In five hours, it’s pencils down for the Academy. Ballots are due this afternoon and then it’s five days before we find out what they amounted to.

For the most part, these races are decided. We sometimes get big, stunning upsets, though typically they have one or two indicators that we only pick up on after the fact. Sometimes, though, they don’t. Who can forget humble “Precious” scribe Geoffrey Fletcher having his name called for Best Adapted Screenplay two years ago, speechless as he took to the stage, expecting, like all of us, for the category to go a different way?

Those are the kinds of moments you hope for to shake things up, but particularly if you think they are deserving upsets. This year, there are certainly a few of those across the Academy’s 24 categories worth spotlighting, and so we have, dedicating this last pre-show list to the cause.

I tapped all our writers here at In Contention to put our heads together and come up with 10 envelope reveals we’d be delighted to hear on Sunday night. I’d wager just about all of them are so unlikely as to make this a wishful thinking collective and nothing else, but that’s kind of the spirit of the grouping, too. We don’t expect any of these to happen, but man would we be delighted if they did.

Hopefully this gives you an even deeper insight into how we saw the film year, and where we see the deserving elements scattered throughout. Of course, a non-Oscar nominated list of choices would be much different, but this is what the Academy has given us to work with. But it wasn’t that hard to find things worth championing.

So have a look at our choices in our new gallery and feel free to comment and/or offer up yours in the comments section below.

For year-round entertainment news and awards season commentary follow @kristapley on Twitter.

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