The fearful Oscars predictions by Gordon Stamper, Jr.

This year's Academy Awards will feature a new host, Seth McFarlane.  If he performs to his full comic potential, he will be a one-time host; if McFarlane does more song and dance than barbs, he will be the new Billy Crystal.  Also, since it is the only foreign film nominated for Best Picture and several other major categories, Amour should be the easy winner for Best Foreign Film.  With those safe predictions aside, on with my not-so-surefire picks for the winners at tomorrow's ceremonies:

Best Picture:  Amour, Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, Les Miserables, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, Zero Dark Thirty.  Argo will mainly win because it means Ben Affleck will be acknowledged as producer, but no one will be artistically put off by the choice, either.  The nominee list shows what an excellent year we had in movies, even if it was mostly bottom-loaded to fall and winter releases.  Moonrise Kingdom should have been nominee number ten.

Best Actor:  Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook; Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln; Hugh Jackman, Les Miserables; Joaquin Phoenix, The Master; Denzel Washington, Flight.  Duh.  Day-Lewis has a lock in this category, and it's not true that in his portrayal of Lincoln, he tells Congress he'll drink their milkshake.  Neither does Washington say "My cracker" to Ethan Hawke in Flight.

Best Actress:  Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty; Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook; Emmanuele Riva, Amour; Quvenzhane Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild; Naomi Watts, The Impossible.  Extremely competitive, especially compared to Best Actor, but Lawrence should win as the scene-stealer in an excellent cast.  However, frontrunners Chastain and Lawrence may cancel each other out, leaving it wide open for the oldest nominee ever, Riva, to win for her mentally and physically demanding work in the highly respected film Amour.

Best Supporting Actor:  Alan Arkin, Argo; Robert De Niro, Silver Linings Playbook; Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master; Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln; Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained.  All are former Oscar winners, and the performances are comparing apples to oranges in one of the most competitive categories in Academy Award history.  I'll pick De Niro, who hasn't won in about three decades, with the other frontrunner being Tommy Lee Jones.  Waltz's nomination is a typical Academy Award cheat--he's really co-lead with Jamie Foxx in Django.

Best Supporting Actress:  Amy Adams, The Master; Sally Field, Lincoln; Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables; Helen Hunt, The Sessions; Jackie Weaver, Silver Linings Playbook.  Hathaway is the other runaway winner in acting this year, singing and dying her heart out in the big musical tragedy.  Field runs a distant second as a very well cast Mary Todd Lincoln.  As for Amy Adams, you'll always be my MTV girl.  By the way, Jennifer Ehle should have been nominated for a phenomenal performance in Zero Dark Thirty.

Best Director:  Michael Haneke, Amour; Ang Lee, Life of Pi; David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook; Steven Spielberg, Lincoln; Behn Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild.  Since who should have been vying for best director, Ben Affleck and Kathryn Bigelow, aren't even nominated, third-best will probably go to Steven Spielberg for helping to make Lincoln an entertaining and not-so-dry historical drama.  The dark horse will probably be Ang Lee for his technical ringmaster work in Life of Pi, or Michael Haneke for Amour but just as much a lifetime achievement award.

Best Animated Feature Film:  Brave, Frankenweenie, ParaNorman, The Pirates! Band of Misfits, Wreck-It Ralph.  Why are there five nominees?  It wasn't a particularly strong year for animated films.  The likeable Wreck-It Ralph should win, and Brave would be the lazy, default Pixar choice.

Best Adapted Screenplay:  Lucy Alibar and Behn Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild; Tony Kushner, Lincoln; David Magee, Life of Pi; David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook; Chris Terrio, Argo.  Or what Best Screenplay awards have been for years--the consolation prize, so no Argo here.  Award-winning playwright Kushner (Angels in America) will most likely win, but the most recent Oscar winner in this category, The Descendants, was a less accomplished blend of what Russell did this year with a combination of comedy, drama, and romance in Silver Linings Playbook.

Best Original Screenplay:  Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola, Moonrise Kingdom; Mark Boal, Zero Dark Thirty; John Gatins, Flight; Michael Haneke, Amour; Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained.  Maybe as outrageously competitive as Supporting Actor.  Haneke is a likely winner just as much for his body of work (Cache, Funny Games, The White Ribbon) as for Amour, with Tarantino being a strong dark horse, whether he deserves it or not.  Moonrise Kingdom should win, but oh well.

Finally, the technical categories will probably go to the cinematography and effects wizardry that went into creating Life of Pi.  Ang Lee's adaptation of the famous novel may actually take home the most Oscars because of its technical prowess.

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK review by Gordon Stamper, Jr.

Silver Linings Playbook

Written and Directed by David O. Russell (based on the novel The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick)

Starring Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Jacki Weaver, Anupam Kher, Chris Tucker, John Ortiz, Julia Stiles

122 minutes, rated 'R' for profanity and sexually suggestive language

Silver Linings Playbook is one of the most nominated films for this year's Academy Awards ceremony, and for good reason.  The film is a poignant drama without being a manipulative tearjerker, a comedy that doesn't ignore the serious problems that its main characters have, a romance with excellent lead chemistry, and has a well-earned conclusion.  In reality, the film shouldn't have "dramedy" or any label on it.  It's just high-level film making from David O. Russell with a plot that serves the characters and defies categorization, in many ways like his previous movie, The Fighter.

Pat (Bradley Cooper) has recently been released from a mental institution after a violent outburst on his estranged wife and her lover.  Now living with his parents (Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver), he is invited to a small dinner party thrown by his buddy Ronnie (John Ortiz) and Ronnie's wife, the uptight and rightfully nervous friend of Pat's wife, Veronica (an amusing cameo turn by Julia Stiles).  Another guest is the almost equally troubled family black sheep, Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), who is highly promiscuous and likely to say anything in any setting.

What follows could have been played as broad comedy or Lifetime Movie of the Week doomed romance, but instead takes off on an often unpredictable path.  It includes meetings with Pat's therapist (Anupam Kher); meeting up with Pat's former institution roomie, the neurotic Danny (Chris Tucker, about as low-key as Tucker can get); and explorations of love, loss, moving on with one's life, and seizing opportunities without pounding those points with a sledgehammer.

The acting ensemble is uniformly good, including Cooper, a Best Actor nominee, but Lawrence and De Niro are Oscar worthy as the vividly alive and foul-mouthed Tiffany and the long-suffering yet passively aggressive Pat Sr.  Russell writes several showpiece scenes for his actors, including an unusual, funny, and troubling Halloween date for Pat and Tiffany, and a showstopping showdown between Tiffany and Pat Sr.

For this year's Oscar contenders, Silver Linings Playbook may not take home the ultimate Best Picture prize, but it may hold up as one of 2012's contributions to the cinematic art form.

Rating:  **** out of ****