The 2012 HitFix Oscar ballot

Credit: HitFix

(Re-posting this week. Any thoughts on the scoring system, guys?)

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. I currently have the system weighted with all 1s, but as usual, I'd like to defer to you guys on what's best for the points system. Typically we try to weight categories that are more difficult to predict higher, but there's no clear-cut way of gauging all that this year. So, thoughts?

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.

Almost there. Can you believe it?

A scene from Oscar-nominated animated short "Wild Life"

Credit: ShortsHD/Magnolia Pictures

Many of you would really like to see the Oscar-nominated shorts prior to Sunday's telecast but can't make it to one of the theaters currently running the package. Well, better late than never, I guess. I'll let the press release speak for itself:

"Just days after the February 10th theatrical release of The Oscar Nominated Short Films 2012, and just in time for the 84th Academy Awards, ShortsHD, the only TV network dedicated exclusively to short movies, today announced the collection of Oscar nominated films will be available to cable subscribers on demand.

"Starting Feb 21st, the best of this year’s nominated shorts are offered in two special packages: Best Animated Short Films and Best Live Action Short Films, in both HD and SD. These films are presented to cable television subscribers by ShortsHD in conjunction with the nation’s leading Movies on Demand (MOD) distributor, iN DEMAND.

A scene from 1994's "Hoop Dreams."

Credit: Fine Line Features

Nearly every year there are a number of films that Oscar simply seems to miss. Just recently Steve McQueen addressed some of the reasons he believes that Oscar ignored Michael Fassbender's performance in what was, for me, one of the best films of the year: “Shame.” Certainly Guy, Kris and I have all expressed our support for “Margaret” and our wish that the Academy voters had caught onto its value in time for it to make even a small showing.

Over the years there have been a number of omissions that have inspired either a quiet or riotous outcry from audiences and critics circles. In recent memory “The Dark Knight” and “Dreamgirls” were each considered shocking snubs by many given their momentum in the precursor circuit. In general terms, there are certain categories that tend to yield frustrating nominations and wins due to nonsensical and counterproductive voting practices.

Anton Furst poses on the badass instrument of his creation: the 1989 Batmobile

Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

There's a stand-by in Oscar season, if you're one of us who obsesses on guessing below-the-line categories, that I learned never to forget last year: Don't bet against a Tim Burton film in the Best Art Direction category.

Last year it was "Alice in Wonderland" that took the award, when I and a number of others thought "The King's Speech" might grab it in a bit of a sweep scenario for the eventual Best Picture winner. Three years prior, it was this season's expected victor, Dante Ferretti, winning the award for Burton's "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street." Eight years before that, the inarguable work of Rick Heinrichs and his team took it for "Sleepy Hollow."

That run started, though, in 1989, when Anton Furst and Peter Young beat out James Cameron's "The Abyss," Terry Gilliam's "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen," Best Picture winner "Driving Miss Daisy" and Edward Zwick's "Glory" for their towering Gothic creations on the year's (and, to that time, the industry's) biggest hit: "Batman."

Woody Allen and Owen Wilson on the set of "Midnight in Paris."

Credit: Sony Pictures Classics

(The Oscar Guide will be your chaperone through the Academy's 24 categories awarding excellence in film. A new installment will hit every weekday in the run-up to the Oscars on February 26, with the Best Picture finale on Saturday, February 25.) 

For many Oscar voters and watchers, Best Director appears to be something of a superfluous category: If you directed the best film of the year, the reasoning goes, you must be the best director of the year too. That may be true more often than not, but the Academy doesn't always distinguish between a true visionary and a safe pair of hands guiding well-chosen collaborators.

So it is that, over 83 years of Academy Awards history, the Best Picture and Best Director awards have gone to the same film 75% of the time -- and in recent years, haven't been separated since the 2005 ceremony. Last year, the Academy opted for the safe pair of hands: Tom Hooper, a comparatively untested Brit with a TV background, beat four idiosyncratic American auteurs, to the chagrin of critics everywhere. This year again sees a foreign first-time nominee pitted against a quartet of more established Yanks. (All four of them, moreover, are previous nominees -- the highest proportion in the category since 1993.) Once again, the outsider is favored to triumph, though in this case, it's for a work of more director-centered ingenuity. He's also one of four writer-directors among the nominees, a number last matched in 1995.      

The nominees are...

Andy Serkis on the set of "Rise of the Planet of the Apes."

Credit: 20th Century Fox

With many grousing that the Academy's technophobia deprived Andy Serkis of an Oscar nod for "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," Matt Zoller Seitz makes a case for a compromise honor: a new Oscar category for Best Collaborative Performance, for characters created by heavily altered actors in conjunction with motion-capture artists, animators and makeup wizards. Serkis aside, performances Seitz suggests could have won here include Jeff Goldblum in "The Fly" and Brad Pitt in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" -- though his notion that anti-FX bias cost Pitt the 2008 Best Actor Oscar is an empty one when you consider his competition. Overall, It's an intelligent suggestion, though it would surely hinder the possibility of such performances cracking the main acting races. [Press Play]     

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" became the first film in the franchise to be recognized by the guild since "The Sorcerer's Stone" in 2001.

Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

The 14th annual Costume Designers Guild Awards were held this evening, and it was a good night for wizards, hackers and, uh, Madonna.

The Harry Potter franchise was honored for the first time since 2001 by the group as Jany Temime, who has been with the series since 2004's "The Prisoner of Azkaban," won the Excellence in Fantasy Film award for "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2." The last Potter costumer awarded by the guild was Judianna Makovsky, way back on the series' first installment, "The Sorcerer's Stone," making for nice bookends for the franchise. The series' only other nomination was for Temime again on "The Order of the Phoenix" in 2007.

Elsewhere, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" won in the contemporary category (beating out films like "Bridesmaids" and "Drive"), while "W.E." costumer Arianne Phillips was the surprise winner of the evening, besting Oscar frontrunners "The Artist" and "Hugo."

Kevin Kline in "A Fish Called Wanda"

Credit: MGM

In the final heated build-up to Oscar night, the tendency is to look at all of the ways the Academy has failed us or is bound to fail us. We do last-minute championing of underdog films and performances or perform a final public, or private, snub lament (not to worry, some of that is forthcoming).

I thought it might be nice, however, to take a look back at some of the moments where the fates have aligned to provide a win we can really appreciate. I spent some time yesterday afternoon looking over the Academy Award winners of the past 20-odd years, and there were some notable pleasures in the mix. Whether they were upsets or favored, whether I recall watching the moment live or have since come to appreciate the significance, they inspire that rare sense of visceral gratification.

A moment in the opening scene of "Rio," featuring Best Original Song nominee "Real in Rio"

Credit: 20th Century Fox

(The Oscar Guide will be your chaperone through the Academy's 24 categories awarding excellence in film. A new installment will hit every weekday in the run-up to the Oscars on February 26, with the Best Picture finale on Saturday, February 25.)

So, 39 songs were qualified for eligibility in this year's Best Original Song race. 39. That's one short of 40. But apparently 37 of them just weren't good enough for the music branch, as the category turned up two -- yes, two -- nominees. One of them, at least to my mind, is dubious at best, while the other would at least appear to be in a cakewalk for the win (judging by consensus).

Is it not just patently obvious that the music branch can't be bothered with this category anymore? Just get rid of it if that's the case. I happen to like the category (many would like to see it die a quick death), but seeing something like this go down, after countless screw-ups in better fields over the last few years, it's just painful to watch.

The nominees are…

Jessica Chastain in "The Help"

Credit: Walt Disney Pictures

In five hours, it's pencils down for the Academy. Ballots are due this afternoon and then it's five days before we find out what they amounted to.

For the most part, these races are decided. We sometimes get big, stunning upsets, though typically they have one or two indicators that we only pick up on after the fact. Sometimes, though, they don't. Who can forget humble "Precious" scribe Geoffrey Fletcher having his name called for Best Adapted Screenplay two years ago, speechless as he took to the stage, expecting, like all of us, for the category to go a different way?

Those are the kinds of moments you hope for to shake things up, but particularly if you think they are deserving upsets. This year, there are certainly a few of those across the Academy's 24 categories worth spotlighting, and so we have, dedicating this last pre-show list to the cause.