Being in Australia, watching the Oscar nominees every year involves operating in a moral grey area because almost everything is released late. Movies that are already on iTunes in the States haven’t even been released in cinemas.

Don’t even get me started.

Ahem. Below are my picks for Oscar winners – can’t wait to see how I went!   To see the complete list of nominees, click here.

Best Picture

My Pick: Spotlight
Possible Upset: The Big Short

Spotlight has been picking up most of the major awards lately, and both it and The Big Short are leading the field with the nominations that Best Picture winners usually get. While The Revenant is coming up behind, sadly I just don’t think its going to happen for Leo this year.  The Big Short is a pretty smart movie, with its shtick of breaking the fourth wall and as much as I want to see the director of Anchorman win an Oscar, it’s not as easily watchable as Spotlight.

Best Director

My Pick: George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road
Possible Upset: Adam McKay, The Big Short

Because please? Can we? We should get to have nice things sometimes! Genre films are so rarely recognized by the Academy and what Miller pulled off with Mad Max was truly an amazing technical feat. The movie just looked so fantastic in every detail I’m not even going to talk about any others. It wins. Always.

Best Animated Picture

My Pick: Inside Out
Possible Upset: Anomalisa
What other movie could you possibly choose? Pixar generally has a lock on this category. The only surprise here is why it wasn’t nominated for Best Picture. Anomolisa may be still in the running though, simply by virtue of being a ‘grown up’ animated film. Depends how snooty the Academy is feeling this year.

Best Actor

My Pick: Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl
Possible Upset: Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant

Oh Leo, I want to see you win an Oscar so bad, but you have the terrible luck of being nominated in years where your amazing performances get overshadowed by truly spectacular ones. Much as I would love to see you pull it off, I think its going to be Eddie all the way. The Academy loves transformations, and like his performance as Stephen Hawking last year, he disappears into this role. That said if anyone can pull off the upset it will be Leo and I will be ever so pleased to be wrong.

Best Actress

My Pick: Brie Larson, Room
Possible Upset: Cate Blanchett, Carol

Room was heartwrenchingly traumatic and I was just watching it –  I can only imagine what it was like to bring it to life. Give Brie all the Oscars!  If any one can topple her, it will Cate Blanchett’s incredibly subtle perfomance in Carol. 

Best Supporting Actor

My Pick: Sylvester Stallone, Creed
Possible Upset: Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight

Again this is probably wishful thinking on my part, but Stallone has picked up a few awards this season and Rocky has a good history with the Academy. Honestly, I don’t think there’s much chance of an upset here – Stallone has this in the bag.

Best Supporting Actress

My Pick: Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl
Possible Upset: Rooney Mara, Carol

This was a tough race – I think it definitely comes down to one of these two ladies, but its too close to call. I give the edge to Vikander simply because she had a cracker of a year with a couple of fantastic performances in The Danish Girl as well as Ex-Machina.

So those are my Oscar picks.  Did I get anything terribly wrong? Or wonderfully right? Tell me in the comments!