I think my opinion of the Awards Circuit has been pretty clearly established by now. I hold them in unequal parts esteem and disregard, hating them, but finding a value in them. Regardless of what anyone says, no one will ask who won the 2008 Independent Spirit award but Slumdog Millionaire with be a bar room trivia staple. It's the way it is. No matter how much politicking is involved, the "Academy Award winner" moniker is going to follow a person and be seen as something that legitimizes the person. It isn't right, but it's how it is.
I also think that anyone who pays attention can see that most of my interest in these awards is tied numbers. I could (and have and will again) waste hours trying to observe trends. Last year, I came up with a fuzzy math in a few majors categories to narrow things down for my best picture pick, which was pointless because it was all but guaranteed that The Artist was winning.
This year, I let my inner John Nash took over in search for a formula to predict the winner of Best Picture based off the nominations alone. I'll cut the suspense now and say that there isn't one. You can weight Cinematography and Sound Editing and group acting by support/lead or gender all you want, but there is no formula. Even if I cheat and weigh by the winners of each, there's no 100% rhyme or reason.
Having wasted countless hours compiling all this data into an Excel sheet (in probably the least efficient way imaginable) I was compelled to do something with the data. What I decided on is something similar to my project that lead up to the Emmys last year. I decided to come up with a list of all the ways the Oscars don't logically follow. Yes, I do realize how unneeded that proof is. Regardless, It's nice to point to something concrete.
Where, for the Emmys there is not a direct correlation to things because the entire award selection process is based on a single submission episode or handful of them, the Oscars are based on the single work: the movie, so a nomination is far more indicative of what the overall esteem of the movie in the academy's eyes is. In other words, the more nominations a movie has, especially in the bigger categories, the more argument a movie has for a best picture nomination (Ex. Eight "technical" awards is probably more deserving than only a supporting actor nod).
The way I made my list is pretty simple. I went back 50 years because it's a round number and the nomination fields are mostly consistent over that time. After that, I rated movies based on the quantity and quality of the nominations. What I mean by that is pretty simple. 49 of the last 50 best picture winners had a nomination for Directing as well, so movies with a directing nomination gets a boost in the ratings. Hardly any of the best picture winners have had best song nominations. It doesn't hurt to have that nomination, but it doesn't help as much as, say cinematography. The more nominations, the more points, with more major nominations netting more points. That's as much detail as anyone ever needs to know, but since I've wasted so much time already, I'm going to post an explanation of my exact formula on another page in case anyone wants to contest it.
The other way this list differs from my Emmy one is that it's not a ranking. I'm just going through, year by year, pointing out what doesn't make sense based on the nominations. Specifically, I'm focusing on what was nominated and if those nominations suggest that it should've won or been nominated for best picture that year. The one thing I'm trying to avoid doing is judging based on movie preference. So, when I say Titanic deserved to win in 1997, that's because it dominated the nominations, not because I liked it better than something else. Or, when I say The Blind Side probably didn't deserve a best picture nomination, that's based on it only having a Lead Actress nomination, not because I hated it.
I could've divided these up into 10 at a time since I'm only going back an even 50. Instead, I have opted for the far easier to title decades. Here we go...
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