MCN’s Gurus of Gold, finally up and running, have Up In The Air in the top Best Picture prediction slot, fine, followed by Precious and The Hurt Locker. Wait…they have A Serious Man in tenth place following the unseen Invictus, Nine and The Lovely Bones, and one slot behind Inglourious Basterds? Am I reading this correctly? Jokey-dokey, baseball-bat-and-gloppy-brain-matter Basterds — a movie costarring the perpetually smug-faced Eli Roth — is a hotter Best Picture contender than A Serious Friggin’ Man?

Calling on the ghosts of Ernst Lubitsch, Billy Wilder, Douglas Sirk, Andrei Tarkovsky and Fritz Lang to walk the earth, visit certain Gurus in their homes at 3 am and straighten their asses out.

Among the Gurus predicting that Serious won’t make the List of Ten are USA Today‘s Anthony Breznican and Suzie Woz (do they talk to each other?), the Toronto Star‘s Peter Howell, EW‘s Dave Karger (Dave!) and L.A. Times guy Mark Olsen. The 11.4 chart says the hardcore Serious-o’s include Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson, Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, Indiewire‘s Eugene Hernandez, The Wrap‘s Steve Pond, In Contention‘s Kris Tapley (who only gave it a 10) and Greg Ellwood.

The L.A. Times/Envelope Buzzmeter will be up and running early next week.