The envelope please. It's been dubbed the Gay Super Bowl; it's been protested for being too white, too glitzy, culturally irrelevant in the digital age, but guess what? We still care who takes the bald guy home for their mantle. Below is an educated guess on who will get Oscars for the major categories.
Best Picture
Arrival If this dark-horse sci-fi drama from Quebec-born director Denis Villeneuve wins Best Picture, all bets are off and you're not winning your office Oscar pool.
Fences Powerful African American family drama, adapted by Denzel Washington from the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by the August Wilson, is a contender in a year when Oscar is yearning to be more inclusive.
Hacksaw Ridge Should this Mel Gibson-helmed battlefield drama starring Andrew Garfield as a pacifist medic win the Oscar, it will be an amazing personal rehabilitation story for Gibson, who has languished in Tinseltown's doghouse since his notorious anti-Semitic remarks a decade back.
Hell or High Water This populist melodrama finds brothers Chris Pine and Ben Foster robbing Texas banks to save their family's homestead from foreclosure. Great opportunity for an Anti-Trump acceptance speech.
Hidden Figures Producers of this underdog tale about the contributions of three black women to John Glenn's trip into space are probably happy just to be invited to the dance.
La La Land This feel-good reboot of the traditional Hollywood musical could receive a tsunami of old-fashioned Oscar-sweeps love. Who says Ryan Gosling can't sing?
Lion A little-boy-lost story, with Dev Patel putting a nifty third-act button on the tale drawn from real life.
Manchester by the Sea Another improbable candidate, grimmer than it may first appear. Janitor Casey Affleck is called upon to look after his late brother's adolescent son.
Moonlight African American director Barry Jenkins aces his second feature with a layered account of three stages in the life of a gay black kid. This would be the ultimate Oscar-night Cinderella story.
Actor in a Leading Role
Casey Affleck (Manchester) Ben's younger brother is finally getting the love. Affleck is moving as a small-town New England janitor who's a human hand-grenade capable of pulling his own pin. Kenneth Lonergan withholds crucial information about the source of Lee's dark mood until late in the film, when everything becomes painfully clear.
Andrew Garfield (Hacksaw) It's not often an actor who's up for a big prize admits he did better work in a non-nominated film. Garfield prefers his 17th-century Catholic monk in Japan (Martin Scorsese's neglected Silence) to his WWII medic for Mel Gibson. Garfield would get my vote.
Ryan Gosling (La La) Like Leo DiCaprio before him, Gosling has earned Oscar's blessing so many times that I'd have no trouble with his film's frontrunner power sweeping him along.
Viggo Mortensen (Captain Fantastic) Good actor, wrong year.
Denzel Washington (Fences) In the Oscar game, artists are sometimes rewarded in a different slot from the one they deserve. This would be an odd choice but not an unworthy one.
Actress in a Leading Role
Isabelle Huppert (Elle) The French actress works hard in this absurdist tale of a TV producer battling demons.
Ruth Negga (Loving) In the poignant story of a black woman persecuted for marrying a white man in the Jim Crow American South, Negga is a strong candidate.
Natalie Portman (Jackie) The Israeli-born Portman (Black Swan) impresses as a Dead Kennedy's stoic widow.
Emma Stone (La La) If this is a La La sweep, expect Gosling's intrepid singing partner to be along for the ride.
Meryl Streep (Florence Foster Jenkins) Normally a shoo-in for Oscar love, Streep's funny take on a lady who couldn't sing but did anyway, at the largest venues for her time, will probably lose out to candidates with more compelling contemporary stories.
Actor in a Supporting Role
Mahershala Ali (Moonlight) An underdog candidate for a little film with a big heart.
Jeff Bridges (Hell or High Water) "The Dude" returns as the Sheriff in a high-energy Texas bank robbery drama.
Lucas Hedges (Manchester) This lad has game, battling family tragedy and the control of his future.
Dev Patel (Lion) The Slumdog Millionaire star is all grownup and very good in a drama that spans decades and continents.
Michael Shannon (Nocturnal Animals) Veteran character actor has the kind of energy that can sometimes steal the spotlight.
Actress in a Supporting Role
Viola Davis (Fences) A smart TV ad campaign has elevated the prospects of this powerful trouper.
Naomie Harris (Moonlight) British actress plays drug-addicted mom to the nines.
Nicole Kidman (Lion) A solid but not pivotal role for the reliable Aussie vet.
Octavia Spencer (Hidden Figures) A nomination that stands in for a trio of women, unsung African American NASA Space Center pioneers, in a year when we lost John Glenn.
Michelle Williams (Manchester) One-time Dawson's Creek TV star has come a long way, might just win with a role that only plays in a couple of scenes.
Documentary (Feature) Efforts to reform this category have paid big dividends with the top three candidates:
Fire at Sea is a piece of agit-prop theater that all but shoves your head into the diesel-tainted waters off the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, and a personal drama that feels like it must have spun from someone's imagination.
I Am Not Your Negro The words of African American gay writer James Baldwin, read by Samuel L. Jackson.
O.J.: Made in America Normally a hybrid doc (produced for ABC/ESPN) would not have a prayer of crashing the big-screen category, but these are unusual times, and this was a powerful statement on race and celebrity.