Looking to the Oscars — who should win and who will win

By Eleanor Ringel Cater

The Oscars are upon us…

Again.

This year, the show, like everything else todayl, is desperate to skew young. Not an easy act for an event that’s been around 80 years.

I remember when the Oscars used to matter. Well, to me, that is. Sometime between the late ‘50s and late ‘60s. Then I went to college, the sixties happened and the only thing worth remembering for at least a decade was Sasheen Littlefeather, the Faux Native Maerican who accepted an absent Brando’s Best Actor award for “The Godfather.”

The Oscars began to matter again — kinda — in the late 1970s. At least they meant enough that a major metropolitan newspaper sent me to cover it.

It was the year that Hollywood finally got around to making movies about Vietnam, i.e., several years after the war was over. The front-runners were “Coming Home” (the doves’ choice) and “The Deer Hunter” (the hawks’ choice, though I’m still not sure why; it wasn’t exactly a PRO-war picture).

Anyway, the Academy split the difference, giving the acting awards to “Coming Home’s” co-stars, Jon Voight and Jane Fonda, and handing “The Deer Hunter” Best Picture.

So, back to Sunday and some Office Pool picks.

BEST PICTURE
Should: TRUE GRIT
Will: THE KING’S SPEECH (and fine by me; it’s good, too)

BEST DIRECTOR
Should: Coen Brothers (“True Grit”)
Will: David Fincher (“The Social Network”)

BEST ACTOR
Should: Colin Firth (“The King’s Speech;” It’s payback for last year when he lost to Jeff Bridges, who gives a better performance this year in “True Grit” but he won last year for “Crazy Heart” and so on and on and on)
Will: Colin Firth

BEST ACTRESS
Should: Natalie Portman (“Black Swan”)
Will: Natalie Portman

The hosts, by the way, are the supposedly youth-friendly James Franco and Anne Hathaway. I wish ‘em luck…