Beverly Hills, CA - The general habit here is to wait until the last possible minute until Oscar Predictions are filed. That's to give this blogger enough time to research how politics has impacted the Oscar race.

The question is annually asked "Did you see every movie?" which has nothing to do with predicting which movie will win what award. Getting one's predictions correct means taking one's heart out of it, and just using their head. What you have to do is guess how the Academy's going to pick and why.

The Hurt Locker is a dramatically powerful film. So much so that an arguably questionable decision to ban Nicolas Chartier, one of the fllm's producers, from the Oscars on Sunday for an email he wrote to friends in the Academy asking them to vote for his picture, will not hurt its momentum.

The reason is the overwhelming desire to give the Best Director Award to The Hurt Locker's brilliant director Kathryn Bigelow, and make her the first woman in history to win an Oscar for Best Director. The momentum to make this happen is enormous, so much so that I'm going out on a limb and say there's no contest. And The Academy tends to believe that a film can't have the best director and not be the best picture. This powerful desire will override the new-for-2010 preference voting system and give The Hurt Locker the prize.