I'm putting this analysis of the best actor race here because I think it addresses the perpetual question of why James didn't get a nom or win Atonement. I may be in the minority, but I actually thought Clooney was deserving of the award this year. I suspect that in a few years people will look back and wonder why the charming but ephemeral The Artist swept the top awards.

BEST ACTOR
Jean Dujardin (The Artist

In the end, the Academy, like SAG (which has now predicted this category eight times in a row), opted for "the Clooney of France" over Clooney himself, making Dujardin its first French winner ever (Maurice Chevalier, Charles Boyer, and Gerard Depardieu were nominated) and only the fourth person to win best actor at both the Cannes Film Festival and the Oscars (the others were Ray Milland for The Lost Weekend [1945], Jon Voight for Coming Home [1978], and William Hurt for Kiss of the Spider Woman [1985]). I suspect that Clooney came very close (he's now 0-for-3 in the category in the last five years), but that voters ultimately concluded that he will have other chances whereas Dujardin might not (he plans to remain in France), and therefore opted to seize this opportunity -- like when they voted for Roberto Benigni for Life Is Beautiful (1998) -- to acknowledge him. Significant credit for this win must be given not only to TWC, but also to Dujardin's publicist Bryna Rifkin of ID-PR, who has now guided two French natives with broken English to acting Oscars within the last five years, the other being Marion Cotillard for La Vie En Rose (2007).