THE 2011 ACADEMY AWARDS PREDICTIONS EXTRAVAGANZA

I go once more into the breach, dear friends, once more and predict who will win (and pontificate on who should win) the 2011 Academy Awards. Every single category predicted!!!  Every single category most likely incorrect!!! Feel free to leave your predictions in the comments. Here we go:

The Oscar Predictions and Nominations Wrap

Well after the Golden Globes performance I had to redeem myself and hopefully my Oscar picks went some of the way to doing that. Let’s have a look at the nominations and the favourites after the jump:

MY FIVE MOST ANTICIPATED AUSTRALIAN-MADE TV SHOWS OF 2011

I’ll out myself straight away – I completely prefer American and British TV to Australian television. It’s not that Australian television is worse, necessarily, just that since we have a smaller population and a less splintered audience we tend not to take as many risks. When you don’t have sustainable ratings on offer for a show like Mad Men, for example, no one is going to risk making it.

Our strengths lie, as always, in comedy and reality television, where we tend to capture so much more of the Australian character. Perhaps this is because we are a nation that enjoys laughing at ourselves and doesn’t take things too seriously - perhaps a serious drama requires a bigger risk, I don’t know. All I know is that Australian television hasn’t quite made the leap British and American TV has made just yet.

So it is with high hopes and heavy optimism that I look towards the coming year and pray that we can make something – anything - of note. Here are my five most anticipated Australian-made TV shows of 2011.