Oscar Countdown: Best Picture

Conventional wisdom holds that ‘The Artist’ will win. Will conventional wisdom prevail?

In advance of the Academy Award ceremony on Sunday, Screen Grab will predict the winners in all categories.

Best Picture: The Artist, The Descendants, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, The Help, Hugo, Midnight in Paris, Moneyball, The Tree of Life, War Horse. Maybe this’ll be a year in which the conventional wisdom is wrong and the Academy surprises everybody by choosing a film other than the front-runner, The Artist. Normally the Academy chooses big, important Hollywood films, so for them to pick a silent, black-and-white French film seems more like the Bizarro Academy Awards. Some films could still pull off upset victories: Hugo got the most total nominations, after all, and The Help was the biggest hit. (Dan Kois in Slate predicts that The Help will win, in emulation of Driving Miss Daisy’s Best Picture from 1989.) I still think The Descendants has a shot, although Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir analyzes its chances in a persuasive piece called “The Oscar favorite no one really likes.”) Or maybe so many votes will split that the Tree of Life will surprise everybody: idiosyncratic but possessed of an ardent following, it’s like the Ron Paul of the Oscar season.

Prediction: The Artist. It’s a love letter to Hollywood that happens to be the most entertaining film of the nominees. And it has tap-dancing: