Having already committed my Oscar predictions to print (they will appear in next Thursday's "Phoenix"), I feel a sickening surge of anxiety reading this article about Heidi, the cross-eyed opossum, in the Leipzig Zoo. Like her late colleague Paul the Psychic Octopus from the Oberhausen Sea Life Centre, who picked Spain to win the World Cup last year, Heidi is also reputed to have a talent for predicting the outcome of contests, in this case the Academy Awards.

The surprise Director's Guild Award for Tom Hooper and the awards from the Screen Actors Guild -- Best Actor for Colin Firth and Best Ensemble Cast -- pretty much guarantee an Oscar sweep for "The King's Speech," the lush period biopic about King George VI, who, with the help of a non-elitist therapist managed to shake off a debilitating stutter, a toffee-nosed dissolute, Nazi-leaning elder brother, and a paralyzing father complex, and, apparently, go on to win World War II singlehandedly.

Marwencol

After you've attended the Boston Society of Film Critics Annual Awards ceremony, the Oscars might seem anticlimactic. Among those expected at this year's extravaganza is Jeff Malmberg, winner of the society's Best Documentary and Best Newcomer awards for his brilliant, sui generis film Marwencol, which will screen after the event.

This year I feel less embarrassed than I normally do after the Oscar nominations announcements, getting fewer prognostications wrong - four - than my usual six or more misfires. On the other hand, those I got wrong were really the ones that would have taken any genuine acumen to figure out. So as it stands I got 31 out of 35, around 88%, or a B+ average.