OscarsSeriously, by the end of Hugh Jackman's opening number during the 2009 Academy Awards telecast, did it even matter if the rest of the show was any good?

I know, I know ... you heeded my Oscar advice to the letter last year, and wound up guessing correctly in only 11 of the 24 categories. I'm truly sorry if you ended up looking like an idiot at your Academy Awards party. But it was a tough year, and there were a lot of deserving contenders, and at least you were cool for predicting Marion Cotillard, and ... .

Ah, screw it. Let's try this again, shall we?

Mickey Rourke in The WrestlerIf you're looking to win your workplace's annual Oscar pool, you'll likely do pretty well this year just by going with Slumdog Millionaire for nearly everything, by picking The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for the tech awards Slumdog isn't nominated for, and by not making wild-card predictions in the gimme categories. Heath Ledger is winning Best Supporting Actor and WALL?E is winning Animated Feature. Just accept it. Don't try to be a hero.

WALL-EWith the Golden Globes behind us and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) telecast not taking place until January 25, there's nothing for movie-award hounds to do now but wait for the announcement of this year's Oscar nominations on Thursday, January 22.

Oh, wait, there is one thing we can do: We can make seemingly knowledgeable predictions that, in all likelihood, will eventually bite us in the ass!