Oscar 2013: Best Supporting Actor: 30 Seconds to Oscar

Over the next few weeks, leading up to the ceremony on March 2, I'll take a look at the top six categories in the Oscar race. I start with the easiest to call, Best Supporting Actor.

It's hard to envision a scenario that doesn't have Jared Leto, as the doomed transvestite Rayon from Dallas Buyers Club, winning. Now, if you had told me at the beginning of the year that Leto would win an Oscar, I would have thought you were crazy. He hasn't done much acting in the last few years, concentrating on his band, 30 Seconds to Mars. Many probably only know him for his role many years ago as the Holy Grail of high school boys, Jordan Catelano, on My So-Called Life. But he has swept the precursors, and the role has almost everything an Oscar performance needs: he cross-dresses (to great effect, I might add), has a lot of comic moments, dies, and has the requisite Oscar-clip scene, in which he goes to his disapproving father and asks for help.

The rest of the group can probably pass on writing speeches. Before Leto emerged as the favorite, it was Michael Fassbender as the evil slave owner Edwin Epps in 12 Years a Slave. It's an intense, and sometimes weird performance, but Fassbender has been eclipsed by Leto's string of victories.

Bradley Cooper gets his second straight nomination for a David O. Russell film as the tightly-wound, both in personality and in hair, FBI agent in American Hustle. I found the performance a little off-putting, but that may have been the writing, and I don't see this as Cooper's year.

Jonah Hill gets his second nomination as the hedonistic stock trader in The Wolf of Wall Street. It's a fascinating role, a man who is basically all id (and he gets to sport a prosthetic cock), and in a weak year he could be a contender, but not this year.

Finally there's Barkhad Abdi, the feel-good nominee. An amateur, he was plucked from the Somali community in Minnesota to play Muse, the leader of a band of pirates in Captain Phillips. His performance is both chilling and touching, but I doubt he has the juice here to pull off a victory. I hope he is able to continue a career as an actor.

Will win: Jared Leto
Could win: Michael Fassbender
Should win: Jared Leto
Should have been nominated: James Franco, Spring Breakers