Though I'm always providing my own opinion and judgment on the Oscar race in this column, I like to think of myself as more of a filter, reading the plethora of Oscar blogs out there written by people much better informed than myself and bringing back what they're saying, not just my own ramblings. So it feels important to tell you at all that the first Gurus o' Gold chart-- the compilation of Oscar predictions by some 14 insiders-- has been posted at Movie City News. They're handicapping every major race, even without having seen some major players like True Grit and Love and Other Drugs, and the major consensus is that the likeliest Best Picture winner is The King's Speech, followed very closely by The Social Network and then Inception.

What's surprising is how much consensus is there-- The King's Speech received almost entirely 1st and 2nd place votes, as did the The Social Network with a smattering of threes. I also never would have anticipated Inception making it so close to the top, with the July movie fading in memory and none of the performances even sticking in the brain, but the DVD release is imminent and, as we've known for years, the Academy owes Christopher Nolan big time after leaving The Dark Knight out of Best Picture entirely. The entire chart is worth a look-- there's a strong cadre of support for True Grit's Hailee Steinfeld for Best Supporting Actress, an idea I floated last week, and they've got Andrew Garfield just below Geoffrey Rush for Best Supporting Actor, with surprisingly just two Justin Timberlake supporters in the field.

As for me, my last week was dominated by New York Comic Con, but I did manage to come across two films with Oscar relevance, though only one with any impact on the categories in the charts.

• Tangled. In my Best Picture-centric brain I totally forgot to mention Tangled last week, which I saw in unfinished form at a Disney presentation last week. The movie could definitely be a contender for Best Animated Feature, especially if Disney tries to get the Academy to forgo that category for Toy Story 3 entirely and bump it right up to Best Picture, but the real force here is the songs from Alan Menken, the 8-time Oscar-winning composer who has won previously for The LIttle Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, among other modern Disney classics. There are some terrific songs in there, including the evil stepmom number "Mother Knows Best" and a rousing barroom song about having a dream. It'll be the most fun Best Original Song performances since Enchanted, so we all have that to look forward to.
  
  
• Hereafter. There are plenty of supporters out there for this film, and some of the Gurus o' Gold picked it as a contender for Best Picture in the last few slots, but I found pretty much nothing worthwhile or Oscar-worthy in Clint Eastwood's latest, which feels messy and unfocused while also deeply, absurdly sentimental. There's definitely no acting prospects in here-- Matt Damon good but restrained in a way that won't work, while the rest of the cast isn't famous or isn't that good-- and much as the Academy may love Clint to pieces, remember, Invictus didn't get a Best Picture nomination last year despite two acting nominations for Morgan Freeman and Damon. Strong box office performance or a bunch of critical champions could prove me wrong, but right now I feel like even Best Picture is way too crowded to include this.

As for everything else that's happened in the last week, the surprisingly slow box office performance of Secretariat, which came in second to The Social Network, has plenty of people wondering if it might be the sneak attack Blind Side-style Best Picture nominee that some were predicting (only one of the Gurus, Sasha Stone of Awards Daily, picked it for a Best Picture spot). I still haven't seen Secretariat, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it perform well week after week until suddenly it's made $100 million and is a contender all over again-- Rush Limbaugh's support sure can't hurt.

In the next week Conviction will be opening, along with Hereafter, in limited release, both of them still fairly long shots for Best Picture. And, well, the most notable releases of the weekend are Jackass and RED, neither of them likely to find Oscar support. It's actually going to be a long four weeks until November 5, when 127 Hours, Fair Game, For Colored Girls and Fair Game open, before any new releases enter the Oscar conversation. Maybe that will give us time to talk about some other races in more detail, or starting looking at the year as a whole overall. So many options! For now, though, the charts.

BEST PICTURE

The Gurus o' Gold have me convinced that Inception is the lock I should have been predicting weeks ago, so it gets bumped up as one of only three locks. Never Let Me Go, on other hand, has been bumped down as a Long Shot after never really catching on in limited release. Everything else remains the same for now. Now that The Way Back is confirmed for a 2010 release I wonder if they'll start showing it to select critics-- early buzz on that could make it far more of a contender than it feels right now.

Inception
The Social Network
Toy Story 3

127 Hours
Another Year
Black Swan
The Fighter
The Kids Are All Right
The King's Speech
True Grit

Fair Game
Love and Other Drugs
Made in Dagenham
Rabbit Hole
Secretariat
Shutter Island
Somewhere
The Tourist
The Way Back
Winter's Bone

Blue Valentine
Biutiful
Brighton Rock
Conviction
Country Strong
The Debt
For Colored Girls
Get Low
The Ghost Writer
Greenberg
Hereafter
How Do You Know?
Never Let Me Go
Nowhere Boy
The Town
Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps

BEST DIRECTOR

Nothing much to see here-- The Social Network continues to dominate, everything else in the Strong Contenders looks as valid and promising as ever, and even David O. Russell is hanging in there thanks to the huge deal he struck to direct Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. Sure, that might not mean anything, but I take it as a sign that someone at Sony has seen The Fighter and is betting on his stock going up. Whenever Paramount decides to finally screen The Fighter we'll finally be able to cross off this giant question mark. (Pictured above is Danny Boyle, just because I like him).

David Fincher, The Social Network

Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan
Danny Boyle, 127 Hours
Joel and Ethan Coen, True Grit
Tom Hooper, The King's Speech
Mike Leigh, Another Year
Christopher Nolan, Inception
David O. Russell, The Fighter

Lisa Cholodenko, The Kids Are All Right
Sofia Coppola, Somewhere
Clint Eastwood, Hereafter
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, The Tourist
Peter Weir, The Way Back

Ben Affleck, The Town
Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu, Biuitiful
John Cameron Mitchell, Rabbit Hole
Tyler Perry, For Colored Girls
Roman Polanski, The Ghost Writer
Mark Romanek, Never Let Me Go
Martin Scorsese, Shutter Island
Oliver Stone, Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps
Edward Zwick, Love and Other Drugs

BEST ACTOR

Beginners has been knocked to a 2011 release, so Ewan McGregor is out, but otherwise nothing has changed. Blue Valentine getting slapped with an NC-17 rating will make it an even harder road for Ryan Gosling, who was already a longshot in this category, but he's so good in the movie I have to think the Weinsteins will find a way to keep him in the running.

Colin Firth, The King's Speech
James Franco, 127 Hours

Javier Bardem, Biutiful
Jeff Bridges, True Grit
Robert Duvall, Get Low
Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network
Ryan Gosling, Blue Valentine
Mark Wahlberg, The Fighter

George Clooney, The American
Johnny Depp, The Tourist
Stephen Dorff, Somewhere
Aaron Eckhart, Rabbit Hole
Aaron Johnson, Nowhere Boy

Jim Broadbent, Another Year
Leonardo DiCaprio, Inception
Jake Gyllenhaal, Love and Other Drugs
Sean Penn, Fair Game
Kevin Spacey, Casino Jack
Ben Stiller, Greenberg

BEST ACTRESS

Now is the time that the campaign for Jennifer Lawrence in Winter's Bone needs to kick into gear, as equally strong performances from the likes of Nicole Kidman, Sally Hawkins and Lesley Manville head toward release and threaten to erase the memory of her tiny movie entirely. Annette Bening is a little safer-- she's more of an industry icon, and her name has been mentioned in the same breath as this statue ever since the film debuted at Sundance. But I'm worried and wondering about Lawrence, who will have to hit the pavement hard to keep her name in the mix.

Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right
Natalie Portman, Black Swan

Sally Hawkins, Made in Dagenham
Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole
Jennifer Lawrence, Winter's Bone
Lesley Manville, Another Year
Julianne Moore, The Kids Are All Right

Anne Hathaway, Love and Other Drugs
Diane Lane, Secretariat
Hilary Swank, Conviction
Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine
Reese Witherspoon, How Do You Know?

Helen Mirren, The Tempest
Carey Mulligan, Never Let Me Go
Gwyneth Paltrow, Country Strong
Tilda Swinton, I Am Love
Naomi Watts, Fair Game
Rachel Weisz, The Whistleblower

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

I hate to do something like this without seeing a performance, but the drumbeat for The King's Speech has gotten so persuasive that I can't help but assume Geoffrey Rush is locked in for a nomination here, especially with the rest of the field so fuzzy. And, because we're being bold today, I'm putting Mark Ruffalo in there too-- he's had the buzz to himself for so long that he's earned it. Everything else remains the same, as the Social Network boys make choosing really difficult. That seems like a choice that won't be sorted out until critic's awards start making their picks in December-- and who knows, they might avoid the issue entirely and give it to Rush instead.

Mark Ruffalo, The Kids Are All Right
Geoffrey Rush, The King's Speech

Christian Bale, The Fighter
Andrew Garfield, The Social Network
Justin Timberlake, The Social Network

Ed Harris, The Way Back
John Hawkes, Winter's Bone
Bob Hoskins, Made in Dagenham
Jeremy Renner, The Town
Sam Rockwell, Conviction

Josh Brolin, True Grit
Vincent Cassel, Black Swan
Matt Damon, True Grit
Michael Douglas, Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps
Colin Farrell, The Way Back
Armie Hammer, The Social Network
Dustin Hoffman, Barney's Version
John Malkovich, Secretariat
Christopher Plummer, Beginners

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

I'm bumping up Jacki Weaver to Likely Contender, because when Sony Pictures Classics recently sent out T-shirts with her face on it to Academy voters, they proved they meant business with her campaign. And, sad as it makes me, I've bumped down Kristin Scott Thomas-- the Nowhere Boy campaign that could have been just hasn't materialized.

NONE

Helena Bonham-Carter, The King's Speech
Barbara Hershey, Black Swan
Miranda Richardson, Made in Dagenham
Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit
Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom
Dianne Wiest, Rabbit Hole

Amy Adams, The Fighter
Anne-Marie Duff, Nowhere Boy
Melissa Leo, The Fighter
Rosamund Pike, Made in Dagenham
Kristin Scott Thomas, Nowhere Boy

Marion Cotillard, Inception
Elle Fanning, Somewhere
Rosamund Pike, Barney's Version
Saoirse Ronan, The Way Back
Sissy Spacek, Get Low
Mia Wasikowska, The Kids Are All Right