Oscar Predictions Revised: Picture, Director, Animation, Documentary, Sound

I'm working on revising the Oscar predictions. So far we've updated the extensive foreign film pages (yet, we're already behind again the news is coming so quickly), the animated and documentary categories, the aural categories like best score and song (I could use some help there -- offer it in the comments) and NEW best picture. And yes I know that many people believe that The Way Back will not be released in time. But I don't believe for a second that the current plans will keep.

About Best Director. After a banner year for diversity last year this year looks like a return to the standard. It'll take a while for cinema's burgeoning spread of voices to register on a frequent basis. If you fuse all my predicted nominees together -- that'd be David Fincher, David O. Russell (pictured left), Mike Leigh, Peter Weir and Christopher Nolan -- you've got a 54 year old white auteur with 9 films under his belt who has been nominated once before in this category and is generally perceived as overdue for a win. But why would you fuse them together? That's only something I sometimes do with statistics because I am weird.

I would have loved to predict Darren Aronofsky for Black Swan (because I am a fan* in general, though I haven't yet seen the film), but here's something I fear about the new 10 wide Best Picture system. Though it gave us a nice spread of genre and mood and consensus last year, I fear the noisy mainstreaming of that category will end up drowning out the hoopla for those left of center choices that the directorial branch sometimes honored in their gutsier moments. And if my fears prove correct going forward, that'll be a real shame.

Your thoughts and armchair punditry are welcome in the comments as always.

*fan not stalker. Which I must differentiate because a friend of a friend of a friend did point out his & Rachel Weisz's apartment to me the other day quite unexpectedly, even though movies weren't even the topic of conversation. The exterior was red. That's neither here nor there. I'm just sharing for a bit of organic blog flavoring.
*