Early Best Picture Predictions

I've been slower than usual this year at pulling myself out of March's Oscar withdrawal and gearing up for next year's awards, so my apologies to all two of you who have been impatiently itching to see my early predictions. Rest assured they'll be posted on the sidebar by the first of May (my normal deadline for early guesses), but I'll only bother doing a write-up for one category; Best Picture. And here it is:

Review - Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Oscar-charmed filmmaker Stephen Daldry takes us on an autistic odyssey in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. The film follows Oskar Schell (played by the impossibly precocious Thomas Horn), an insatiably curious child who struggles to make sense of his father's senseless death in wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. As he scours NYC for the lock to a key left behind by his dad (Tom Hanks), he meets a diverse kaleidoscope of people, but grows emotionally distant from his mourning mother (Sandra Bullock).