“Avatar” captured the top award, and five others, Sunday night from the Visual Effects Society. Unfortunately, it’s been snubbed by every single other group of motion picture employees who give awards, most recently by the cimematographers (who went with “The White Ribbon”) the night before. Not even the Producers Guild of America — presumably more impressed by money than the actors, directors, writers, editors etc. — followed The Golden Globes in embracing “Avatar,” which sure looked like it had an unbeatable lead in mid-January, even after “The Hurt Locker” took virtually all of the critics’ awards. These are not good omens for Fox and the rest of Team Cameron. “Avatar” also lost (except for visual effects and productiond design) with the British Academy, which has a significant overlap with Oscar voters. The Best Picture advantage clearly belongs to “The Hurt Locker,” though two veteran Oscar consultants I spoke with cautioned that it was difficult to make a flat prediction because there are 10 Best Picture nominees this year, as well as a new preferential voting system in place. Both nonethless think “The Hurt Locker” is the likely winner, and both faulted the campaign for “Avatar,” which they say has failed to adequately convince Oscar voters — who have to cast their ballots by Tuesday — how the record-setting blockbuster changed the way movies will be made. An overly defensive campaign “focused too much on convincing the actors that the motion-capture performances were real acting,” one of the consultants says.

In any event, early predictions that “Avatar” will follow the Oscar sweep of James Cameron’s last feature “Titanic” ignore the fact that the earlier film, unlike “Avatar,” scored a pair of acting nominations — a feat not duplicated by “Avatar.” Cameron’s latest film appears to have fallen behind because of a major post-Globes backlash even as it smashed box-office records. There’s been what some suspect is an orchestrated attack on “The Hurt Locker” in the past week, but by that point, experts think, most Oscar ballots were already in the mail. Tom O’Neil and some of my fellow Oscar pundits at The L.A. Times’ The Envelope have been pushing the theory that the preferential ballots — which give more weight to second-place choices if one title doesn’t capture more than 50 percent of the votes on the first ballot — could result in a surprise victory by “Inglourious Basterds.” The Oscar consultants I spoke with aren’t buying this theory at all, and I think their reasoning is sound. “This assumes that most people who choose ‘The Hurt Locker’ as their top choice wouldn’t pick ‘Avatar’ as No. 2, and anecdotal evidence suggests this just isn’t true,” says one consultant. “Or if they’re indie fans, they’d be more likely to pick a low-budget film like ‘An Education’ instead of a big-budget flick like ‘Inglourious.’ ” Says the other consultant: “If ‘Inglorious Basterds’ is as popular among the actors as Harvey [Weinstein] says, then why didn’t Brad Pitt, who already has two Oscar nominations as Best Actor, get another one for this? Where’s the nomination for Melanie Laurent, who was pushed very hard? A lot of people I’ve spoken with just don’t think ‘Inglorious’ has the gravitas for Best Picture.” Bottom line: “The Hurt Locker” is the safer choice in your office Oscar pool, “Avatar” is for gamblers, and “Inglourious Basterds” is the choice for those who like to play long shots.