Oscars Forecast: 4 Weird Things You Should See, 24 Things You Will See

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Winona Ryder

The Oscar polls closed Tuesday at 5 p.m., so here's what's going to happen at the Oscars on Feb. 22 (plus four imaginary scenes that would make the show way more entertaining).

First, four things you won't see at the Oscars but I wish you could:

Winona Ryder re-enacting her confrontation with Natalie Portman in Black Swan, but suddenly, catching sight of Gwyneth Paltrow backstage rehearsing her “Coming Home” number from Country Strong, losing it and attacking Paltrow for her 2009 GOOP blog blind item about her, breaking Paltrow’s guitar over her head and shrieking Gwyneth's own lyrics at her: “Get lost in the great wide open, Gwyneth! And never find your way back!”

Bansky swinging on a rope from the ceiling like a less accident-prone Spider-Man dressed in a gorilla mask, seizing the best doc trophy from Inside Job director Charles Ferguson and escaping through a breakaway stunt wall he’s secretly installed in the Kodak Theater, then nimbly grabbing a flying trapeze dangling from a hovering helicopter that whisks him away to an undisclosed location.

Christopher Nolan discovering it's all been a series of convoluted dreams, and he's really back in 1998 trying to scrape up $6,000 for his first film, Following, which he then explains to Janet Maslin thus: "I decided to structure my story in such a way as to emphasize the audience's incomplete understanding of each new scene as it is first presented." (Actually, that's what he really did say. And at Saturday's Eddie Awards, where he won Filmmaker of the Year, he really said what Inception editor Lee Smith did was to "have everybody understand it -- or understand it enough anyway.")

Toy Story 3 winning Best Picture, Javier Bardem winning Best Actor, Michelle Williams winning Best Actress, John Hawkes winning Best Supporting Actor, Jacki Weaver winning Best Supporting Actress, Mike Leigh winning Best Original Screenplay — followed by the rain of toads from Magnolia, a plague of locusts, the moon turning to blood, and the coming of the Millennium.

Instead, expect this to happen:

BEST PICTURE: The King's Speech

BEST DIRECTOR: David Fincher, The Social Network

BEST ACTOR: Colin Firth, The King's Speech

BEST ACTRESS: Natalie Portman, Black Swan

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Christian Bale, The Fighter

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Melissa Leo, The Fighter

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE: Toy Story 3

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: David Seidler, The King's Speech

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: True Grit

BEST ART DIRECTION: Alice in Wonderland

BEST COSTUME DESIGN: Alice in Wonderland

BEST DOCUMENTARY: Inside Job

BEST FILM EDITING: The Social Network

BEST FOREIGN FILM: Incendies

BEST ORIGINAL MUSIC SCORE: The King's Speech

BEST SONG: "We Belong Together" from Toy Story 3

BEST SOUND EDITING: Inception

BEST SOUND MIXING: Inception

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: Inception

BEST MAKEUP: The Wolfman

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT: Warriors of Qiugang

BEST ANIMATED SHORT: Day and Night

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT: Na Wewe (even thought it's the schematic, sentimental Crash of shorts, and the best one is Michael Creagh's The Crush, which I vote least likely to win)

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