Er, no - a mediocre southern accent should not an Oscar win.

I don't know who this Dave White MSNBC contributor is, but I think he's taken a few too many sips from The Blind Side's peroxide bottle.

At least that's the only explanation I can come up with for why he'd call Sandra Bullock the predictable Best Actress Oscar winner this year.

Really?

Because last time I checked, sporting a new hair color and a southern accent ought not a Best Actress make. Not that the academy voters can't be duly swayed by the fact that she did have a rockin body and glorious "Southern Suburban Ladies Who Lunch" wardrobe throughout, but if we're evaluating on that basis, please - hand the award to Carey Mulligan - her hair underwent as much of an education as her character. And her eyeliner was so precise.

I wasn't planning to commit my own Oscar picks to posterity....HOWEVER, since I've seen MOST of them this year, I may as well weigh in, since I can't simply let this Dave White guy project unchallenged. Because he's wrong. For now. Until Sunday proves otherwise, either way.

So - armed with my dog-eared Oscar Ballot (yes, I carry it around with me for a month and check off each movie as I see it. Whatever, it's my Big Television Event of the Year), here's how I'm calling it (my picks italicized):

Leading Actor:

Jeff Bridges - Crazy Heart
George Clooney - Up in the Air
Colin Firth - A Single Man
Morgan Freeman - Invictus
Jeremy Renner - The Hurt Locker

How come? Fine, the Dave White guy and I agree on this for the same reason. It's sort of a "body of work" award. The Academy's turn to say, "Jeff, we like ya bud. You were almost as good as a drunk country singer as you were in Iron Man. In fact, we liked watching you get all wound up over your badass super powers right before Tony Stark wiped you off the planet so much that we thought this would be a nice retrospective honor. And you made one awesome hippy in The Men Who Stare at Goats. But honestly - even with the beer belly and the sweat stains and the whiskey breath, you were actually...um....sexy in the Crazy Heart. Like, we'd probably have slept with you, too." On that point, the Academy and I agree.

Why not Clooney? Because he played himself. He was "George Clooney Showing Up In A Suit to Fire You." He was endlessly likeable, but - let's be honest- it's George Clooney playing a likeable guy. It's not acting.

But come on, what about Colin Firth? The movie was great. And it was great BECAUSE of Colin Firth, but it wasn't great because of Colin Firth's acting. It was great because of the art direction and cinematography that focused on Colin Firth. Now Julianne Moore - she should have been nominated.

Sure, but Jeremy Renner's hot - shouldn't he win? Heather says, "nope. give him a few years and a biopic about addiction or a great gay kiss and he might stand a chance.

Kiddo, you're leaving out Morgan Freeman! Correct. Haven't seen that one. Can't weigh in.

Supporting Actor:

Matt Damon - Invictus
Woody Harrelson - The Messenger
Christopher Plummer's Beard - The Last Station
Stanley Tucci - The Lovely Bones
Christopher Waltz - Inglourious Basterds

How come? The Academy likes charming villains. Or even complely vile villains. Villainy wins Oscars. And that entire milk-drinking with Poor Man's Liev Schreiber scene in the beginning was so spooky and well-played and VILLAINOUS and he did such a comprehensive job of killing Diane Kruger's character, and he was so smug about all of it - it's the Academy's way of saying, "Chris, man, we'd totally take a baseball bat to the head for you. You make a great evil guy. Now pull up your hair - show us the swastika scar....please?!"

Yes, but doesn't Captain VonTrapp deserve a win? Yes, he absolutely does. And he and his beard made one incredibly....BRITISH Tolstoy. But I suspect he won't win because his role absolutely wouldn't have existed without the amazing chemistry he managed alongside the ever-luminous Helen Mirren. She was as much responsible for how lovable Tolstoy VonTrapp felt in the end. So, "body of work" award aside, I suspect he and his beard will be bested by vile villainy this year.

So that MSNBC guy got it right about Stanley Tucci? I think so. The amazing thing about his Julie and Julie performance was that you actually ended up being sort of attracted to him right along with Julia Childs - and that's pretty amazing, right? So why nominate him for the Lovely Bones, a movie no one saw? Why not let him ride Meryl Streep's coattails with the warm, fuzzy nomination and actually stand a winning chance? Good question, academy. Why not? I'll leave it at that and not dig into the fact that he's actually right up my alley - bald, with plenty of hair on his chest. Lo, the day has arrived: Heather has a crush on That Guy From The Devil Wears Prada.

Leading Actress

Sandra Bullock - The Blind Side
Helen Mirren - The Last Station
Carey Mulligan - An Education
Gabourey Sidibe - Precious
Meryl Streep - Julie & Julia

How come? The astoundingly commanding screen presence of such a young woman is enough to warrant my pick for Carey Mulligan, to mention nothing of how powerfully expressive her face can be. She acts without acting (er, I mean that in a less George Clooney way than it sounds). To me, we weren't watching a twenty-something actress playing the part of a tortured, articulate, repressed teenage girl - she WAS a repressed teenage girl - from the way she rolled her eyes to the way she tolerated her parents to the way she let herself be swept away by the mysterious older man and his flower bouquets. She was amazing and subtle and magnetizing and beautiful and vulnerable and infinitely easy to relate to.....it was an incredible movie, made so incredible by Carey Mulligan - yes, the camera loves her, but we could have shot the thing on our cell phone video recorders and she still would have been as compelling.

Really? You think she'll beat out all of those heavy hitter AND Sandra Bullock-as-a-blonde? Yep, I do. Meryl and Helen have had a few good years recently, and they'll continue to have more good years, but they cancel each other out in this case - they were both good - they both tackled historic characters in period pieces with quirky husbands and fun costumes. And, fine, I know the Academy is looking for some way to reward Sandra Bullock for simply being beloved. This feels very much like Julia Roberts' Erin Brockovich nomination - take another real character, give her a great bra and some fun shoes and some basically family-friendly adversity and - boom - box office sweetheart becomes a "serious actress." But come on - every time Sandra's character experienced anything emotional, she fled the room and slammed the door. We never had to see her attempting more than just an earnest expression and some hair flips. It just wasn't Oscar-caliber acting in a year with a lot of more serious performances.

Supporting Actress

Penelope Cruz - Nine
Vera Farmiga - Up in the Air
Maggie Gyllenhaal - Crazy Heart
Anna Kendrick - Up in the Air
Mo'Nique - Precious

How come? Because anything that was so unequivocally, grotesquely horrific to watch really is a work of art - and an amazing cinematic feat - and none of the other ladies nominated come anywhere near her on this. She brought a monster to life and absolutely stole the screen. The scene where she throws the TV down the stairs after her own grandchild? Yikes. The two ladies from Up in the Air cancel each other out (though of the two, my vote would absolutely go to Anna Kendrick, she nailed that uptight place that lives between professionally confident and personally insecure with really effortless finesse. Smart and socially awkward: I live inside of that more often than not and she really made the character feel authentic, not forced).

What's that, you can't figure out why Penelope was nominated, either? Correct. Were we short on female supporting roles this year? If that's the case, Academy, you should have remembered Julianne Moore in A Single Man or Sari Lennick from A Serious Man or Paula Patton from Precious. Come on, Academy - stop being a sucker for the Penelope every time she teases her hair. It's sexy, yes. And yes, the musical number where she's in nearly nothing, wrapped up in a rope, turning around and bending over was totally hot. But not "Oscar-hot." Just "freeze-frame in Blu Ray hot."

But you loved Maggie in Crazy Heart - don't think she can pull it off? In a year where Mo'Nique wasn't nominated, I'd hand it to Maggie - but this is not that year.

Best Picture

Avatar
The Blind Side
District 9
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Precious
A Serious Man
Up
Up in the Air

How come? Wellll - if I could write in an extra, I'd nominate Crazy Heart. Not sure why it didn't snag a nomination - it was a gorgeously moving movie. But of the nominated ten, it WAS a tough call - unlike last year where I suffered through The Reader and wanted to burn my eyes out during most of Benjamin Button, I was bummed when the credits rolled on all of these (OK, with the exception of Avatar - as of the moment I type this, I haven't watched it yet. Intend to fix that by Sunday afternoon and maybe I'll revise this - but at this point, haven't watched it.....). Up in the Air was terrific, if not a little lightweight. A Serious Man was standard Coen Bro fair - clever, inventive, obscurely circumspect, endlessly endearing - and visually striking. Great script (actually, very Wes Anderson in style and tone now that I think about it). The Hurt Locker managed to say a lot between explosions and gun shots (cereal aisle scene, naturally). Up had that talking dog with the helium voice, nuff said. Even Inglourious Basterds had its moments (though I'm patently Anti-Tarrantino, so I have to admit bias there).

Yeah, yeah, yeah, make your point: why An Education? Because it was the only one of the 10 that made me want to press "rewind" and start all over from the beginning the second it ended. I wanted to experience it all over again - wanted to watch the character transformation from mild-mannered school girl to wise old soul from start to finish again. And it was a beautiful glimpse of conservative London in the 60's and the almost quaintly patriarchal ideas that dictated that it was perfectly fine to spend lots of money to ship your daughter off to Oxford as long as the ultimate goal was to find her a good Oxford husband - I loved that when the girl challenged the system she'd grown up inside of and eventually rebelled against it she attacked the status quo from a rational, intellectual platform rather than from a whiny, vindictive place. It was beautiful and subtle and hypnotic. And it was my favorite.

So there we have it. I'll be happy as a clam no matter how the show goes down as long as Avatar doesn't snag the picture win and Sandra Bullock doesn't get awarded with an Oscar simply for being likable. I'll be setting up camp before hand to make fun of the hair, dresses, and awkward red carpet interviews, admiring how thin and svelte and fit they all look while I shove chocolate and cheese and wine and ice cream down my throat. Mmmmm.