Gurus of Gold’s first Oscar predictions

The Gurus of Gold, a panel of movie “experts,” who vote on which pictures, actors, etc., have the best chance of winning Oscars, has released its first poll. This panel is usually fairly accurate. Last year, while I was tooting my horn for The Social Network and all the early precursors said that movie was a lock for best picture, the Gurus never wavered from The King’s Speech. In its rankings that come out this time last year, nine of its top 10 choices were nominated and its 11^th pick was the 10^th nominee.

This year is going to be a little more difficult because under the current rules, we won’t know how many best picture nominees there will be until the day the nominations are announced. All we know is that it’s going to be a minimum of five and a maximum of 10.

In the Gurus’ tabulation, strong support for any one film falls off after seven, so I’m going to assume for right now that there will be seven nominees and according to the Gurus, they will be (in the order the Gurus ranked them) War Horse, The Ides of March, The Artist, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, The Descendants, Midnight in Paris and J. Edgar. If the list does stretch to 10, the Gurus say the final three will be Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy; The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo; and Tree of Life.