Are you ready for the Oscars?

Although I’m a huge movie fan, I wish I had a couple more weeks to prepare for the 86th Academy Awards broadcast (which airs on March 2 on ABC). Alas, due to situations beyond my control — covering the Olympics, few artsy films showing in rural New Hampshire, no screeners from the Academy — I simply cannot make what I consider an informed decision on which films/actors I think will win. I can only make an educated guess, based on my knowledge of the pictures and the talent involved. For that, I sincerely apologize. To me, ignorance is not bliss; it’s annoying.

That said, I did see about 30 movies last year, and watched all of the trailers for the nominees. Here are my predictions:

Best Picture

Expect to win: American Hustle
Captain Phillips
Dallas Buyers Club
Want to win: Gravity
Her
Nebraska
Philomena
12 Years a Slave
The Wolf of Wall Street

Best Actor in a Leading Role

Christian Bale (American Hustle)
Bruce Dern (Nebraska)
Leonardo DiCaprio (The Wolf of Wall Street)
Expect/want to win: Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave)
Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club)

Best Actress in a Leading Role

Expect to win: Amy Adams (American Hustle)
Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine)
Sandra Bullock (Gravity)
Judi Dench (Philomena)
Want to win: Meryl Streep (August: Osage County)

Best Actor in a Supporting Role

Barkhad Abdi (Captain Phillips)
Bradley Cooper (American Hustle)
Expect/want to win: Michael Fassbender (12 Years a Slave)
Jonah Hill (The Wolf of Wall Street)
Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club)

Best Actress in a Supporting Role

Sally Hawkins (Blue Jasmine)
Expect to win: Jennifer Lawrence (American Hustle)
Want to win: Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave)
Julia Roberts (August: Osage County)
June Squibb (Nebraska)

Best Animated Feature

The Croods (Chris Sanders, Kirk DeMicco, Kristine Belson)
Despicable Me 2 (Chris Renaud, Pierre Coffin, Chris Meledandri)
Ernest & Celestine (Benjamin Renner, Didier Brunner)
Expect/want to win: Frozen (Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee, Peter Del Vecho)
The Wind Rises (Hayao Miyazaki, Toshio Suzuki)

Best Cinematography

The Grandmaster (Philippe Le Sourd)
Expect/want to win: Gravity (Emmanuel Lubezki)
Inside Llewyn Davis (Bruno Delbonnel)
Nebraska (Phedon Papamichael)
Prisoners (Roger A. Deakins)

Best Costume Design

Expect to win: American Hustle (Michael Wilkinson)
The Grandmaster (William Chang Suk Ping)
Want to win: The Great Gatsby (Catherine Martin)
The Invisible Woman (Michael O’Connor)
12 Years a Slave (Patricia Norris)

Best Directing
American Hustle (David O. Russell)
Expect/want to win: Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón)
Nebraska (Alexander Payne)
12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)
The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)

Best Documentary Feature

Expect to win: The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, Signe Byrge Sørensen)
Cutie and the Boxer (Zachary Heinzerling, Lydia Dean Pilcher)
Want to win: Dirty Wars (Richard Rowley, Jeremy Scahill)
The Square (Jehane Noujaim, Karim Amer)
20 Feet from Stardom (Nominees to be determined)

Best Documentary Short

CaveDigger (Jeffrey Karoff)
Facing Fear (Jason Cohen)
Karama Has No Walls (Sara Ishaq)
Expect/want to win: The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life (Malcolm Clarke, Nicholas Reed)
Expect to win: Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall (Edgar Barens)

Best Film Editing

American Hustle (Jay Cassidy, Crispin Struthers, Alan Baumgarten)
Expect/want to win: Captain Phillips (Christopher Rouse)
Dallas Buyers Club (John Mac McMurphy, Martin Pensa)
Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, Mark Sanger)
12 Years a Slave (Joe Walker)

Best Foreign Language Film

Expect to win: The Broken Circle Breakdown (Belgium)
The Great Beauty (Italy)
Want to win: The Hunt (Denmark)
The Missing Picture (Cambodia)
Omar (Palestine)

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Expect/want to win: Dallas Buyers Club (Adruitha Lee, Robin Mathews)
Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa (Stephen Prouty)
The Lone Ranger (Joel Harlow, Gloria Pasqua-Casny)

Best Original Score

Expect/want to win: The Book Thief (John Williams)
Gravity (Steven Price)
Her (William Butler, Owen Pallett)
Philomena (Alexandre Desplat)
Saving Mr. Banks (Thomas Newman)

Best Original Song

Expect to win: Happy (Despicable Me 2)
Let It Go (Frozen)
The Moon Song (Her)
Want to win: Ordinary Love (Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom)

Best Production Design

Expect to win: American Hustle (Judy Becker, Heather Loeffler)
Want to win: Gravity (Andy Nicholson, Rosie Goodwin, Joanne Woollard)
The Great Gatsby (Catherine Martin, Beverley Dunn)
Her (K.K. Barrett, Gene Serdena)
12 Years a Slave (Adam Stockhausen, Alice Baker)

Best Animated Short Film

Expect to win: Feral (Daniel Sousa, Dan Golden)
Get a Horse! (Lauren MacMullan, Dorothy McKim)
Mr. Hublot (Laurent Witz, Alexandre Espigares)
Possessions (Shuhei Morita)
Want to win: Room on the Broom (Max Lang, Jan Lachauer)

Best Live Action Short Film

Aquel No Era Yo (That Wasn’t Me) (Esteban Crespo)
Avant Que De Tout Perdre (Just Before Losing Everything) (Xavier Legrand, Alexandre Gavras)
Helium (Anders Walter, Kim Magnusson)
Pitääkö Mun Kaikki Hoitaa? (Do I Have to Take Care of Everything?) (Selma Vilhunen, Kirsikka Saari)
Expect/want to win: The Voorman Problem (Mark Gill, Baldwin Li)

Best Sound Editing

All Is Lost (Steve Boeddeker, Richard Hymns)
Expect/want to win: Captain Phillips (Oliver Tarney)
Gravity (Glenn Freemantle)
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (Brent Burge, Chris Ward)
Lone Survivor (Wylie Stateman)

Best Sound Mixing

Captain Phillips (Chris Burdon, Mark Taylor, Mike Prestwood Smith, Chris Munro)
Want to win: Gravity (Skip Lievsay, Niv Adiri, Christopher Benstead, Chris Munro)
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (Christopher Boyes, Michael Hedges, Michael Semanick, Tony Johnson)
Expect to win: Inside Llewyn Davis (Skip Lievsay, Greg Orloff, Peter F. Kurland)
Lone Survivor (Andy Koyama, Beau Borders, David Brownlow)

Best Visual Effects
Expect/want to win: Gravity (Tim Webber, Chris Lawrence, Dave Shirk, Neil Corbould)
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (Joe Letteri, Eric Saindon, David Clayton, Eric Reynolds)
Iron Man 3 (Christopher Townsend, Guy Williams, Erik Nash, Dan Sudick)
The Lone Ranger (Tim Alexander, Gary Brozenich, Edson Williams, John Frazier)
Star Trek Into Darkness (Roger Guyett, Patrick Tubach, Ben Grossmann, Burt Dalton)

Best Adapted Screenplay
Before Midnight (Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke)
Want to win: Captain Phillips (Billy Ray)
Philomena (Steve Coogan, Jeff Pope)
Expect to win: 12 Years a Slave (John Ridley)
The Wolf of Wall Street (Terence Winter)

Best Original Screenplay

Expect to win: American Hustle (Eric Warren Singer, David O. Russell)
Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen)
Dallas Buyers Club (Craig Borten, Melisa Wallack)
Want to win: Her (Spike Jonze)
Nebraska (Bob Nelson)

If you want to share your picks, visit this page or share ’em in the comments. I’d love to see how we agree/differ.

Earlier this evening, I finished reading Lu Ann Cahn’s lifestyle experiment book “I Dare Me: How I Rebooted And Recharged My Life By Doing Something New Every Day.” If you’re unfamiliar with Cahn, she’s an Emmy Award-winning TV journalist, mother and cancer survivor who, back in 2009, decided to try a new thing every day for a year and blog about it.

As noted in her blog’s intro:

When we are children, our lives are full of firsts: first steps, first grade, first wish, first kiss, first love. There seems to be an endless stream of “firsts”.

At some point, though, there are fewer “firsts”. We forget what it’s like to discover something new.

After a while we tend to lose our childlike curiosity, leaning more toward what we know and what we’re comfortable with. We order food that we know we like. We wear clothes that are the same style we’ve worn for years. We see the same people every day. Work is “Groundhog Day”. We vacation in the same place every year. We wrap ourselves in the familiar to avoid the discomfort of change. We attach ourselves to our habits, (good and bad), and our usual ways of doing things.

And then we stop growing.

“I Dare Me” is a compilation of Cahn’s many fun and daring “firsts.” Before I finished the first chapter, I knew I’d have to give it a try. And so today, I shall embark on a “first” quest. Who wants to try it with me?

My “first” goal: Create a list of “firsts” to try. So far, I’m up to about 100 items. Here’s a small sampling:

* Stand up for a cause I believe in (see this entry).
* Publicly reveal my Oscar picks.
* Take a class in astrobiology.
* Walk 15,000 steps in a single day.
* Pay for a stranger’s coffee.
* Get a massage.
* Get a mammogram.
* Go letterboxing.
* Take piano lessons.
* Buy a house.

Have any suggestions for interesting “firsts”? Feel free to share ’em in comments.