You know how I’m like Penelope Cruz, Vera Farmiga, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Anna Kendrick? When it comes to the Oscar competition I’m a part of this year, no matter how hard I try and how strong of an effort I put up, I know I’m going to lose.

As you may recall, every year I go head-to-head with my longtime friend and former movie review show colleague in a friendly competition to see who can best predict the nominees in the six biggest Oscar categories. And every year I lose, except in those couple of years in which we tie. I never actually win. And once again, I have stepped forward in my best battle armor exo-bot only to be felled by his well-shot Na’Vi arrow, left to expire in the lush Pandoran greenery. We traded predictions. He got thirty correct. I got twenty-nine correct. My lifetime record drops to 0-19-2.

Still, if I may be immodest for a moment, both of had pretty impressive showings. Correctly predicting thirty and twenty-nine nominees of thirty-five total in the six categories we work through is, on the surface of it, pretty damned impressive. Now, if I may shift back to modesty, I’ll note that, even with the expanded Best Picture race, this may have been one of the easiest years to ascertain who’d be celebrating this morning. For example, we both named all ten total nominees in the Best Actor and Best Actress races, a feat I don’t think we’ve pulled off before. But we did it by naming the same ten thespians that almost every seasoned Oscar watcher had on their list, the same ten individuals who received corresponding honors from the Screen Actors Guild awards. The only people who had something wrong on those lists were those venturing some mild upset, Tobey Maguire in place of Morgan Freeman, maybe, or…well, it’s hard to even think of another example. The Academy Awards, still the most prestigious of the entertainment honors, continue to seem less and less surprising, simply ratifying the conventional wisdom already established by dozens of precursor events instead of forging their own unique statement on the best of the year.

Perhaps the biggest surprise among the major categories was The Blind Side showing up in the Best Picture race, something that absolutely would not have happened without the expansion to ten categories, but may very have happened before the revolution of seventies cinema when there always seemed to be room for a tepidly-received issues drama. Guess Who’s Coming to the Line of Scrimmage. It’s hardly unprecedented, and, in some ways, is more in keeping with the Academy’s purpose of expanding the slate of Best Picture nominees. It’s nice to see District 9 elbow its way in, but I don’t expect that will generate too many extra viewers. Including The Blind Side, and its $238 million (and counting) gross, just might. It won’t be the young viewers the Academy covets, and any bump will surely be attributed to Avatar, but I have an inkling that the other holiday sensation might have even more of an impact. The one thing that I am confident about is that The Blind Side having enough support to get into the Best Picture mix, even an expanded Best Picture mix, means that Sandra Bullock has enough support to win Best Actress. All four acting categories are done.

Beyond that, there’s not much to say. Predictable nominations will do that. I will note that I’m inordinately pleased as can be that, just as was the case with Titanic twelve years ago, the writing branch of the Academy denied James Cameron a nomination for a bad script, even though his film was well-represented in other categories. With Titanic, that missing nomination prevented the film from becoming the most nominated film in Oscar history. This year, it means that Avatar actually tied with Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker for the most nominations. The Writing Branch is now officially my favorite branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

(Posted simultaneously to “Jelly-Town!”)