Who are Your Picks for the Oscars?

Given the controversy over the Academy's weird nominations for Best Director Oscar, I thought it would be fun to create a thread for posters to tell us their Picks for the Big Six Oscars. Here are mine:

Best Picture: Zero Dark Thirty. I also loved Les Miserables, Lincoln, Django Unchained, and Argo, so this was a close call. Nevertheless, I think that Zero Dark Thirty was the best of the bunch

Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln. This was an easy one for me. Day-Lewis gave as compelling and rewarding performance as Abraham Lincoln as I have seen on film.

Best Actress: Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty. Chastain's performance alternately moved me and made my blood run cold. Great work!

Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained. Waltz alternated between warm and funny, and a cooly efficient killing machine in a convincing and highly entertaining way.

Best Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables. Hathaway's Fantine broke my heart but made it soar, too.

Beat Director: Kathryn Bigelow, Zero Dark Thirty. Another close call because Ben Affleck for Argo and Tom Hooper for Les Mis were nearly equally deserving. Oh, wait, all three were passed over for a Best Director nomination! More seriously, I am going to boycott voting in the Best Director category because I don't see how my vote could have any more credibility than most of the Academy's nominations in the Best Director category, which is say, no credibility at all.

Good 2012 films are thick on the ground. In addition to Django, Zero Dark Thirty, Argo, Les Mis, and Lincoln, I got around to seeing Silver Linings Playbook today. Wow! It's another terrific film. As usual Jennifer Lawrence was wonderful, this time as an edgy young widow, and Bradley Cooper turned in what I believe is the performance of his career as a guy with bipolar disorder who was just released from treatment is separated from his wife, and living at home with his loving mother and dysfunctional father. 8 Stars out of 10. Nevertheless, I thought giving a Best Director nom to David O. Russell over Tarantino, Hooper, Affleck, and Bigelow was a joke. But I can't contemplate this issue further, for this way lies madness.

I haven't seen any of the Oscar nominated animated films so I did a little research, which convinced me that Wreck-it Ralph may indeed be the best animated film in the Oscar race. IMDb voters loved it (8.1 out of 10) and the reviews collected at Rotten Tomatoes were overwhelmingly favorable (84 percent). When I checked on the other nominated films, none was in the same class. I may have to see Wreck-it Ralph but continue to have no interest in seeing any of the others.

Today I discovered that Life of Pi was showing at the second closest cineplex to me, so decided to see it. As one would expect with any Ang Lee film, it was visually stunning and the story, finally, was both thoughtful and moving. Unfortunately, I thought the film took far too long to get to the point, Nevertheless, it had enough good stuff in it to convince me to give it 7 Stars out of 10. That said, I don't think it deserved an Oscar nod for Best Film and certainly not a nom for Best Director.

CAVEAT: I had to see Life of Pi in 3D. I hate 3D and, to one degree or another, it always takes me out of a picture I have to see that way. I have a headache and the bridge of my nose is sore from having to support two pairs of glasses so my analysis of the film may not have been entirely fair but there it is.

We agree that technically Life of Pi could hardly have been better. The problem with the film, and from what my daughter tells me the book too, is that they don't get to The Big Finish until too late.

I have no idea how Ang Lee was able to stage the scenes between the kid and the tiger on the boat but it was an impressive achievement. The film was nominated for Best Cinematography and I have a hard time arguing with that one. I feel really sorry for all the films and directors who will get shutout for 2012 because of how many extraordinary films there were. It's happened before I suppose but not very often.

I didn't like Prometheus much, either. My daughter loved it though and got the BD, which I watched a couple of weeks ago. I liked it marginally better when i saw it on BD than I had when I saw it in the theater but still wasn't greatly impressed. As I was feeling particularly generous, I gave Prometheus 7 Stars out 0f 10.

Despite my reservations about Life of Pi's storytelling, I thought its visual effects and cinematography were stunning. It would not bother me if the film won both Oscars. An Oscar for either Best Picture or Best Director, though? Perish the thought!