I’ll give you 10 guesses

Oh, okay then. I’ve held out longer than most, but with the summer mostly played out, and newly unveiled schedules for Venice and Toronto signifying that the fall film season is already breathing down our necks, now is as good a time as any to go on the record with some Oscar predictions.

In years past, I’ve had readers tell me that my predictions are tricky to access on the site — not a problem for me, since the fewer who found them, the more contained the embarrassment when they were proved hopelessly wrong. Nevertheless, we have heard you, and we have acted: at the bottom of Kris’s predictions on the sidebar, you will find a shiny new link to mine. You can’t beat progress.

As usual, if you like your predictions rational, grounded in inside information and frequently accurate, Kris is your man. (He’ll be updating his on August 23, by the way.) At these early stages, I go on a mixture of gut feeling, sudden hunches and a broken Ouija board I picked up for a fiver in a garage sale. I tend to get stronger inklings about what won’t get nominated than what will, which is why some of my picks have a placeholder feel to them.

For example, I’ve persuaded myself that “Inception” will miss out in the top races, but with the late-season surprise packages yet to reveal themselves, my substitutes don’t look that credible to me either. I admit I struggled to cobble together 10 titles for Best Picture, with so many upcoming prestige pics looking either uncertain or just plain unappetizing.

Meanwhile, I’m currently hedging my bets on two British entries. Most would put money on “Another Year,” given its Cannes blue-ribbon status and Mike Leigh’s wad of previous nominations, but I find myself questioning whether the film might prove too low-key and melancholy for the general votership. Could it face competition for the Brit vote from Nigel Cole’s sunnier comedy “Made in Dagenham,” currently getting “next ‘Full Monty’” buzz on its way to a prominent launch at Toronto? The Academy frequently likes its Britpics chirpy and digestible, and “Made in Dagenham” (already retitled from its original, less awards-friendly moniker “We Want Sex”) boasts five words very dear to voters’ hearts: “Based on a True Story.”

The film centers on the 1968 equal-rights strike by female workers at the Ford Dagenham factory in East London, with Sally Hawkins reportedly as its Norma Rae figure. Should the film gather any steam in the coming months, Hawkins’s presence could remind voters of her pointed 2008 snub for (funny how these names circle round) Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky.”

Of course, it could be nothing. We don’t know. It’s July, for Chrissakes. Next time I update my predictions, of course, I’ll have have seen a few more things. For now, enjoy.