever since its Cannes bow in May, it really has been in the thick of this race. It most likely would have been one of five nominees in a typical year and just managed to rub voters right throughout the season. Maybe Woody Allen wins the original screenplay prize, but producers Letty Aronson and Stephen Tenenbaum might as well get comfortable on Oscar night. They’re likely to stay in their seats. Still, it’s a big coup for Sony Pictures Classics, which turned this into Allen’s biggest box office success and doesn’t always have the best of luck in the Best Picture category.

Brad Pitt may have had his name nixed from the list of nominees on another Best Picture contender this season, but he gets to wear his bid for “Moneyball” (nominated alongside Michael De Luca and Rachael Horovitz) loud and proud. If not for that other film being in the mix, I’d say this one was the most deserving of the nominees, but it’s still a fine contender and hopefully won’t go home empty-handed on Oscar night. The story of the film’s embattled production history is almost as compelling as the story it tells on screen, but as an underdog tale, the road looks to end tomorrow.

That other Pitt film, by the way, is Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life,” which managed to tap a potent fan base and show up both here and in Best Director. The Academy allowed an exception so that four producers, rather than the usual three, could be listed on the nominees tally. But Pitt had to take a back seat to his Plan B partner Dede Gardner and frequent Malick collaborators Sarah Green, Bill Pohlad and Grant Hill. The film is easily the most deserving of the nominees, but it’s probably the least likely to win. Nevertheless, it’s nice that it even gets the distinction “Best Picture nominee” in the first place.

Finally, after getting mauled on the precursor and, particularly, guild circuits, Steven Spielberg‘s “War Horse” (co-produced by his right hand girl, Kathleen Kennedy) managed to be resurrected by the Academy after all. Not only that, but it clocked in six nominations, tying with “Moneyball” and for third on the tally. Clearly it hit the right heartstrings for enough Academy members to get it there, while I’m sure there’s plenty of respect for Spielberg that played a hand as well. Nevertheless, even though things seemed different before the start of things, this will most certainly not be “The Year of The Beard” at the Oscars this season. Mea culpa.

Will win: “The Artist”

Could win: “Hugo”

Should win: “The Tree of Life”

Should have been here: “Margaret”

Keep track of our current rankings in the Best Picture category via its Contenders page here.

What do you think deserves the Oscar for Best Picture? Who got robbed? Have your say in the comments section below!

(That wraps up this year’s annual Oscar Guide feature. Feel free to go back and read through each of the various installments here.)

For year-round entertainment news and awards season commentary follow @kristapley on Twitter.

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Well, enough belly-aching over this nonsense. Pick something and move on. So I have.

This morning’s Oscar Talk let you into the bizarre, weird, obsessive head space of figuring out how 6,000 people are gonna vote. Sometimes it’s easier when you don’t have a dog in the hunt (and I certainly don’t this year — at least out of what’s plausible), but not this time around. The major categories seem relatively decided but it’s throughout the craft categories where you start to see potential scenarios popping up all over the place.

There were four categories still giving me pause when we wrapped up the podcast, areas that I felt I might just revisit and flip-flop to something else and yada, yada, yada. They were Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Sound Mixing and Best Visual Effects. But, well, I didn’t. I’m sticking with what I called there and calling it a year. Let’s see what happens.

But in the way of final reflection and to just note some rhythms of the last few weeks of the season, “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” for instance, started to lose some steam in the one category it seemed assured at the start of the season: Best Visual Effects. It could fall to Best Picture bridesmaid “Hugo” or BAFTA winner “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2,” but maybe it’s all a mirage. Still, there wasn’t a big presence over the last month for the film and you have to keep reminding the Academy why this or that should be considered, unfortunately. Maybe Fox figures you don’t need much reminding on a film like this. I hope they’re right.

Best Cinematography has had me at a loss all season. The temptation, of course, is to chalk it up to “The Tree of Life,” deserving as it may be and as dominant as it may have been on the precursor circuit. The Best Picture and Best Director nominations have made it easy for most to ignore how fragile this arena is this year and the potential for great photography to again get the shaft because of the divisiveness of a film. I’m going with “Hugo,” but its largely indoor setting has always given me pause. I really think “War Horse” could be in a position to upset here, while most who aren’t picking “The Tree of Life” are going with the black and white photography of “The Artist.” I see all the angles. But I’m springing for the 3D.

In the sound categories, I’m at odds with myself. When in doubt, pick the war film. And if you doubt that logic, let me just ask: Did you pick “Avatar” to win both categories two years ago? Ouch. There are stats and considerations and a lot of just cobwebby logic leaning me away from “War Horse” in the sound mixing category when my instinct is to pick it for both, but perhaps unwisely, I’m going out of my way to pick a split. Hey, if that or “Hugo” happens to win both, at least I get one right. And the history does indicate a desire to award one film in both fields. But I’m hedging a bit here.

(Speaking of which, I say this with a straight face: “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” might have its best shot of the franchise at winning something in these fields, finally. That phase two campaign Paramount put together really turned some heads, mainly impressing members of other branches who were surprised the time and effort was taken to push. That just means they’re more aware of the film’s situation than they otherwise would have been, but I don’t know that it goes deep enough to matter.)

And then there’s the mess that is Best Costume Design. The consensus says “The Artist,” and that’s where I settled, but black and white does no favors for design elements, particularly costumes. If you look out across the wide swath of pundit predictions, you’ll see each of the five nominees getting picked. It’s a nightmare, but in the midst of such doubt, I’m just deferring to the likely Best Picture winner.

I have very little confidence this year in this stuff. I can see all the arguments for all the scenarios, so very little that actually happens (save something outrageous) is going to surprise me Sunday. I feel like I’ve dug in and considered things this year way more than usual, which probably just indicates the overall boredom of a season that has been decided for so long in the top categories (with only the Best Actor flutter of SAG and BAFTA to provide any real change in momentum).

But I’m done now. I’ve thought about this long enough. Probably (definitely) too much.

You can find my final predictions here. Guy’s are here. And Gerard’s are here. There’s also HitFix’s gallery of Oscar predictions, featuring my calls and Guy’s as well as those from Awards Campaign’s Greg Ellwood. Meanwhile, remember to join our Oscar pool to win a grab-bag prize here (as well as the site-wide HitFix pool here), and download the official HitFix Oscar ballot here.

And finally, one more time for the 2011-2012 season, the Contenders section has been updated in full.

Good luck to you on your predictions, which you can feel free to share with us in the comments section below.

For year-round entertainment news and awards season commentary follow @kristapley on Twitter.

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