The Academy announced today that Jack Nicholson and Dustin Hoffman will present at the Oscars on Sunday. Some call Nicholson the unofficial mascot of the Oscars. And Hoffman, well, you don’t need me to explain why he’s a legend. Needless to say, then, given the gravitas of both actors, we should probably see them towards the end of the show. Especially Jack.

Last year’s Best Director Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist) is not expected to return. Perhaps this will be Hoffman’s category?  Or, hilariously, do they ask Ben Affleck to present here? If both the Academy and Ben had that cheeky a sense of humour...

There’s no other category for Jack but Best Picture. To me, anything else would be considered an insult. You save the biggest award of the night for the biggest name.

Interestingly enough, as I’ve been saying for weeks, if Daniel Day-Lewis wins Best Actor, he will do it in the presence of the man who also has three...but only two in that category, which means, technically, according to the Academy, DDL is...MORE.

If.

I spoke to one Academy member this morning who told me he voted for Hugh Jackman. He belongs to one of the smaller Academy branches so it’s not like this should mean a lot but, you know, that was my balls out, go for broke prediction. And I’m not abandoning it even though safe money and everyone else on the planet is saying it’ll be DDL who really worked for it this year, not just in his performance but also on the campaign circuit?

What?!?

He would never!

He has too much integrity!

Please.

DDL may not have papped it out like the Afflecks at the Brentwood Country Mart every day but he was on it, no doubt.

Vulture posted a good article today on Oscar campaigning with insight from Oscar consultants and marketing experts. Click here to read. According to one of their sources:

“Daniel Day-Lewis is going to win no matter what, but he also campaigned more than he ever has before. He was out here a lot — I’ve never seen him doing it before — probably because it’s such a tough field of competitors, you know?”

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