The Hollywood Reporter has released the ninth installment of its weekly web series The Hollywood Reporters. In each episode, THR awards analyst Scott Feinberg, the series' host, chats with colleagues from THR's newsroom about different aspects of the awards race. This week, Feinberg was joined by contributing tech editor Carolyn Giardina for a discussion about the technical Oscars -- among them best cinematography, best film editing, best sound editing, best sound mixing and best visual effects -- and the top contenders to win them this year.

Thanks for checking out the 19th -- and final pre-Oscars -- episode of A Few Minutes With Feinberg, The Hollywood Reporter’s weekly video series in which I spend -- you guessed it -- a few minutes dissecting the race to the Academy Awards.

Not long ago, I moderated an extensive Q&A following a screening of Lincoln with the film's director Steven Spielberg, screenwriter Tony Kushner, and actors Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, David Strathairn, James Spader and Lee Pace. The Academy nominated Lincoln for best picture, Spielberg for best director, Day-Lewis for best actor, Field for best supporting actress and Kushner for best adapted screenplay. I urge you to check out the video of our conversation above.

I first met Malik Bendjelloul at a little concert that Rodriguez performed at a Hollywood cabaret back in January. If someone hadn't introduced the two of us, I would have assumed that the unassuming 35-year-old Swede was just another young fan of the 70-year-old Mexican-American singer. Although he displayed great promise in America, he flamed out in the early seventies. In Apartheid-era South Africa, however, bootleg copies of his two albums made him into as big a rock star as any. The remarkable story of his South African fans' search for him and his discovery that he had a huge fan-base in South Africa was captured in Searching for Sugar Man, a film that became a critical and commercial triumph and is now nominated for the best documentary feature Oscar. It was directed by none other than Bendjelloul, with whom I subsequently met up for this interview.

Last week, I experienced something that my adolescent-self would have never dreamed possible: I went to the offices of The Simpsons, located on the Fox lot in Century City, and spent a chunk of the afternoon picking the brains of two of the people most responsible for the animated TV show's unprecedented success over the past 26 years, executive producer James L. Brooks and animator/supervising director David Silverman.

VIDEO: A Few Minutes With Feinberg: Oscar's Dark Horses

Back in 2011, Brooks suggested that Silverman -- who previously helmed The Simpsons Movie (2007), a feature film about the show's characters -- direct a Simpsons short in 3D. A little over a year later, Maggie Simpson in 'The Longest Daycare,' a four-and-a-half minute silent dramedy, played before every screening of the Fox animated blockbuster Ice Age: Continental Drift. Last month, it was nominated for the best animated short Oscar, one of the few prizes that The Simpsons hasn't yet won. (It has garnered 27 Emmys, 30 Annies and a Peabody award, among many others.) And, on Feb. 24, Silverman, representing The Simpsons creative team of which he is so proud to be a member, will be headed to the Academy Awards.

I caught up with the 72-year-old Brooks, who seems almost shy despite having been in the spotlight for decades, in a room filled with Simpsons memorabilia -- Emmys, framed news clippings and life-size cutouts of the show's characters -- just next door to the writers' room where so many episodes of the beloved show, which is now the longest-running primetime animated sitcom in TV history, were conceived.

Last week, I experienced something that my adolescent-self would have never dreamed possible: I went to the offices of The Simpsons, located on the Fox lot in Century City, and spent a chunk of the afternoon picking the brains of two of the people most responsible for the animated TV show's unprecedented success since the very beginning 26 years ago, executive producer James L. Brooks and animator/supervising director David Silverman.

Back in 2011, Brooks suggested that Silverman -- who previously directed The Simpsons Movie (2007), a feature film about the show's characters -- direct a Simpsons short in 3D. A little over a year later, Maggie Simpson in 'The Longest Daycare,' a four-and-a-half minute silent dramedy, played before every screening of the 20th Century Fox animated blockbuster Ice Age: Continental Drift. Last month, it was nominated for the best animated short Oscar, one of the few prizes that The Simpsons hasn't yet won. (It has garnered 27 Emmys, 30 Annies and a Peabody award, among many others.) And, on Feb. 24, Silverman, representing The Simpsons creative team of which he is so proud to be a member, will be headed to the Academy Awards.

PHOTOS: The Making of 'The Simpsons'

I caught up with 55-year-old Silverman, who looks serious and stern but is as pleasant and unassuming a guy as one could ever encounter, in a room filled with Simpsons memorabilia -- Emmys, framed news clippings and life-size cutouts of the show's characters -- just next-door to the writers' room where so many episodes of the beloved show, which is now the longest-running primetime animated sitcom in TV history, were conceived.

Last week, I sat down in a suite at the Chateau Marmont across from the writer-director-producer-animator Tim Burton, who made many of the most memorable movies of my childhood, including the first film that I ever saw in a movie theater. (My dad thought that Edward Scissorhands was a movie for kids. We quickly figured out that he was wrong.)

The 54-year-old looked like a character in a Tim Burton film -- endearingly fragile and yet also otherworldly -- with a broken arm in a sling, a big mischievous smile on his face and his hair awry like the "mad scientist" he once dreamed of becoming. Nearby was a plastic container marked "Tim's Toys," several of which had been removed and placed on a desk to make him feel at home during an extended stay in Los Angeles. There were also colored markers within reach -- he has loved to draw for as long as he can remember, and was in town talk about Frankenweenie, the animated feature for which he is now a best animated feature Oscar nominee, and on behalf of which he had attended the Oscar nominees luncheon the previous day.

Believe it or not, I know what it's like to be searching for Sugar Man. On the day that I was originally supposed to interview Sixto Rodriguez, the titular subject of Malik Bendjelloul's remarkable best documentary feature Oscar nominee Searching for Sugar Man (which chronicles the search for a musician who never knew he was famous halfway across the world), neither the publicist working on the film nor I could locate him. We later learned that the 70-year-old, who had flown from Detroit into Los Angeles for a short trip, had taken his girlfriend to the hospital for what was ultimately diagnosed as exhaustion. When I finally connected with the two of them the next day, both were in good spirits, though clearly drained from the travels and adventures of a year that neither of them -- nor anyone else -- could have possibly seen coming.

PHOTOS: THR's Oscar Nominees Night: Jennifer Lawrence, Steven Spielberg, Naomi Watts Celebrate at 2013 Bash

For the second year in a row, the actress Jessica Chastain is Oscar-nominated for a performance in a film that is also a best picture Oscar nominee. Last year, she was a best supporting actress nominee for The Help, which was joined in the top category by another film in which she starred, The Tree of Life; this year, she is a best actress nominee for Zero Dark Thirty, for which she has already won the Critics' Choice Award for best actress and Golden Globe Award for best actress in a drama. And, for the second year in a row, she has starred in films that were No. 1 and No. 2 at the box office in the same weekend. Last year, The Help and The Debt proved to be blockbusters; this year Zero Dark Thirty and Mama were big hits.

FEINBERG FORECAST: Updated Projections (With 3 Weeks Until the 85th Oscars)

With a critical and commercial track record like that, it probably won't come as a surprise to learn that the delicate-looking but ferociously ambitious 35-year-old redhead is now one of Hollywood's most in-demand actresses. Her mentor Al Pacino recently told Roger Ebert, "I never saw in my career, in my entire time doing this, anyone in the business who's not a household name yet but so sought after as her." So how did Chastain celebrate her recent coronation as a member of Hollywood's A-list? By performing in eight shows a week as the title character of The Heiress on Broadway.

Thanks for checking out the 18th episode of A Few Minutes With Feinberg, The Hollywood Reporter’s weekly video series in which I spend -- you guessed it -- a few minutes dissecting the race to the Academy Awards.

For this episode, I thought that it would be fun to highlight a few Oscar nominees who most people think don't stand much of a chance at winning, but who I think could pull off surprises on Oscar night -- sleeper contenders that might wake up on Feb. 24, if you will! 

During The Hollywood Reporter's recent Nominees Night at Spago, I pulled aside Argo director/producer/star Ben Affleck -- a best picture (if not best director) Oscar nominee this year and winner of the DGA, Critics' Choice and Golden Globe awards for best director -- for a brief chat about his amazing journey with the film.

The Hollywood Reporter has released the seventh installment of its weekly web series The Hollywood Reporters. In each episode, THR awards analyst Scott Feinberg, the series' host, chats with colleagues from THR's newsroom about different aspects of the awards race.

This week, Feinberg was joined by senior editor Alex Ben Block -- last year's winner of the L.A. Press Club's Entertainment Journalist of the Year Award and a nominee for the International Cinematography Guild's Press Award that will be presented on Feb. 22 -- to preview the 16 days remaining before the 85th Oscars.

FEINBERG FORECAST: Updated Projections (With 3 Weeks Until the 85th Oscars)