“What do we know about the Best Actor race right now?,” Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone wrote this morning. “We know that George Clooney is, to my mind, in the frontrunner’s spot for The Descendants. Right behind him, I figure, is Michael Fassbender in Shame.”

Due respect but I have to say no on Fassbender. His performance is too malignant and frosty, and you don’t get a Best Actor nomination for a performance that includes walking around your New York apartment with your elephant-sized appendage hanging out and bouncing against your upper thigh. Portraying a sexual pervo in a clinically accurate way is not what stirs hearts and minds. Fassbender is an iceman in this thing.

Stone doesn’t mention in her piece that she hasn’t seen Moneyball yet, so take her assessments with a grain.

“And in the major upset category,” adds Stone, “is Christopher Plummer for Barrymore, already called for the win by Jeff Wells of Hollywood-Elsewhere and mentioned in this story by Tom O’Neil. But if we’re talking frontrunners, the snake in the grass in the Best Actor race is The Artist‘s Jean Dujardin, who will charm the pants off of anyone who sees the film.”