Most of my selections are fairly conventional. One would be hard-pressed to find somebody willing to pick against Jeff Bridges for Best Actor, and it’s difficult to ignore the screen-grabbing supporting turns by Waltz and Mo’nique.

Kathryn Bigelow seems poised to become the first woman to win Best Director (somewhere, the late Ida Lupino is undoubtedly smiling), and recent years would suggest that Disney/Pixar holds prior claim to the Best Animated Feature trophy.

Few will take issue with the assertion that “Inglourious Basterds” touts the most original of the original screenplays. “Up in the Air” is the clear frontrunner for Best Adapted Screenplay (if only because it doesn’t stand a chance anywhere else).

However, there are two major categories in which I’ve distinctly countered the critical consensus: Best Actress and Best Picture.

First, let’s look at Best Actress, where Sandra Bullock stands as the odds-on favorite, and Meryl Streep is the accepted dark-horse candidate. I, however, have chosen Carey Mulligan from “An Education.”

This selection would certainly appear irrational, as she’s both young (at 24) and inexperienced (five feature-films to her credit, and “An Education” is the only film in which she stars). It doesn’t help that she will be going up against a pair of acting icons in Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren, and few in Hollywood are more popular than Sandra Bullock.

However, none of these factors can obscure the truth: Mulligan’s performance was undeniably the year’s best. Her role (as a late 1950s British teenager who is gradually seduced by an older, dubious suitor) was by far the most daring and the result was easily the most resonant.

Mulligan may not be first in the Hollywood-hierarchy, but her performance deserves to be recognized by the academy.

Now, for the big upset: “Inglourious Basterds” for Best Picture.

“Avatar” and “The Hurt Locker” have emerged as the critical darlings in this category, and both certainly hold a fair claim to the trophy. “The Hurt Locker” is a Hollywood rarity indeed (as a largely apolitical war film), while “Avatar” seems destined to do for 3D what movies like “Gone with the Wind,” “The Wizard of Oz,” and “The Thief of Bagdad” did for Technicolor or what David Lean’s 70mm films did for widescreen.

So why does “Basterds” win out on my ballot?

Because, frankly, it’s everything a movie should be. “Basterds” manages to be both reverential and unique, straddling the line between old-fashioned Hollywood entertainment and cutting-edge auteurism.

No movie this year was more ambitiously conceived or more painstakingly constructed (unlike the makers of “Avatar,” the producers of “Basterds” actually had to worry about a budget). And there wasn’t another film in 2009 that could so easily transition from a summer popcorn-flick to a legitimate subject for critical-study.

“Inglourious Basterds” is simultaneously bold and subtle, excessive and tempered, divisive and unifying.

In short, it’s everything that the word Hollywood entails, and hopefully the academy will take note.