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I was happy that The Artist won Best Picture and Best Director because it meant that I was right. The game of Oscar isn't being happy with the winners, it's being happy because you predicted the winners. The Artist came through for me in four of the six categories I predicted it to win. Hugo came through in three of the four I predicted it for, including Best Cinematography, one of my gutsier calls that came through. I got both Screenplay categories right, a rarity for me, and two of the three short film categories, which is the best I've done in half a decade. Overall I got seventeen categories correct out of a total of twenty-four, which is better than I usually do, but not as well as I did in 2005. I should have been ecstatic that year, when I got nineteen categories right, but I was too busy being furious about Crash beating Brokeback Mountain. I was playing the game wrong.

What were the big surprises this year? Meryl Streep won the Oscar despite losing the SAG award to Viola Davis. You could say that this gives more weight to the BAFTA than the SAG, but the fact is that, historically, when one nominee wins the SAG and the other wins the BAFTA, either of them can win the Oscar. Streep played a real person, with an accent, suffering from dementia and wearing prosthetics. That package, plus the sense that Streep was overdue, was too much for Davis to overcome. The flashier part almost always wins. We learned that when Marion Cotillard beat Julie Christie, and we relearned it this year.

Hugo's win for Best Visual Effects says a lot about how voters pick the winner in this category. Usually there is a Best Picture nominee with really incredible special effects, so it is easy to assume that the film won because of the visual effects, rather than because of love for the film. Hugo has proven that the film itself is what the Academy votes for. Never in the history of this category has a film nominated for Best Picture lost to one that hasn't. This is an upset we should have seen coming.

But there are some upsets you just don't see coming. I put The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as my dark horse for Best Film Editing, but I never expected it to win. This makes the film only the fourth non-Best Picture Nominee to win this award since 1990, following The Matrix, Black Hawk Down, and The Bourne Ultimatum. I suppose the take away from this win is that films with action sequences have an advantage, and especially films with dark lighting and dark themes. I'm not sure why, but the last time a legitimately bright film won this Oscar was The Aviator. Mostly, this award is a reminder that The Academy will sometimes throw us a complete curveball and there's nothing we can do but look foolish when we swing and miss.

There are now only two reasons to predict different films to win Best Sound Mixing and Best Sound Editing. The first is when a musical is nominated for Best Sound Mixing (such as when Dreamgirls won Mixing but Letters from Iwo Jima won Editing). The second is when an animated film with lots of action sequences is nominated for Best Sound Editing (such as when The Incredibles won Editing but Ray won Mixing). The only recent year where there was a split in the categories for neither of those reasons was 2008, which was a particularly strange year, as Slumdog Millionaire won Mixing but The Dark Knight won Editing. But King Kong, The Bourne Ultimatum, The Hurt Locker, Inception, and now Hugo have proven that these categories will almost always go to the same film.

Two other categories gave us lessons to remember for the future. Some people were concerned that the controversy surrounding The Artist's score (which apparently raped Kim Novak) would cost it votes. We have learned again that the voters either don't pay attention to these controversies or just don't care. They vote for what they love, and they loved the score for The Artist. Also, Terry George's Oscar for Best Live Action Short confirmed my thoughts that films with famous people involved are much more likely to win that Oscar. Martin McDonough's Six Shooter won with Brendan Gleeson, and now George's The Shore won with Ciaran Hinds.

There's not much more to say about this year's Oscars. That's not true, there's a lot more to say, but that's all I care to say about it right now. It's possible that some of the lessons we learned this year will bite us in the butt next year, but hey, that's next year's problem. I hope everybody enjoyed the show and got at least one more category right than they did last year. I suppose I'll end the year by quoting the most memorable line from any Best Picture nominee this year. Will I obsess and analyze the Oscars this much next year, knowing how pointless and often fruitless it is? “With pleasure.”

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