Best Original Screenplay

Poor Moonrise Kingdom won’t win its lonely nomination, and Flight doesn’t deserve to be in the contest.  Django is a maybe at best; I think those horrified by the racial politics of the film outnumber the fans of its genre panache.  (Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking on my part.) So it’s a toss-up between Zero and Amour.  Zero took the WGA prize while Amour was ineligible.  However, Mark Boal just won in this category three years ago for The Hurt Locker, and this go-around might seem too familiar to voters (in addition to the controversies that have crippled the film’s early momentum.)  Meanwhile, Amour may be as sure a bet as possible in the erratic Foreign Language Film category, but writer-director Michael Haneke won’t be able to keep that prize; he’ll accept it, but the award will go to the Austrian Ministry of Film or whatever it’s called.  (The strange rules of this category dictate that the official winner of the award is the country of origin rather than the producer or director.)  Haneke is well admired on the international film scene, for The Piano Teacher, Cache, The White Ribbon, and Amour most of all, so I think the Academy will vote him a statuette that they’ll actually put his name on.

Prediction: Michael Haneke, Amour

Personal Pick:Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola, Moonrise Kingdom