Brad Pitt Can't Win 'Em All—and, Sorry, Neither Can The Help

Who's up—and who's down—as the 2012 Oscars race gets down to the wire

The Screen Actors Guild Awards totally scrambled awards season, yes? Brad Pitt can do no wrong, right? 

No. And not quite.

With final Oscar ballots in the mail, we're delivering the latest look at which players are up—and down:

HOTTER

Tom Cruise: Nothing like a $600 million-grossing worldwide hit to say you're back, and nothing like an Oscars presenting gig (your first since your career looked a little off track in 2007) to formally announce it. 

Viola Davis: The oddsmakers have come around (slightly) on The Help star.  

Jean Dujardin: The oddsmakers still say George Clooney's the Best Actor front-runner, but the SAG Awards, whose voters have honored the eventual Best Actor winner seven times out the last seven ceremonies, say they're wrong. And since some SAG Awards voters double as Oscar voters, the SAG Awards get to be right.

Blackie: Martin Scorsese complained. Facebookers took up the cause. The Golden Collar Awards caved: Hugo's Doberman has his Best Dog nomination. (And lotsa luck to you, sir, in beating Uggie.)

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COLDER

The SAG Awards: The show is practically perfect at calling Oscars' acting categories; it's anything but perfect at calling Best Picture. Prior to last weekend's show, half of the SAG Awards' film-ensemble winners didn't go on to win the top prize at the Academy Awards. And so it'll go this year. The Help is not going to win, and The Artist is probably not going to lose.   

Brad Pitt: Nobody's perfect. In an otherwise stellar awards season, Pitt didn't make the cut as an Academy-qualifiying producer on The Tree of Life, meaning in the extremely unlikely event the film wins Best Picture, the star, who was one of its five credited producers, won't get to hoist its Oscar gold. 

Brad Pitt's Big Idea: No, nobody's perfect. On The Daily Show, the actor proposed a Survivor-like way to settle the Best Actor race that would make the Oscar telecast arguably more compelling, but probably longer than ever. (If you're watching the clip, you'll want to skip to the 6-minute-20-second mark.)

Kodak Theatre: The Oscars' longtime home is going to lose its name, and just maybe its status as the Oscars' longtime home.        

RIP

• Damien Bona: Back in the 1980s, Bona and Mason Wiley wrote the best year-by-year, feud-by-feud account of the Academy Awards, Inside Oscar. Wiley died in 1994. Bona passed away last weekend. He was 56.