I'd say that four of the five actors listed above are, if not shoo-ins, at least highly likely Oscar 2010 contenders.

Michael Stuhlbarg in A Serious Man

The iffiest one in the list is Viggo Mortensen, whose spot could be taken by, say, Morgan Freeman, playing one more honorable presidential character (Nelson Mandela this time) in Clint Eastwood's South Africa-set drama Invictus; Robert Duvall in Get Low, which has been generating some good buzz for the veteran actor whose performances, no matter how ravenous, have earned him five Oscar nods and one win in the last 37 years; or Michael Stuhlbarg as the cross-carrying hero in the Coen brothers' A Serious Man — it all depending on how much love this stage performer gets from US critics later in the year.

Ben Whishaw in Bright Star

Other solid possibilities are: Robert Downey Jr as the weird detective hero in Sherlock Holmes; Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the lovestruck young man in the sleeper hit 500 Days of Summer; Ben Whishaw as poet John Keats in Jane Campion's Bright Star; and Robert De Niro in Everybody's Fine, another old Marcello Mastroianni role, this one that of a widower on his way to meet his somewhat estranged grown children. (The Giuseppe Tornatore 1990 original is way too maudlin for my taste, but I do hope they've kept the deer sequence intact in this remake.)

Addendum: Initially, I had James McAvoy (above, with Helen Mirren) as one of the top best supporting actor contenders for The Last Station. However, McAvoy is being appropriately pushed as the film's lead. (Veteran Christopher Plummer, who'd been mentioned as a possible best actor contender for The Last Station, has been demoted to the supporting category in that film so he can run in the best actor race for The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.) Anyhow, after being ignored twice — for both The Last King of Scotland and Atonement — perhaps enough Academy members will decide to give McAvoy an Oscar break for his performance as Leo Tolstoy's secretary Valentin Bulgakov.

Also: Jeremy Renner in The Hurt Locker (above); Mark Wahlberg in The Lovely Bones; Ryan Gosling in All Good Things; Brad Pitt in Inglourious Basterds; Michael Sheen in The Damned United; Peter Sarsgaard in An Education; Ben Foster in The Messenger; Clive Owen in The Boys Are Back; either Jake Gyllenhaal or Tobey Maguire in Brothers; and Liam Neeson in Five Minutes of Heaven.

And last but quite probably not least, veteran Hal Holbrook (right) as a Tennessee farmer facing all sorts of problems in That Evening Sun.

Now, it's worth remembering that some of the aforementioned names may be pushed as supporting actors no matter how much screen time they have. Others may not be pushed at all, depending on how much studios and/or distributors want to spend on films that have underperformed (or will underperform) at the box office or that have been (or will be) coolly received by critics. Some of those films may only open in the Los Angeles area in 2010…

Just like last year, the real tight Oscar race will take place among the women. The best actress field has about ten likely candidates, while the best supporting actress race is even more crowded. The best supporting actor category, on the other hand, is wide open because there are thus far few truly strong candidates.