Best Picture

Sure-Things:

The Artist

The Descendants

Hugo

Remaining Predictions:

The Help

Midnight in Paris

War Horse

Alternates:

Moneyball

The Tree of Life

Long-Shots:

Drive

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

The Ides of March

The Academy continues to monkey around with this category. After two years of a ridiculous ten Best Picture nominees, they have changed the rules again, this time dictating that the number of nominees will be between five and ten every year, depending on how many films reach a certain percentage of first place votes. This means that my predictions, and maybe one or two of my alternates, could be chosen. It further ruins my comparative statistics keeping, and therefore greatly pisses me off.

The nominations for the 84^th Annual Academy Awards will be announced on Tuesday, January 24, 2012, at 5:30 a.m. Pacific Time, by Academy President Tom Sherak, and Academy Award-nominee Jennifer Lawrence.