Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin host the (something annual) Academy Awards at 5 p.m. Sunday on ABC. It should be a big test for the industry’s most celebrated award show. While some see the 10-nominee Best Picture race as detrimental to the Academy’s reputation as the authority on quality filmmaking, others believe the stuffed category will boost ratings for the fledgling ceremony telecast.

Those are discussions for other days. For now, let’s focus on the big night: Who will win, and perhaps more importantly, who should win. On with the predictions!

Best Picture
The most heated battle of the night comes down to mega-blockbuster “Avatar” and the low-budget war drama “The Hurt Locker.” The two films couldn’t be any more different. One is good, and the other is an overblown rip-off of “Pocahontas” with cool special effects.

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Casual moviegoers finally have a reason to watch the Academy Awards ceremony.

When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decided to expand its Best Picture category from five nominees to 10, many hoped it would lead to a more diverse and audience-friendly awards show. They got their wish, and it only desecrated the Oscar image a little bit.

The expanded category gives blockbusters “Avatar,” “The Blind Side,” “District 9,””Inglourious Basterds” and “Up” a chance to compete against the smaller, award-friendlier films, “An Education,” “The Hurt Locker,” “Precious,” “A Serious Man” and “Up in the Air.”

Voters should be commended for such solid choices in the first year of this 10-nominee experiment. “Up” becomes only the second animated feature to ever compete for Best Picture, and surprise nominee “District 9” proves that Academy voters are finally beginning to understand the craft of science-fiction. Yeah, yeah, “Avatar” proves that too.

The only real misfit here is “The Blind Side,” a movie with almost no Oscar precursors to its credit. Most of its buzz has circled star Sandra Bullock, who is now the likely frontrunner in the Best Actress category.

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With two lingering wars and the economy in the tank, the nation didn’t exactly have a very happy 2009.
Fitting that many of the year’s best movies were fantasies, comedies and cartoons. Apparently, there’s nothing like a good distraction to help ease the pain of tough times.

1. Up

While this Pixar masterpiece boasts several visually arresting action sequences, the film’s most powerful moments are the quietest ones– particularly a dialogue-free sequence that documents the love and loss of a long, happy marriage.

From there, “Up” becomes a refreshingly funny buddy comedy, teaming an 80-year-old grouch with a young, upbeat wilderness explorer. It seems like all fun kid stuff, but “Up” is more a movie about grief and how some of the greatest adventures in life can also be the simplest.

People go on and on about the revolutionary computer effects in “Avatar,” but only Pixar has ever made me connect with computer images on a human level.

Consider the climactic scene of “Up,” when heartbroken Carl Fredericksen opens the last page of his wife’s photo journal. The scene has no explosions, quips or bright balloons. The essence and brilliance of “Up” is in an old man’s gaze.

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