The Oscars... an almost-definitive guide to Best Picture, Actor, Actress and the supporting roles

In order, the best films of 2012 were:

1. Argo
2. Lincoln
3. Silver Linings Playbook
4. Zero Dark Thirty
5. Django Unchained
6. Life of Pi
7. Beasts of the Southern Wild
8. Just about any other movie made in 2012
9. Les Miserables

* Not mentioned, because I didn't see it: Amour

Best Director will go to Steven Spielberg (Lincoln), though Ben Affleck's work on Argo was at least as good and he got royally snubbed.

Best Actor will go to Daniel Day-Lewis for his remarkable portrayal of Abraham Lincoln, but if that movie wasn't in the running this year it would be hard to stop Bradley Cooper for his astounding "I'm a really freaking good actor" role in Silver Linings Playbook.

Best Actress seems like it's Jennifer Lawrence's to lose (also from Silver Linings Playbook), but her competition doesn't seem to be that fair.  It won't shock me if the Academy gives the award to the 85-year-old Emmanuel Riva (Amour), but J-Law deserves it.  Unfortunately she doesn't deserve it as much as Cooper, who's luck ran out the second Lincoln came out.

Best Supporting Actor should go to DeNiro (Cooper's father in Silver Linings Playbook), but it seems the Academy is likely to award it to Tommy Lee Jones for his rarely-important Thaddeous Stephens in Lincoln. My actual favorite portrayal was from Christoph Waltz in Django Unchained, and his role was even more significant than DeNiro's (marginally so, however). Waltz was really more like the lead actor in Django, but that doesn't matter.

Best Supporting Actress is going to go to Anne Hatheway for Les Miserables, though that one should have stayed off the silver screen and then we wouldn't have to be dealing with this debacle of a "film" at all.  But apparently the Academy loved the over-the-top dramatized work Hatheway and the rest of the cast shoved down our throats and she's going to win.  I'd rather see it go to Adams for The Master, but oh well.