Brace yourselves: the Oscars are coming and this year’s annual ceremony of celebrity is going to be a total disaster. First off, 2015 was an awful year for movies.  I feel like any time an action movie gets more than 5 Oscar nominations they can just go ahead and call everything off. I’m looking at you, Mad Max. I don’t care how awesome the costumes and haircuts were. Don’t you know the Oscars are for British Bio Pics and Serious Films? Moving on!

I’ll Never Let Go, Oscar

Can we talk about Leonardo DiCaprio and “The Revenant”? The movie was crazy beautiful and intense, but how is it possible that this performance has Leo favored for the first time to win Best Leading Actor? In any other year, this movie would have been snubbed hard, as it doesn’t really press the typical Academy buttons.

A Brief List of DiCaprio Film Performances that Are Better Than “The Revenant”:

1. All of Them!

Does the Academy hate Leonardo so much that they’re only willing to reward him with a golden statue if he risks hypothermia in the Yukon? Poor Leo. Let us hope he doesn’t return to his warm horse carcass Sunday evening empty-handed.

#OscarsSoWhite

And then there’s the ridiculous lack of black nominees that’s churned the Twitterverse to a boil. If Stallone wins for “Creed”, look forward to him giving his Oscar to Michael B. Jordan, the immensely talented black actor who wasn’t even nominated. Too bad he’ll have to mail the thing to MBJ, who is skipping the show, as he should.

Who’s not skipping the show? Chris Rock and thank GOD. Help us, Chris; help us laugh at the injustice of it all. Help us laugh to keep from crying!

Five Reasons Why The Big Short is Going to Win Best Picture

Finally, the real reason why I began writing this article. I’m going all in on “The Big Short” for Best Picture. Here’s why:

1: Politics. This is a movie with a message: you should be really, really, really angry at Wall Street for tanking the economy. “The Big Short” is like watching a hunky, two-hour Bernie Sanders dream. TBS stakes out a real moral position which Academy members are bound to salivate over.

2: The Cast: Enough Said. Christian Bale, Steve Carrell, Ryan Gosling, and Brad Pitt, etc. Did I mention Bale plays a young doctor-investor with Aspergers? I’ll leave others to speculate on the so-called “Forest Gump” effect.

3. Wait, Let’s talk a little more about Steve Carrell. This is a no-brainer for best supporting actor. Carrell’s character Mark Baum is the moral heart and soul of this movie. Without such an intense performance it’s extremely unlikely that TBS would be in serious contention for anything other than the Golden Globes.

4. Adam McKay. The Academy loves an underdog, and it’s my hunch that bestowing an Oscar on the director of every Will Farrell movie ever is exactly the kind of story Academy members will get weepy writing. “The Big Short” director is also a graduate of Great Valley High School in Malvern, so I have to root for the home team. Lord knows M. Night isn’t going to bring an Oscar to Chester County anytime soon.

5. Margot Robbie In a Bath Tub

Hear me out on this one. How did Adam McKay avoid boring, complicated explanations of complex market blah blah blah? He came up with a few novel ways of explaining the financial crisis. Margot Robbie sips champagne in a tub while she explains sub-prime mortgages.  Classy! Selena Gomez plays poker with an economist? Smart!

So that’s it. That’s all the Oscar speculation I care to put out onto the internet. I’ll be watching and live-tweeting on Sunday @lhknickerbocker. Join me.