HE Best Picture Dream Picks (i.e., in this order & to hell with tea-leaf-reading predictions with The Revenant and Joy put aside for the time being): Spotlight, Mad Max: Fury Road, Brooklyn, Beasts of No Nation, Love & Mercy, Son of Saul, Carol, Everest, The Martian, Asghar Farhadi‘s About Elly, the last 25 minutes of The Walk.

HE Hardball Best Picture Predictions (obviously without having seen The Revenant and Joy): Spotlight, The Revenant (because I can feel it), Joy (ditto), The Martian (popcorn), Room, Brooklyn, Carol. Mystifying Add-Ons: Bridge of Spies, Steve Jobs.

MCN’s David Poland has written that “there are no locks in the Best Actor category [but] closest to locked are Eddie Redmayne, Ian McKellen and Michael Caine. But there is a real chance that one of them could fall out.” Eddie Redmayne is close to locked? Since when?