George Clooney's Big Year: Predicting the 2012 Oscar Winners

Now that the nominations for the 84th annual Academy Awards have been announced, it's time to start playing the fun parlor game of guessing who will win the actual prizes. Several nominees have been leading their competitors for months, so it would be a shocker, for instance, if Christopher Plummer failed to win Best Supporting Actor for his performance as an aging man who comes out as a homosexual in Beginners. Conversely, several other races are highly competitive, especially the Best Director contest, so forming a solid set of predictions takes a bit of work. In other words, the following forecast is offered with the utmost confidence, but if Oscar history proves anything, it's to expect the unexpected.

Best Original Screenplay: Midnight in Paris, by Woody Allen. One of this year's most wide-open categories, this race includes a mainstream favorite (Bridesmaids) and the most celebrated foreign film of the last 12 months, The Artist. Either could score a win, because some voters may opt for Bridesmaids out of sympathy for the movie's failure to land a slot in the Best Picture race, and The Artist might carry momentum as an overall frontrunner (only Hugo scored more nominations). However, one should never underestimate the Woodman. One of the most Oscar-nominated writers in history, Allen enjoyed a major commercial comeback with Midnight in Paris, and, lest we forget, it's a movie about writers competing in a category whose winner is picked by writers.

Best Adapted Screenplay: The Descendants, by Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon, and Jim Rash. An exquisite adaptation of a character-driven novel that director/co-writer Payne used as a platform for exploring deep issues of duplicity, grief, loneliness, and loss, The Descendants was easily the best grown-up movie of the year. It's also the kind of film Hollywood rarely makes anymore, so writers may celebrate this script as a means of sending a message about the importance of catering to the adult demographic instead of merely pandering to kids. The movie's closest competitor is probably another smart drama for grown-ups, Moneyball, which was cowritten by last year's winner in this race, Aaron Sorkin.

Best Director: Alexander Payne, The Descendants. Payne's last picture was the multiple Oscar nominee Sideways, and his enviable résumé also includes About Schmidt and Election. He's the kind of serious, sophisticated artist whom the Academy likes to celebrate, and The Descendants also represents an important feat of filmmaking because Payne made the picture on a slim budget and guided an eclectic cast of newcomers and veterans toward delivering across-the-board great performances. Payne deserves this win, though it could get stolen away by perennial favorite Martin Scorsese, who demonstrated his ability to thrive outside his comfort zone with the family-friendly Hugo, or by French filmmaker Michael Hazanvicius, whose The Artist is a love song to cinema.

Best Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer, The Help. In addition to giving the Academy an opportunity to reward African-American acting, something the Academy hasn't done nearly often enough in its eight-decade history, Spencer's performance as a put-upon maid in The Help is the kind of crowd-pleasing (read: obvious) role that cuts through all sorts of resistance; she's the showiest performer among the ensemble cast of an extremely popular movie. Spencer's win in this category has been preordained for months, so chances are the only person truly nipping at her heels is Bridesmaids breakout Melissa McCarthy. That said, it's hard to imagine the Academy picking a comedienne whose biggest moment involved explosive diarrhea over a dramatic actress who channeled the anguish of a people trapped in humiliating servitude.

Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer, Beginners. In a long career that includes everything from costarring in The Sound of Music to playing a villain in a Star Trek movie, Plummer has quietly accrued decades of exceptional work without winning an Oscar, positioning him to a win that doubles as a lifetime-achievement prize. Luckily, his performance is wonderful, so he deserves the award on every level. The same could be said of the great Max Von Sydow, whose acting in the 9/11-themed drama Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is completely wordless, since his character is voluntarily mute. Still, Plummer's momentum has been building for so long (Beginners hit theaters months before Extremely Loud) that his progress to the podium seems unstoppable.

Best Actress: Viola Davis, The Help. This category is a solid three-way race between Davis, Meryl Streep, and Michelle Williams. Like Spencer, Davis shined in a popular movie about the kind of hermetically sealed Noble Subject Matter the Academy loves; unlike Spencer, Davis showcased deep and subtle emotion instead of outlandish wisecracks. That Davis would only be the second black woman to win Best Actress makes her win all the more likely; voters like to be part of making history. Streep is the most-nominated actor, male or female, in Academy history, but even though her performance as onetime British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady is very good, it's merely the latest in a long string of great Streep performances instead of a once-in-a-lifetime masterwork. Similarly, Michelle Williams' enjoyable turn as Marilyn Monroe in the so-so My Week With Marilyn is great but not that great. Streep's brand name or the challenge of channeling Monroe will curry favor, but it seems probable Davis will capture the prize.

Best Actor: George Clooney, The Descendants. Playing a confused dad sorting out his relationships with his two daughters as he discovers disturbing facts about his comatose wife, Clooney goes deeper than he ever has in The Descendants, underlining his steady evolution from a charismatic leading man to a world-class actor. He's also well-liked in Hollywood for his charitable work, good sportsmanship, and smooth handling of the cocktail-party circuit, so he will almost certainly win. The actor best positioned to upset Clooney is not his pal Brad Pitt, who was very good in Moneyball, but rather Frenchman Jean Dujardin, from The Artist. Like Von Sydow, Dujardin wowed viewers without the benefit of dialogue, which might be impressive enough to meet some people's definition of the year's best male performance. Happily, all three serious contenders for the Best Actor prize did Oscar-worthy work, so a win for any of them would be good news.

Best Picture: The Descendants. Throughout awards season, there's been a steady back-and-forth between The Artist, Hazanvicius' charmer about a silent-movie star, and The Descendants, with other movies scrambling for scraps by winning prizes captured by neither The Artist nor The Descendants. Right now, conventional wisdom holds that The Artist will win, since it scored the second-highest number of nominations and therefore has strong momentum, but it's possible that enough voters will balk at voting for a foreign film to let Payne's wonderful movie slide into pole position. However, it's imprudent to limit the competition to two titles since nine movies received Best Picture nominations, meaning that in theory, any of the flicks could sneak a win. Of the second-tier candidates, the movie with the best chance of outpacing the frontrunners is Hugo, which had the year's largest number of nominations.