Oscar Pool Reminder and Open Thread

broderic on March 2, 2010

Thanks to the one and only incomparable Annie, we receive an appreciation from one of last year’s winners. Annie ruled the micro points portion of our contest, won a copy of Bolt, and shared her little ones (minus one) enjoyment of this Disney Pixar attempt. Although, those multi-prize times are gone, they’ll be back soon. This year, though, it’s a cage match to the death. “N men enter 1 man leaves!” Our goal this year: beat the two time champ riss.

Consider this an open thread on the Oscar (pool) race

BrowserMetrics Annual Oscar® Pool in iMax3D™

broderic on February 26, 2010


Once again. It’s that time of year. I know you movie goers love it. OSCAR POOL time!

But before we get to the ballot and the ceremony, we have to always visit the Science and Technology Awards, the Geek Oscars. This year they had the lovely Elizabeth Banks host the awards. If I could, I would include a question about the Geek winners in the pool. I usually can’t figure out how to squeeze that in plus it’s always too late by the time I remember when they do that.

Here’s the direct quote of the rules. You’ll remember them from last year.

Make your choices.
Select one from each category.
A category has points assigned to it.
If you correctly predict the winner, you receive the assigned points.
At the end of the night who ever has the most points wins.

Tie breakers:
1) Closest to but not over the number of people in the US who watch the telecast
2) Pick names from a hat

There are 24 categories. Points break down is as follows:
Best Picture, Animated Feature: 4 points each (8 total)
Actor, Actress, Costume Design, Makeup: 3 points each (12 total)
Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Best Director, Art Direction, Cinematography, Sound Mixing: 2 points each (12 total)
The rest are worth 1 point each (12 total)

Total Points Available: (2*4) + (4*3) + (6*2) + (12*1) = 44

Here’s the link to the ballot: http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dE8zcnc0ZDFfLXFJbFVVS21QeFk0Rmc6MA. You get one entry, but you can fill it out as many times. I’ll use your last most latest entry as your official entry.

This year there will only be one prize. Again its DVD/BluRay of any of the best picture nominees. It would’ve been cool to have a couple of other prizes like last year, but the recession has cut my spending habits and unfortunately one of the prizes.

The form will be active until Sunday of the telecast. I hope to live blog/tweet it and try to tally your votes. And get the winner out.

Good luck and better get your 3D glasses on!

Ten Best Pictures!

broderic on February 3, 2010

Here’s imDb’s list of nominees.

I’ve seen seven of the ten best pictures: Avatar, District 9, An Education, Inglourious Basterds, A Serious Man, Up, and Up in the Air. Interesting considering the number of nominees.

Of the three I didn’t see, The Hurt Locker is the only one I’m really interested in. The Blind Side maybe. Precious, based on the Novel Saphire by whatshername, not interested.

I wonder if this changes things for the Oscar Pool?

What’s the deal with no Ponyo though?

Golden Fail

broderic on January 18, 2010

The Golden Globes is a joke. I'm looking at the nominees for last nights program and I shake my head trying to understand any of it.For example, the best Drama pictures are: Avatar, The Hurt Locker, Inglorious Basterds, Precious based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, and Up in the Air. The winner, Avatar, was no more dramatic than Aliens, and some may even call it an action flick. When you divide pictures arbitrarily into Drama and Comedy/Musical, you start pigeonholing films into categories that make no sense! And why are musicals still around? There's only one or two non-animated musicals made a year. That shouldn't be enough to earn them a part of one category. Here's another example of a headscratcher coming from the Golden Globes: Robert Downey Jr won for best actor in a comedy/musical for his hilarious portrayal of that truly funny guy, Sherlock Holmes. What you didn't LOL all through that film? Jokes on you then. Sherlock Holmes was as much an actioner as Avatar, but didn't qualify for Drama the way Avatar did! Hunh?The Golden Globes also lump in television into their awards. Now, there's nothing wrong with TV, but throwing it into the mix is like comparing apples to oranges. The star wattage between the two is megawatts in difference. Funny that.There. The rant is done. Perhaps fueled by Avatar's win. But then I look at the films and realize I don't think anything about them. Weird. Who knows what the Oscar race is going to be like?

5 More

broderic on June 25, 2009

The Academy has gone to 10 Best Picture nominees instead of the usual 5. Isn’t 10 too much to choose from? And will it have even more suckier films to choose?

The Academy should just take a page from the Globes and have different categories for Best Picture. Best Picture for Drama. Best Picture for Comedy. Best Picture for Impenetrable Foreign Film. Best Picture for Will Ferrell Comedies. Best Picture for Lame Action Movies. Best Picture for Non-lame Action Movies. Such and such.

This will make creating the spreadsheet for BrowserMetrics Annual Oscar Pool a little bit more inconvenient.

Is 10 too much? I think 7 would’ve been ideal.

Link of the Day [2.24.09]

broderic on February 24, 2009

I had probably linked his predictions prior to our Oscar Pool, but Nate Silver does an analysis of where he went wrong. There’s a comment there that congratulates him on missing only two. I think we all did just as good and we were picking names out of a hat. When I think back, it would’ve been just as well to have gone with the front runners. You would’ve nailed all them. And no, Sean Penn, wasn’t a big surprise — see Eddie Murphy in best supporting actor.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/02/some-post-oscars-thoughts-on.html

Oscar Pool Results 2009

broderic on February 23, 2009

So it’s late night after the show. I forgot about Jimmy Kimmel, but spent the later part of the midnight drinking a cherry coke and tabulating results. I bet you’re all on edge. But first, let me thank the academy, my mom and dad, the producers, the craftspeople, rod and ness and most of all the seed for live blogging the telecast. He did a bang up job with the blow by blow. Read it and experience our night at the oscars.

Oh yeah I forgot. Thanks for all my participants: the seed, CapSwell, riss, dace, Marge, Annie, and Wyman. You make it fun.

So the winners are: Drumroll pleases!

Winner of the Special Jury Prize of picking the most 1 pointers: Annie!!! She does by being the only one to pick the live action short and the foreign film and by being one of two with the correct choice in costume. She takes it with 10 points! Most of the rest of us had 6! Good job.

She gets to choose any of the animated feature films on DVD!

Runner up is Wyman! 24 points! He ruled the two pointers in the early evening, but was only average in the others. Could’ve gone his way, but for Sean Penn.

He gets his choice of the best picture nominees.

The winner and still reigning champion, riss! 26 points! Sean Penn FTW! Congratulations. How the heck do you get so good?

She gets her choice of any nominated film. I hope I can find it for her!

The rest of us suck. It’s later than I want it to be, so we’ll find out more rankings tomorrow. As a whole we did pretty well. Only categories we missed completely were best supporting actress and animated short. Woohoo good job.

**** UPDATE ****
Here’s a link to the tallies. They show all received entries in the sub totals, but only the accepted entries in the totals. Enjoy!!!!! http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pTj2DeezQPze5P4223RV8bw

Oscar Pool Totals

broderic on February 23, 2009

Not doing them until tomorrow, but the Wyman is running away with this currently. Why!?!!?!?Drop by the seed for some live blogging. Sent from my iPhone

Oscar Pool Update Episode IV: A New Hope

broderic on February 20, 2009

We’re going into the weekend and it looks like the ballots are set. Hope everyone is making the right choices. Good luck.

View the current entries. Hopefully, I’ve hidden your email addrs from everyone so that you don’t get that crazy spam I’ve been getting wherein I complain about the tightness of my shorts.

Link of the Day [2.20.09]

broderic on February 20, 2009

I can’t believe I forgot to post about the technical Oscar awards. These are better than Sunday’s broadcast because it’s all about the nerdy stuff. And it’s hosted, lately, by a hottie. This year’s host was Jessica Biel. Yeah! She’s pretty hot! But not comparable to when Rachel McAdams hosted it a few years back.

http://www.oscars.org/awards/scitech/index.html