This is going to be good.  Believe me, I've paid my dues, racking up years and years of bitching and moaning about the Oscars and how they were out of touch and irrelevant and generally mean, but now, for the first time in YEARS, I stand less than 24 hours away from the ceremony thinking that there are very few possible winners in all the major categories I wouldn't be happy about.  I saw all ten Best Picture nominees and disliked only one (loved seven of them, in fact) and found the Academy very much IN touch with the people who made the end of 2010 one of the best periods for movie acting I can recall.  Yes, some want to make this a war between the Surgically Cynicical Cool of The Social Network and the Old School Inspirational Sentimentality of The Kings Speech, but can't we all just get along?  For a change, right down to the fact that James Franco and Anne Hathaway seem to be inspired outside-the-box choices to host, I really expect to love these Oscars.  Which isn't to say I can successfully predict them.  But I think I can, so let's give it shot.  Checking the scorecard, this is the 5th year I'll be making predications, and I'm 30 for 36 all-time, including 8 for 9 last year.
 

BEST PICTURE
Who's Nominated:  Black Swan, The Fighter, Inception, The Kids Are All Right, The King's Speech, 127 Hours, The Social Network, Toy Story 3, True Grit, Winter's Bone
My Preference:  So many good movies on this list, it's hard to go wrong.  Since Oscar voters are asked to rank their choices from 1-to-10, I'll do the same (obviously, my Ten Best List is a bit of a spoiler on this topic, although I hadn't seen a couple of these titles yet at the time):  1)THE SOCIAL NETWORK, 2)Inception, 3)The King's Speech, 4)Black Swan, 5)True Grit, 6)The Fighter, 7)Toy Story 3, 8)Winter's Bone, 9)127 Hours, 10)The Kids Are All Right.
My Prediction: When the vote was in the hands of Critics groups, the award season was a 24-hour Social Network, but once the voting moved to Guilds, The King's Speech became just the 7th movie to win the approval of the Actors, Producers and Directors (5 of the previous 6, with only Apollo 13 bucking the trend, won Best Picture).  Since there's no critics' wing of the Academy, it's a good bet that The King's Speech will hear its name read.  But Network is a legitimate contender, as are, in my mind at least, The Fighter and True Grit.

BEST DIRECTOR
Who's Nominated:  Darren Aronofsky for Black Swan, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen for True Grit, David Fincher for The Social Network, Tom Hooper for The King's Speech, David O. Russell for The Fighter. 
My Preference:  Ever since I was in the extreme minority who admired his work on Alien 3, I've been a big David Fincher guy.  It's a close call between he and Aronofsky, but I've got to go with the guy who delivered the better movie on the larger scale.
My Prediction:  One of the hardest awards of the evening to predict.  Hooper won the DGA prize, signifying just how much the awards season has turned Speech's way.  But if you believe that it's a close race for the top prize, Network just seems MORE directed than Speech, its actors less experienced, and its structure more showy (which is something with which people often incorrectly credit the director).  Besides, unlike Hooper, helming a movie of note for the first time, David Fincher just seems due.  

BEST ACTOR
Who's Nominated:  Javier Bardem for Biutiful, Jeff Bridges for True Grit, Jesse Eisenberg for The Social Network, Colin Firth for The King's Speech, James Franco for 127 Hours
My Preference:  A tough call in another Network/Speech showdown.  These are two tremendous performances.  Firth is amazing, mastering the tics of stammering and low self esteem and mixing them with regal nobility and having to grow beyond his issues while holding onto them just enough to be believable.  But I have to pick Jesse Eisenberg, who's required to communicate so much of what The Social Network is about to us through his work.  The movie never tells us why Mark Zuckerberg does the things he does, but without saying a word, Eisenberg leaves us with no doubt.  He makes a chilly, emotionally shut off megalomaniac an open book, and that's quite a feat.
My Prediction:  The real symbol of how great Eisenberg is is that he's nominated at all in the Academy's ultimate prestige category given his youth.  But no one south of 30 has ever won this award.  Instead, it's Colin Firth who has dominated the later half of the awards season and should have no trouble claiming the first Oscar of a revitalized career.

BEST ACTRESS
WHO'S NOMINATED:  Annette Benning for The Kids are All Right, Nicole Kidman for Rabbit Hole, Jennifer Lawrence for Winter's Bone, Natalie Portman for Black Swan, Michelle Wiliams for Blue Valentine
My Preference:  None of the ten lead performances nominated connected with me emotionally more than the one Natalie Portman gave:  not only is she the fragile heart of her movie, but she too must communicate volumes of information about her character's fractured emotional state and make her entire movie's plot make sense without saying a word about any of it.
My Prediction:  I'm white-knuckled on this one.  Natalie Portman has dominated since about two weeks into the season, but I fear she's barely hanging on due to a late charge by Annette Benning.  I love Benning's body of work, to be sure, but I'd be highly disappointed to see her finally collect a trophy for a performance I found (and I know I'm in the minority on this) to be nothing all that special.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Who's Nominated:  Christian Bale for The Fighter, John Hawkes for Winter's Bone, Jeremy Renner for The Town, Mark Ruffalo for The Kids are All Right, Geoffrey Rush for The King's Speech
My Preference:  Man, there are some good performances on this list.  Hawkes and Renner radiated pure, horrific menace to the point where you feared for anyone in the frame with them, and half the time you're even rooting for the former.  Rush was at the absolute peak of his empathetic powers and would own this category a lot of years.  But have you ever seen anything like the high wire act Christian Bale pulled off in The Fighter?  If there's ever been a more realistic performance as a delusional junkie, I haven't seen it, and he too is delivering sensational inspirational speeches by the third act.  Amazing stuff.
My Prediction:  Unless the Academy simply cannot bring itself to forgive Christian Bale for some highly publicized bits of bad behavior (and I don't think any of them were recent enough to sway the voting the way Russell Crowe's antics during the balloting did when he was up for A Beautiful Mind), the SAG and Golden Globe winner is the pick.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Who's Nominated:  Amy Adams for The Fighter, Helena Bonham Carter for The King's Speech, Melissa Leo for The Fighter, Hailee Steinfeld for True Grit, Jacki Weaver for Animal Kingdom
My Preference:  I didn't get to see Weaver, but the other four performances here are great.  The Fighter's stars stand out above all others, however, and you could really flip a coin between them.  Thus, I'll indulge my long-term love of Amy Adams and give her the nod for a performance that showed facets of her already considerable range I'd never imagined.
My Prediction:  This one was easy before Melissa Leo drew the scorn of the showbiz community by running For Your Consideration ads for herself, an unheard-of practice.  This makes her vulnerable to an upset by either Adams or Hailee Steinfeld, and I know the Academy loves to give this particular trophy to a teen and suspect they're higher on True Grit than any previous award-granting body.  So I'm calling for the upset.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Who's Nominated: Another Year by Mike Leigh, The Fighter by Scott Silver and Paul Tamasy & Eric Johnson, story by Paul Tamasy & Eric Johnson & Keith Dorrington, Inception by Christopher Nolan, The Kids are All Right by Lisa Cholodenko & Stuart Blumberg, The King's Speech by David Seidler
My Preference:  By the end, characters struggle in four distinctly different universes, each bound by their own laws of physics, to perform the same action at the same moment and it all makes perfect sense.  I said at the time that if I could write something as brilliant as Inception, that would be a life's work right there.  For my money, there's no way anyone other than Christopher Nolan can lay claim to this award.
My Prediction:  Except that the Academy has historically had no love for either science fiction or Nolan, so his nomination might have to be the prize.  But the Writer's Guild did pick him, so all hope isn't lost.  Of course, David Seidler had been ruled ineligible for that award for procedural reasons.  Not only is his script the basis for the likely Best Picture, but he's got just about the best story of any nominated writer I can recall, having not only survived the Holocaust and cancer, but waited for decades to see Speech filmed because the Queen Mother had asked him not to proceed during her lifetime.  Did I mention that he had a stammer as a child himself?  I'll be rooting for Nolan, but it'd be impossible not to be happy for Seidler.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Who's Nominated: 127 Hours by Danny Boyle & Simon Beaufoy, The Social Network by Aaron Sorkin, Toy Story 3 by Michael Arndt, story by John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich, True Grit by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, Winter's Bone by Debra Granik and Anne Rosellini
My Preference:  Not only is Aaron Sorkin playing terrific games with perspective and the adversarial legal system, but he's actually turning the story of the founding of Facebook into a meditation on why we all feel so drawn to it.  The Social Network is an amazing writing achievement.
My Prediction:  He's a celebrity writer, the long-term showrunner of a series beloved by the Hollywood establishment, and the writer of the best screenplay in the field.  It's Aaron Sorkin in a walk. 

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
Who's Nominated: How to Train Your Dragon, The Illusionist, Toy Story 3
My Preference:  Yes, TS3 is a great, emotional movie, but it's also a tad familiar given how much of its two predecessors it's recycled.  The one of these nominees that best stands on its own is the splendid fable How to Train Your Dragon.
My Prediction:  The ten movie Best Picture field takes some of the drama away here as you certainly know which one of these three movies people liked enough to give it one of those nominations.  Toy Story 3 is as big a lock as any nominee in any of these categories.

I'm ready to break out the snacks and watch all this unfold in a ceremony that almost can't help but be the most fun in years both because I care and because really only The Kids Are All Right could ruin my evening by scoring a bunch of upset wins.  Hell, even if Franco and Hathaway crash and burn as hosts, that will just add a certain "...and I was there!" buzz to the evening because it's the awards that interest me.  Go ahead, Oscar, TRY to ruin my evening!  (a blog on my inevitable disappointment will follow Monday)