The Artist, a black and white silent movie enveloped in old Hollywood mythos, won Best Picture (the first to do so since Wings at the original Academy ceremony back in 1929). 17 time nominee Meryl Streep pulled the upset of the evening, walking away with the Best Actress statue that many believed was destined for Viola Davis. Christopher Plummer became the oldest man ever to win the coveted award (though there are arguments over the status of Charlie Chaplin and his honorary acknowledgement) and Woody Allen, who earned his first Oscar way back in 1978, took home another (his fourth) for Midnight in Paris. If it weren’t for newcomers Octavia Spencer (Best Supporting), Michel Hazanavicius (Best Director) and Jean Dujardin (Best Actor), the 84th Annual Academy Awards would have played like a complete flashback to Tinseltown’s past - even stalwart host Billy Crystal was there to guide it all.

There were other symbols that the movie industry isn’t completely and utterly lost, however. Alexander Payne and his script collaborators Nat Faxon and Jim Rash were acknowledged for their work on The Descendants, while Gore Verbinski and his delightful cartoon satire on the spaghetti western, Rango, took home the Best Animated Feature award. Flight of the Concords’ Bret McKenzie and the Muppets bested a tune from Rio to win Best Song, while Hugo‘s creative invention walked away a five time winner. Still, after the fiasco of the last few months, with original show producer Brett Ratner resigning over some homophobic comments (and taking his buddy and original host Eddie Murphy with him) and the questions over numbers and nods (Only two tunes were nominated? Only nine films???), Oscar needed a night like this. Sure, they still look out of touch, but at least tradition wasn’t trumped…at least, not totally.

In recent weeks, a conflict of sorts has been raging between critics on either side of a single fence. For some, The Artist, the earnest and endearing foreign film featuring no spoken dialogue and a style semi-reminiscent of movies made after the turn of the century, is the unquestioned Best Film of 2011. They can’t understand why their fellow film pundits don’t lockstep agree, turning a bit of bickering into a backlash that seems to want to reconfigure Michel Hazanavicius and his efforts into some kind of aesthetic affront. While we tend to agree that The Artist is nowhere near 2011’s greatest, we also aren’t about to turn the title into a travesty. Instead, all we can really say is welcome to the annual Academy Awards argument. For every champion of a certain effort, there is someone who doesn’t like it, for whatever reason.

In the same vein, by a kind of analytical proxy, predicting is really no fun either. Sure, you can sometimes sense an upset in the making (see Alan Arkin in 2007), or pray for some last minute left field finish (GO TREE OF LIFE! ). But for the most part, every piece of the pre-Oscar puzzle leads one to an evening of anticipated anticlimaxes. Will we be pleased if some of the givens go home empty handed? Perhaps - it all depends on who or what exactly gets the bridesmaid vs. bride treatment. Will we scream if at least a couple of these certainties turn into Robin Williams/Marissa Tomeis? Damn straight! While we will definitely be back to Monday morning quarterback the slick off these celluloid symbols, until then, enjoy these less than educated guesses. They won’t help you win the office pool, but they probably represent the best bet when it comes to figuring out the funny little movie muddle known as Hollywood, starting with the biggest one of all:

You wouldn’t buy a prime piece of beef filet just to grind it up and use it as dog food. You also wouldn’t spend hundreds of dollars on a brand new wooden deck just to douse it with gasoline and set it on fire. Yet Hollywood does something similar every day. From taking the latest in a long line of talent-limited TV cupies and putting them in roles they have no business being considered for (“she’s a hard edged cop who doesn’t play by the rules…”) to asking aging A-listers to stretch out into ridiculous comedy or comic book villain mode, Tinseltown loves to take the inherent skills of a performer or member of the production personal and insert its own ‘know better’ belief. Sure, without it, typecasting would be even more rampant than it was during the Golden Age, yet there’s something to be said about letting people play to their strengths, instead of stifling the very reasons you hired them in the first place.

A perfect example of this irritating ideal comes in the critically lambasted Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. An unnecessary sequel to an equally pointless 2007 Nicolas Cage vehicle, the story centers around a man living with a curse. Having sold his soul to the Devil for the life of his father, he’s become Satan’s soul catcher, roaming the Earth, transforming into a fire-headed skeleton whenever evil is around. The original, written and directed by Mark Steven Johnson, went for a tricky tongue in cheek approach, and while not always successful, it gave its star a big fat goofy gift to go gonzo in. When a follow-up was mandated, the movie suits made the wise choice of picking geeks Neveldine/Taylor to take over. Responsible for two of the guiltiest pleasures in all of post post-modern cinema - the Jason Statham sensations Crank and Crank: High Voltage, they promised to bring a whole new level of creative chaos to the genre, and the series.

Still reeling from the sad news about Don Cornelius, it’s painful to acknowledge the loss of another irreplaceable master, Ben Gazarra. Some good tributes out there.

What can you say about Gazzara? He was relevant in every decade going back to the ‘50s. And it wasn’t just his longevity or his unique, idiosyncratic style(s); he was old school in the sense that he radiated that aura: above all, he was a man.That might not sound like much, or it may even sound silly (What does aura have to do with anything? These are actors playing roles and they can be transformed into heroes or villains depending on the script and the director), but back in the days when special effects did not do as much to determine what an actor could—and could not—do, it mattered when a man could bring that certain gravitas to a role. As such, he was never typecast (because he was too talented) but he did inexorably bring that aura to each role. These were days when directors counted on that aura, because it conveyed legitimacy that was understood before a single line was spoken.

It seems fitting that, just a day or two after Entertainment Weekly‘s Owen Gleiberman lamented the elitist state of the present Academy Awards, the Screen Actors Guild throws a minor monkey wrench into the entire end of the year argument. For weeks, the gimmicky French phenomenon The Artist has been racking up accolades, landing love from the PGA (Best Film), DGA (Best Director) and those self-appointed pundits of film fortune - the Internet - as the presumption 2012 pick. Then the thesps decide to do something a bit…radical (?)...and give The Help a hand up. Sweeping the female acting awards (Viola Davis - Best, Octavia Spencer - Supporting) and even earning the coveted Ensemble prize, it looks like now we have a foot race to final red carpet of the season.

Or do we? According to Gleiberman, the pre-coronation of The Artist as the presumptive winner may have as much to do with the Weinstein Hype Machine and its annual drive to bring one of its distribution diamonds to the fore as it does the quality of Michel Hazanavicius’ vision. But going deeper, EW‘s chief critic argues that it’s also a sign of the Academy’s new snobbery. Ever since The Hurt Locker (the lowest grossing film ever to win Best Picture) topped Avatar (the highest grossing movie of all time) in 2010, Gleiberman suggests a ‘sea change’ among the AMPAS voters. In his opinion, the days when commercial popularity played a part in the determination of Oscar glory are gone. In their place is an insularity which follows trends and co-conspirator consensus in determining who wins.