The 16th annual "Beat Beifuss at the Oscars" contest -- the event that gives you, dear reader, a chance to win TWENTY free tickets to Malco movie theaters -- begins today.

Twenty tickets? At today's prices, that ain't hay! (Or perhaps I should say "It Ain't Hay," in homage to the 1943 Abbott and Costello comedy. [NOTE: This is probably the first time the terms "Academy Awards" and "It Ain't Hay" have appeared in the same article.])

 Seriously, if you're a movie fan -- or even if you're not -- what have you got to lose?

To win, you must outguess me when I predict the winners in ten top categories in the upcoming Academy Awards ceremony. My guesses will be printed in the newspaper and posted online the morning of Sunday, Feb. 26; the Oscars are awarded that evening. The deadline for entry is essentially midnight, the Friday before.

Ten winners will be chosen at random from among those who beat me (if more than 10 do, in fact, beat me). Each of those winners will receive 20 Malco movie tickets.

Rules and entry form are here. 

In all honesty, this IS a good year to enter the contest, because this could be a very unpredictable Academy Awards. The nominations were surprising (for example, few people expected Demian Bichir to receive a Best Actor nomination for "A Better Life" instead of Michael Fassbener in "Shame"), so there could be some dark horse winners.

And remember, having actually SEEN the movies is irrelevant, and sometimes can be a distraction: Predictions based on the films' reputation or buzz are as likely to pay off as any personal analysis of the film's worth. So even if you've seen only a few or NONE of the films, I'd encourage you to take a chance and enter the contest; the ballot takes only a moment or two to complete.

Albert Nobbs is a strange "little man" in an unshowy little movie titled "Albert Nobbs," and I took a shine to them both.

The film should appeal to people who enjoy "Downton Abbey" and other Edwardian period pieces as much for the costumes and decor as for the drama; meanwhile, its tale of painful closeted lifestyles remains highly relevant, a century after the events depicted. (Just listen to the "family values" pandering of certain presidential candidates.)

An actress of "physical perfection" (according to Vogue magazine) as well as a celebrated humanitarian (she's a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), Angelina Jolie combines her profession and her passion to make her narrative feature debut as a writer-director with "In the Land of Blood and Honey," a sincere and ambitious yet inadequate movie inspired by what an onscreen legend describes as "the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II," the war in Bosnia.

Once lauded as the master of "gynecological horror," David Cronenberg applies his directorial speculum to the human cranium in "A Dangerous Method," a confident and fascinating film about the relationship between big brains Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung and their shared patient, Sabina Spielrein, who followed her mentors to become a noted psychoanalyst in her own right.

Missi Pyle -- arguably the most successful movie actress to emerge from the Memphis area since Kathy Bates -- is almost single-handedly responsible for the PG-13 rating attached to "The Artist." (That's one way to try to steal a scene from Uggie.)

Read my Missi Pyle interview/article here.

"Undefeated," the inspirational documentary that presents "an intimate chronicle of three underprivileged student-athletes from inner-city Memphis and the volunteer coach trying to help them beat the odds on and off the field" (in the words of its publicity material), was nominated today for the Best Documentary Feature Academy Award.

Also among the five Best Documentary Feature nominees was "Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory," currently showing on HBO channels.

For more Memphis Oscar connections, look here.

In 1931's "Safe in Hell," one of the latest pre-code astonishments rescued from obscurity by the Warner Archive Collection, a misbegotten collection of criminal fugitives living in safety if not comfort in a tropical hotel observe the sexy, wary newcomer in their midst with all the polite restraint of "a pack of starved dogs."

The new arrival is "the only white woman on the island," a blond New Orleans prostitute-turned-refugee from a murder rap played by Dorothy Mackaill, soon to be a real-life cast-off herself, from Hollywood.

The "starved dogs" reference offers a clue to the movie's eat-or-be-eaten ethos. Contrary to the implied theology of its title, "Safe in Hell" depicts a hopeless, godless world in which man -- and especially woman -- is just another morsel of meat on the food chain. Chickens roam the hotel to peck at the centipedes, and the water is seeded with "wrigglers," to devour the yellow-fever mosquitos. The people feed off each other, too, in different ways. "Wine is what you need, señorita," a leering general tells the former prostitute, as he pours her a glass. "Wine is only part of it," she replies, suggestively.

"The Artist" is terrific entertainment. Already famous and perhaps overhyped as the first wide-release black-and-white silent film of the modern era, this salute to the romance of the movies is novel, funny and refreshing. It's a celebration of joyful uninhibited performance, of the type found in old musicals and slapstick comedies, when actors might be required to dance, brawl and pratfall within the same reel.

Not all the performers are bipeds. The most irresistible member of the cast is Uggie, the Jack Russell terrier who is the leading man's constant companion. Uggie is fun on four feet. When the camera races alongside Uggie as the dog runs down the sidewalk at top speed, in hopes of rescuing his master, the moment is genuinely thrilling; one undertands why Rin Tin Tin was one of old Hollywood's top box-office draws.

From its wordy title to the impressive vocabulary and compulsive list-making of its possibly autistic young narrator hero, "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" is a motion picture that never liberates itself from the printed page.

"In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none."

That provocative statement is delivered by civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael in "The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975," a "documentary in 9 chapters" compiled mostly from vintage and exclusive news footage shot by Swedish reporters in America and around the world.

The film screens at 7 tonight (Thursday, Jan. 19) at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. Screening information is here.