Feb. 17: This year's Oscar winners

Knowing how much I love movies, my mother has assigned me, as topic-de-jour for note-a-day, to write who I think will take home the big six Oscars this year.

And I must be honest and confess that I have no idea.

Hey, I'm a new dad and that means I'm broke all the time. I have a beard right now because I can't afford razor blades. I surely can't afford to be traipsing off to Ottawa to watch movies three times a week.

I have seen only two of the films nominated for best picture - The Wolf of Wall Street and Dallas Buyers Club (which I watched on DVD last night.) Matthew McConaughey is the frontrunner to win best actor for his role in the latter - he already won the Golden Globe, Critics' Choice and Screen Actors Guild awards for it - so I'd bet my money on him.

Cate Blanchett won those same three awards for her turn in Blue Jasmine so she looks like a lock to win best actress. Three of her fellow nominees - Meryl Streep, Dame Judi Dench, and Sandra Bullock - are past winners. Only Amy Adams has the chance of handing Ms. Blanchett an upset.

The supporting actor races are usually the most difficult to predict since those awards are often consolation prizes - awards given to actors in movies that are very good but get overshadowed by a juggernaut (like the totally undeserving Titanic.) Jared Leto is getting a lot of praise for his portrayal of a transsexual in Dallas Buyers Club, though I'd like to see it go to Michael Fassbender just because I like him as an actor.

Supporting actress: Lupita Nyong’o for 12 years a Slave, which will probably win best picture too.

And there you go. My uninformed and totally ignorant take on the 2014 Oscar race.

By the way, I was very uncomfortable watching Wolf of Wall Street and I was happy that it made me so uncomfortable. Still, Scorsese made that movie at least twice before - once as Goodfellas and the other as Casino. The moral is that a life of excess will lead to a down

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