2012's toughest Oscar categories

This week A.A. Dowd offers his Oscar predictions in the major categories. I'll have my complete picks up soon. But as anyone who's ever won an Oscar pool knows, the front-runners are clear from the outset. To succeed, you need to get the toss-ups right—and this year's nominees, while exceptionally boring from an artistic standpoint, include plenty of those.

Below are the categories I'm sweating most.

Best Actor Jean Dujardin won the Screen Actors Guild award, which judging from the last decade's precedents makes him the favorite to take the Oscar. (The group's membership has significant overlap with the Academy's.) But something about giving the award to Durjardin just feels wrong—he's too new, and his role is too one-note. Going with your gut is often the way to lose a pool, but something tells me that a lot of people think Brad Pitt is overdue. Moneyball shows how great he can be.

Best Supporting Actress The SAG's preferences have aligned less with the Academy's in this category. I see anyone except perhaps The Artist's Berenice Bejo or Albert Nobbs's Janet McTeer as a potential winner.

Best Cinematography Here the problem is simply choosing between two different kinds of cinematography: Will the Academy select the prettiest movie (The Tree of Life) or the most innovative (Hugo, with its groundbreaking use of 3-D)?

Best Original Screenplay Various pundits are touting the movie without dialogue as the front-runner, but the opportunities to award The Artist are ample. On the other hand, while you'd be hard-pressed to argue that Midnight in Paris features Woody Allen's best writing, it is his most successful film ever, and one of the longest-running movies of the year.

Best Adapted Screenplay Aaron Sorkin and Alexander Payne are both poised to snag their second Oscars in less than a decade. Clearly, with six and five nominations, respectively, Moneyball and The Descendants both have substantial love from the Academy.

Best Editing The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo had the showiest editing, but with the most nominations overall, Hugo seems poised to sweep the technical categories.

Best Visual Effects Will Rise of the Planet of the Apes stage a coup?

Best Sound Mixing/Best Sound Editing This year's effects-laden Best Picture heavyweight, Hugo, is more a feast for the eye than the ear.

Best Makeup There's the temptation to go with The Iron Lady, but it's also the last obvious category in which the Academy will have a chance to reward the (conspicuously empty-handed) Harry Potter franchise.

If you have more certainty than I do on any of these, sound off.