Thanks to awards from the Screen Actors Guild and the Directors Guild, the warm and fuzzy stuttering drama The King's Speech is now officially "the film to beat!" at this year's Academy Awards.

This is weird. I do not hate The King's Speech, but it just seems like such a random Oscar fave, especially when you consider similar but superior Masterpiece Theater-esque films that were denied the type of awards being lavished on The King's Speech. Foremost in my mind: Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility, cursed with the misfortune of being released the same year as the one-million-times-stupider-than-The King's Speech Oscar fave Braveheart.

Would The King's Speech have beaten Braveheart? The fact that I was led to type that sentence makes me want to never subject myself to the Oscars' arbitrary bullshit ever again. But who am I kidding? Tune in to The Stranger's live-slog of the 2011 Oscar ceremony—featuring Queen Lindy West and me—on Sunday Feb 27 starting at 5 pm.