And the winners are ... ?

It’s bad enough when the new football season starts up all over again just as Test cricket is getting into full swing.

So the idea of predicting next year’s major film award winners barely a month into the summer blockbusters seems almost as weird.

However, that’s just what The Guardian has done with a Top 50 list of the movies the paper thinks will figure most prominently in the prizegiving for 2011/12.

At number 1 is Tomas (Let the Right One In) Alfredson’s big-screen version of the book/TV spy classic Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, followed by My Week with Marilyn – an account of Marilyn Monroe’s UK-set Fifties clash with Brit icon Laurence Olivier as they filmed The Prince and The Showgirl together in the Fifties, co-starring Michelle Williams and Kenneth Branagh – and The Descendants, George Clooney’s latest comedy drama directed by Alexander (Sideways) Payne.

Cut out and keep this so you can judge in a few months time just how wrong they probably are.

Top 20 in full

1.    Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
2.   My Week with Marilyn
3.   The Descendants
4.   The Iron Lady – Streep as Maggie Thatcher
5.   The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo – David Fincher’s reboot of Swedish thriller
6.   The Ides of March - Clooney directs himself
7.   War Horse – Spielberg’s live action version of puppetry stage hit
8.   J Edgar – DiCaprio as FBI boss
9.   Carnage – Polanski directs theatre hit    
10.   The Tree of Life – Pitt and Penn in father-son drama 
11.   Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – Hanks & Bullock in post 9/11 drama 
12. Young Adult – comedy/drama from Jason (Up in the Air) Reitman 
13.  Albert Nobbs – set in late 19^th Century Ireland 
14. Dangerous Method – Keira Knightley is patient in psychiatry drama 
15. Hugo – Scorsese on the birth of the movies 
16. The Deep Blue Sea – Adultery in Fifties’ Britain 
17. The Rum Diary – Johnny Deep revisits Hunter Thompson 
18. On the Road – Jack Kerouac bestseller goes big screen 
19. W.E. – Madonna’s directing debut 
20. The Whistleblower – Rachel Weisz in post-war Bosnia drama