Viola Davis (Getty Images)

It’s what all the house ads in our pile of unread New Yorker magazines—we’ve been busy!—have been hinting toward. The New Yorker Festival began last night and continues today. Events include a discussion with celebu-cobbler Christian Louboutin, a panel of presidential biographers moderated by editor David Remnick and celebrity drop-ins from interviewees Viola Davis, Sarah Silverman, Ben Stiller and, surprisingly, our onetime Friend Lisa Kudrow. Those without evening plans can check out a preview of Cloud Atlas, the upcoming genre-bending sci-fi flick, followed by a chat with the directors—yes, like everyone else here (but for Ms. Kudrow), they were profiled in the magazine first!

The New Yorker Festival, multiple times and locations, tickets and schedule can be found at newyorker.com/festival/program-guide.

Set in Pittsburgh, the narrative centers on two mothers so appalled by the inner-city educational system that is leaving their children sub-literate that they set out to change it by closing down their children’s elementary school and starting one of their own. This is perfectly legal, but doesn’t begin to cover the obstacles mounted by administrators, union officials, school boards and teachers terrified of losing their pensions, not to mention the powerful and implacable bureaucracy that makes progress impossible. Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Jamie Fitzpatrick, a poor but spunky working-class mom who juggles three jobs to keep her dyslexic eight-year-old daughter in a school that neglects her needs. Viola Davis is Nona Alberts, a dedicated teacher at the same school, whose son has learning challenges of his own that require home tutoring. These children face inadequate teachers, overcrowded conditions and the kind of institutional apathy that passes students yearly who cannot read or write, just to get rid of them. Seizing on the new fail-safe laws that entitle disgruntled parents to turn the schools around, Jamie decides to bite the bullet and try. The process is designed for failure. First she has to rally 50 percent of the parents and teachers, then she must plow through miles of red tape, make appointments to petition the school board and plead her case—if she’s lucky enough to get a hearing. Against all odds, the reluctant Nona and the indefatigable Jamie build their case like a bridge, screwing in one bolt at a time. Printing flyers, staging rallies, baking cookies, ringing doorbells, cornering parents in the streets and parking lots, they are fueled by passion, and their never-say-quit idealism rubs off on others. Jamie begins as a concerned parent who wants to get her kid into a better school but can’t afford to move and meets nothing but rejection from the school principal—and she ends up a militant activist who “won’t back down.” In the process, the two women and the teachers and parents they convert to their cause are taught a few lessons themselves—about friendship, commitment, humanity and pride. If you don’t mind a few sentimental cobbles, there is still the dual magic of Maggie Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis, two stars who know a thing or two about conveying courage on the screen.

This is Norma Rae with chalk and erasers in place of a sewing machine, except for one major difference—this time it’s the unions that stand in the way of progress. With that in mind, it’s little surprise that political conservatives at the press screening I attended booed loudly. For the most part, the direction by Daniel Barnz is clear and substantial, and the screenplay, by the director and Brin Hill, is meticulously researched and stumble-free. As a message picture, its heart is in the right place. Too bad it doesn’t always manage to rise above a swirl of predictable Hollywood clichés. Jamie’s crusade pays off and lands her a boyfriend in the bargain, the children overcome their learning disabilities in record time, and the ogres on the school board reverse their opposition in a victory for the good guys that is too good to be true. And forgive my cynicism, but I had a hard time finding it credible when the conniving union representative (Holly Hunter) who threatens to destroy the women’s idealism applauds her own union’s defeat, even though it costs her her job. Oh well, she says. She can always go back to teaching.

rreed@observer.com

WON’T BACK DOWN

Running Time 120 minutes

Written by Brin Hill and Daniel Barnz

Directed by Daniel Barnz

Starring Viola Davis, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Holly Hunter

3/4

Viola Davis (left) and Maggie Gyllenhaal (Getty Images)

Won’t Back Down, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis as a parent and teacher struggling to turn around a failing school, is a movie that clearly wants to say something, even if The Observer had a hard time hearing what they were saying because of chanting protestors.

The film, directed by Daniel Barnz, premiered Sunday night at the Ziegfeld and was attended not only by the cast, but by the New Yorkers for Great Public Schools Coalition, an umbrella group of parents that gathered across the street. The protestors oppose the “parent trigger” laws that inspired the events of the film, through which parents can take over a failing school and possibly turn it into a charter school. Shouting “Move on over corporate takeover,” the group protested the film's financial backers, right-wing billionaires Philip Anschutz (of Walden Media) and Rupert Murdoch (CEO of News Corporation).

Mr. Barnz told The Observer: “The whole movie is about the benefits of protesting. There are many scenes of protesting in the film. I happen to know that what they’re protesting is different from what the movie is actually about. They’re here protesting parent trigger laws and as I explained to you this is not a parent trigger movie.” The film’s fictional law requires both parents and teachers to vote to take over the school.

“You don’t want a movie to feel like it’s an issue thing. You want it to feel like a human drama. I mean Oscar Isaac’s character, his whole narrative is about someone who’s a big union believer and is struggling with that in the course of the movie.”

The film’s stars, wearing grave political faces in addition to red carpet gowns, were ardent about education reform but wary of appearing anti-union. Ms. Gyllenhall said that she came from “the most progressive left. I wouldn’t be allowed to go home for Thanksgiving if I made an anti-union movie.”

When asked by The Observer about the film’s goals, Lance Reddick, who plays Ms. Davis’s husband, said, “I don’t know. I just know that things need to change. The other thing is I’m not really about gutting teachers unions because I’m a member of three unions and I wouldn’t be able to make a living if I wasn’t.”

Mr. Barnz, Ms. Davis, Ms. Gyllenhaal, and Rosie Perez also sat down earlier in the day at the Education Nation Summit to speak with MSNBC’s Alex Wagner. The summit showed a few of the film’s tear-jerking scenes between real-life panels discussing education reform.

Streep (Getty Images)

Last night's Oscars were as draggy as ever--perhaps it's time to give up the ghost of the hope that they can magically become a breezy ceremony, or at least to stop complaining annually that the jokes are hackneyed and the show's self-congratulatory. The jokes being hackneyed are kind of the point, and, given that this is a Hollywood trade show, the self-congratulation is REALLY the point. And the tributes would not have been so terrifically vague had they been able to be directed at nominated films people had seen--the Bridesmaids-a-palooza in the middle of the show should serve as a reminder of what the tributes at the Oscars look like when they're aimed at hit movies from this year and not "hit movies from all time."

The show's biggest surprise came late in the evening, when Meryl Streep beat out supposed front-runner Viola Davis for the Best Actress trophy; for those hoping for an epochal Oscar moment, it was both disappointing (Ms. Davis would have been only the second ever black Best Actress) and vivifying (Ms. Streep's Oscar was her third--and her first since 1983). The rest of the ceremony went according to plan, with top nominees The Artist and Hugo both winning five awards, the former in major categories and the latter in minor ones.

What else sticks out the morning after? Emma Stone's eagerness to take from Anne Hathaway the mantle of "the one eager to sing and dance" after it didn't quite work out for Ms. Hathaway. Chris Rock nailing sixty seconds of standup and, yes, fine, whatever, the same old Billy Crystal jokes Mom and Dad like. (We will say we've never gotten the "What the nominees are thinking" thing, but people apparently like it?) The Christopher Guest-directed Wizard of Oz parody, so utterly random it felt like a wonderful mistake. The indication that Tom Cruise has been rehabilitated by Hollywood in that he got to present Best Picture. Perhaps the best moment of last night was the appearance of Melissa Leo, the weird warrior queen of the 2011 Oscars, in a relatively normal sequined dress presenting an Oscar to someone else. Last year, she stole Kirk Douglas's cane--and this year, she just smiled and applauded and watched time march on and another Oscar ceremony enter the books.

Jean DuJardin, your Best Actor winner (Getty Images)

The Academy Awards are this Sunday--and we'll be liveblogging away at observer.com. So as to be optimally prepared for these mythical "Oscar pools" that exist only in the minds of entertainment writers, or at least to shout the winner a second before it happens, we've held the hive-mind of the Internet to our ear so as to decipher the buzz.

Here are your Oscar winners!

Best Picture: The Artist

We're not ruling out a more conventional win from the more-traditional and higher-grossing The Descendants, but it'd be a surprise given the success The Artist has enjoyed among critics and different guild awards so far.

Best Director: Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist

It's not as though they're rushing to award this relative newcomer, but his opposition doesn't look credible enough to split Best Picture and Best Director. His toughest competition is Martin Scorsese, who already won this award recently and whose film is thematically similar to The Artist, if less well-loved.

Best Actor: Jean DuJardin, The Artist

Be real. Do you honestly think we live in a world where George Clooney will have won two Oscars for acting as early as this year? While his work in The Descendants was praised early on, we suspect some voters may be attracted to the fresh, new thing in this category.

Best Actress: Viola Davis, The Help

While Meryl Streep really will win in this category one of these years, Viola Davis's movie was an actual hit with audiences and with the Academy--and the weird, hinky truth is that an Academy member will likely feel more virtuous for rewarding a portrayal of a noble, suffering maid than a performance as a controversial political figure.

Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer, Beginners

One of two utterly dull supporting contests whose frontrunners have been ensconced since, like, November.

Best Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer, The Help

The other.

Best Original Screenplay: Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris

The perpetual notion that, if one wills it hard enough, a standard-issue Woody Allen film can be a true comeback picture, became a fixed idea this year. Everyone loves Woody again! This is where this movie gets rewarded.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Alexander Payne and Nat Faxon & Jim Rash, The Descendants

And this is where The Descendants, a popular movie with no real chance at other honors besides Actor, gets rewarded.

All the rest:

Best Animated Feature: Rango

Best Cinematography: The Tree of Life

Best Art Direction: Hugo

Best Costume Design: W.E. [we know, it's weird, but the Oscars really love films about the royals in this category]

Best Documentary Feature: Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory

Best Documentary Short: Incident in New Baghdad [on the shorts categories, one chooses the most portentous-sounding title, except for Best Animated Short, wherein one chooses the loopiest title]

Best Film Editing: The Artist

Best Foreign Language Film: A Separation (Iran)

Best Makeup: The Iron Lady [the fact that the makeup that turned Meryl Streep into Margaret Thatcher is likely to get its own award would seem to take away from the performance that did the same, no?]

Best Original Score: The Artist [the tempest-in-a-teapot over whether this film stole unduly from the score for Vertigo shall likely matter little, as the score blares through the entire running time]

Best Original Song: "Man or Muppet," The Muppets

Best Short Film (Animated): The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore [see the rationale for Documentary Short]

Best Short Film (Live-Action): Pentecost [see above]

Best Sound Editing: War Horse

Best Sound Mixing: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Best Visual Effects: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Viola Davis at the SAG Awards (Getty Images)

Last night's Screen Actors Guild Awards shook up the Oscar race insofar as it was able to be shaken up. Sure bets in the supporting categories Octavia Spencer (The Help) and Christopher Plummer (Beginners) cleaned up again, while frontrunning lead actors George Clooney (The Descendants) and Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady) were dethroned.

The beneficiaries were Jean DuJardin, star of The Artist, and Viola Davis of The Help. Both Best Actor and Best Actress races remain occluded going into the Oscars. Mr. DuJardin's speech was charming but Benignivian in its loose grip on the English language, making him an uncompelling threat for the biggest trophy despite the fact that he's already won a Golden Globe. Ms. Davis's speech was brief and moving--dealing with her lifelong dream of acting and her late-in-life breakthrough--but may not be enough to push her ahead of Meryl Streep. (Ms. Davis, a friend and former castmate of Ms. Streep, paid her particular homage--she was inescapable even in her defeat.)

At the moment, Ms. Davis appears to be leading Harvey Weinstein's two candidates in the Best Actress field--Ms. Streep and Michelle Williams in My Week With Marilyn. Mr. Weinstein has little about which to worry--Mr. DuJardin's victory means that even if he can't top George Clooney, the Weinstein Company film in which he stars, The Artist, is stronger than can be fathomed. The Help's win for Best Ensemble poses little threat there.

Viola Davis (Getty Images)

Best Actress

In the past few weeks, this race--long led by Viola Davis--got a lot more interesting with Golden Globe wins for Meryl Streep and Michelle Williams. Ms. Williams's film may feel too slight, but she's gone on the PR offensive with an in-character GQ cover; Ms. Streep's film has its detractors, and she hasn't won an Oscar in many moviegoers' lifetimes (the Academy likes to nominate her and award a "buzzier" actress, generally speaking).

Best Cinematography

The Artist's black-and-white work is the category's greatest curio, but Hugo's camerawork was widely praised for bringing richness to too-often misused 3-D technology. This is also the only place, realistically speaking, where the Academy could award The Tree of Life for its vision of the beginning and end of life--one accomplished largely through Emmanuel Lubezki's work behind the camera.

Best Director

Whether or not The Artist has Best Picture sewn up, Martin Scorsese--honored in 2007 for his work on The Departed--has shown surprising strength this season for his so-called "love letter" to the cinema of his youth. It's the exact same narrative that accounts for the success of The Artist, with the crucial different of Mr. Scorsese's fame and reputation.

Best Makeup

No widely-nominated films are in this ever-scattershot category--will The Iron Lady team win for making Meryl Streep into Margaret Thatcher? (And does that discount the actress's own skill?) Will the Harry Potter series take a phrryic victory lap here? Will Albert Nobbs win for what we assume is good... make...up? (Still isn't playing in New York.)

Best Original Screenplay

In this category, Oscar has historically rewarded novelty and/or innovation (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Juno, Matt Damon). While Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris would seem to be in pole position, A Separation and Bridesmaids have their supporters (for radically different reasons). One winner elsewhere that may have trouble here? The Artist, which lacks for obvious reasons sparkling repartee.

Academy Award Nominee Rooney Mara

This morning, thousands upon tens of New Yorkers are realizing they have to go see Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, as that film was announced as one of nine Oscar Best Picture nominees.

Big surprises of the morning included that film's nomination for Best Picture, the inclusion of Best Actor nominees Demian Bichir and Gary Oldman, and the breadth of the Best Picture category, which found room for movies as different as War Horse and The Tree of Life after speculation tended towards the notion that there would be fewer nominees about which voters felt more strongly.

The predictions we got right? That Rooney Mara would take the place of Tilda Swinton in the Best Actress race, and that Albert Brooks would fall out of Best Supporting Actor--as well as the first five of those nine nominees. We didn't speculate on Best Animated Feature, speculating to ourselves that the field was a bit fallow, and with nominees including Chico and Rita and A Cat in Paris, we may have been right.

Hugo leads the race with 11 overall nominations, followed by heretofore perceived frontrunner The Artist with 10.

The nominations in top categories are below, and the full list of nominations is here.

Best Picture

The Artist; The Descendants; Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; The Help; Hugo; Midnight in Paris; Moneyball; The Tree of Life; War Horse

Best Director

Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris; Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist; Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life; Alexander Payne, The Descendants; Martin Scorsese, Hugo;

Best Actor:

Demian Bichir, A Better Life; George Clooney, The Descendants, Jean DuJardin, The Artist; Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy; Brad Pitt, Moneyball

Best Actress:

Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs; Viola Davis, The Help; Rooney Mara, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo; Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady; Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn

Best Supporting Actor:

Kenneth Branagh, My Week With Marilyn; Jonah Hill, Moneyball; Nick Nolte, Warrior; Christopher Plummer, Beginners; Max Von Sydow, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Best Supporting Actress:

Bérénice Bejo, The Artist; Jessica Chastain, The Help; Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids; Octavia Spencer, The Help; Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs

Best Original Screenplay

The Artist; Bridesmaids; Margin Call; Midnight in Paris; A Separation

Best Adapted Screenplay

The Descendants; Hugo; The Ides of March; Moneyball; Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Best Animated Feature

A Cat In Paris; Chico and Rita; Kung Fu Panda 2; Puss in Boots; Rango

Charlize Theron (Getty Images)

Newsweek's current issue features its annual pre-nominations "Oscar roundtable"--and either it'll look dated when nominations are announced tomorrow, or we need to adjust our predictions! The panelists are likely nominees George Clooney and Viola Davis (the working-it pair both recently appeared together on an Entertainment Weekly cover, too), as well as Christopher Plummer, Tilda Swinton, Michael Fassbender, and Charlize Theron.

How good is Newsweek at choosing panelists who will be Oscar-nominated? Some years are great--last year's panel featured six eventual nominees and both the Best Actor and Best Actress--and others less predictive. In the past ten Oscar panels (discounting the two panels speaking to five directors apiece, of whose number eight ended up nominated), 48 actors have been interviewed about their Oscar hopeful performances, with eight missing the mark. These "losers" include Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, and Naomi Watts, so their inclusion isn't exactly surprising.

The rate of an Oscar roundtabler getting an Oscar nomination, 40 of 48, is exactly a 5/6 probability--so one of the current panelists (sorry, Charlize! We really loved Young Adult) will probably have talked about the Oscars a bit presumptively.

Michelle Williams--who will be nominated. Who else will join her? (Getty Images)

Tomorrow morning will bring that early-morning announcement of this year's Oscar nominees--with the attention-desperate wrinkle that no one knows how many nominees there will be. Herewith, our predictions, for last-minute entries into your office pool (if yours is the sort of office at which Oscar nominations are the subject of a pool. Ours is not, which is why we're writing a blog post).

Best Picture

The Artist

The Descendants

The Help

Hugo

Midnight in Paris

We know any number of films between five and ten can be nominated for Best Picture, but with The Artist and The Descendants sucking up so much oxygen and so many first-place votes, it's easy to imagine no sixth choice gathering enough steam. The likely sixth entry, if there is one, would be Moneyball--but aren't many of those voters who love "adult dramas" more likely to vote in the buzzier Descendants first?

Best Director

Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris

David Fincher, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist

Alexander Payne, The Descendants

Martin Scorsese, Hugo

Mr. Allen, Mr. Scorsese, and Mr. Hazanavicius are clear locks, and Mr. Payne will get in on the strength of his film's reputation. For the fifth spot, Mr. Fincher and Steven Spielberg seem the likeliest (The Help's debut director, Tate Taylor, did not particularly distinguish himself), but the total fade of War Horse's repute gives the advantage to Mr. Fincher for what would be his third nomination in four years.

Best Actor

George Clooney, The Descendants

Jean DuJardin, The Artist

Michael Fassbender, Shame

Ryan Gosling, The Ides of March

Brad Pitt, Moneyball

Leonardo DiCaprio has been nominated for all manner of precursor awards for his role in J. Edgar, but that movie's disappeared from theaters and from the minds of viewers who've seen many, many better movies by now (J. Edgar really is uniquely terrible). Anyone who loves biographical films about controversial figures gets to vote one in with Meryl Streep in Best Actress--and the surprise nominee might be Ryan Gosling, who does nothing too special in The Ides of March but who'd be a big enough star to stand alongside Mr. Clooney and Mr. Pitt.

Best Actress

Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs

Viola Davis, The Help

Rooney Mara, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady

Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn

Ms. Streep, Ms. Davis, and Ms. Williams have all won early awards, and Ms. Close helped produce her own movie, in which she plays a traditionally bait-y role as a female impersonating a male. The notion that four people in Oscar-bait roles would be joined by Tilda Swinton in the avant-garde We Need to Talk About Kevin stretches credulity--silent for long stretches and chronologically disjointed, this doesn't seem like the sort of role that gets an actress to the Kodak. The narrative around Rooney Mara--plucked out of nowhere in the most extensive casting search since Scarlett O'Hara--seems to coalesce towards a surprise nomination.

Best Supporting Actor

Kenneth Branagh, My Week With Marilyn

Armie Hammer, J. Edgar

Jonah Hill, Moneyball

Nick Nolte, Warrior

Christopher Plummer, Beginners

Mr. Plummer is so far ahead here that the rest of the nominees seem plucked from thin air--an impersonation of Lawrence Olivier? Sure! A fairly quiet turn by a popular comic? Definitely! An attempt at a comeback in a movie no one saw? Okay! Armie Hammer's nomination seems the least likely, but the energy he brought to J. Edgar could make him the one element of the film they nominate.

Best Supporting Actress

Bérénice Bejo, The Artist

Jessica Chastain, The Help

Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids

Octavia Spencer, The Help

Shailene Woodley, The Descendants

Three movies with huge amounts of apparent support carry their supporting stars towards a nomination, with the addition of Melissa McCarthy, taking the spot that some believe might have gone to Janet McTeer in the little-seen Albert Nobbs.

Best Original Screenplay

50/50

The Artist

Bridesmaids

Midnight in Paris

Young Adult

This category seems fairly open--besides the two Best Picture nominees, the three other top entries are not traditionally Oscar-y comedies. The Writers' Guild of America nominated Win Win, a sort-of comedy also, here, but that movie seems even less up Oscar's alley than Young Adult, a movie in which past winner Diablo Cody deals with her relationship with fame.

Best Adapted Screenplay

The Descendants

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

The Help

Hugo

Moneyball

This category, on the other hand, has the real heat--it's hard to imagine anything sneaking into a set of screenplays this popular. It's also one of the few categories with true suspense as to the winner--because the real speculation only begins on Tuesday.