Oh boy, it's finally time for the big one. And it's a doozy. Most years, the way it works out is that there's a definitive front runner (
12 Years a Slave,
The Artist,
The King's Speech,
The Hurt Locker,
Slumdog Millionaire), a runner up, normally one known for technical achievement, that you pretend stands a chance (
Gravity,
Hugo,
The Social Network,
Avatar,
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), and a lot of movies legitimately just happy to be nominated. This year feels different thanks to some odd strategizing and split love from the guilds and awards committees. There's still arguably a frontrunner, but there's a lot that still have a chance, enough of them that I should break it down and see who really stands a chance.
Previously:
Best Documentary, Animate, and Live-Action Short
Best Documentary Feature
Best Foreign Film
Best Animated Feature
Best Visual Effects
Best Sound Editing and Sound Mixing
Best Production Design
Best Original Score and Original Song
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Best Costume Design
Best Cinematography
Best Film Editing
Best Adapted Screenplay and Original Screenplay
Best Supporting Actress
Best Supporting Actor
Best Lead Actress
Best Lead Actor
Best Director
Oscar History
Since Best Picture is a cumulative award, it's actually very useful to take a movie's other Oscar nominations into consideration. Historically, four categories are by far the biggest indicator of an Oscar win: Directing, Writing, Acting (any category), and Editing. The most important one is up for debate but here's the breakdown.
The best picture winner has been nominated for...
...Direction 48 times in the last 50 years.
...Screenplay 48 times in the last 50 years.
...Acting 46 times in the last 50 years.
...Editing 45 times in the last 50 years, including the last 33 winners in a row (by far the longest streak of any category).
No movie in at least 50 years (that's just when I stopped counting) has won Best Picture without being nominated for at least three of those. None. No exceptions.
Let's see how this year's nominees break down in that regard.
Boyhood (Directing, Acting, Screenplay, Editing)
Imitation Game (Directing, Acting, Screenplay, Editing)
The Grand Budapest Hotel (Directing, Screenplay, Editing)
American Sniper (Acting, Screenplay, Editing)
Whiplash (Acting, Screenplay, Editing)
Birdman (Directing, Acting, Screenplay)
The Theory of Everything (Acting, Screenplay)
Selma ()
That means, sorry
Selma and
Theory. No chance. Please enjoy your acting, score, and song awards. The remaining six are still in the mix, and there aren't any other reliable trends to be found. The 33 year Editing nomination streak is part coincidence, I'm sure. If
Birdman wins, for example, I doubt anyone will be stunned, similar to how
Argo won without a Directing nomination. There's always room for weird trends.
Precursor Awards
There are so many awards to track for Best Picture. The BAFTAs, Golden Globes, and Producers Guild all have an overall award. Then there's the individual guilds that all play into it. I've decided to focus on 7 of them and here's their credentials:
BAFTA for Best Film: 18 of the last 20 Best Picture winners have been nominated here. They've shared 11 of the last 20 winners. Most importantly, due to some changes in their voting process, the BAFTA has called the last 6 Oscar winners.
Golden Globe for Best Film, Drama & Comedy/Musical: Over the last 20 years, they only failed to nominate the eventual Oscar winner once (
Crash in 2005 - Good on them). Between the two awards they give out, the Oscar Winner also won the Globe 13 of the last 20 times.
Producers Guild of America Award for Best Film: It's seen by many as the single greatest predictor of the Oscar, because of the similar number of nominees and they use the same preferential voting process as the Oscars. The PGA has predicted the last seven Oscar winners (also getting thrown off by
Crash in 2005). The last time they failed to even nominate the Oscar winner was all the way back in 1995 (
Braveheart).
Screen Actors Guild Award for Ensemble in a Film: In the 19 years this award has been given, it's only matched up with the Oscar winner 9 times, but it has nominated the Oscar winner the last 18 years.
Directors Guild of America Award for Best Director: In the last 20 years, they've nominated the Oscar winner for best picture every time. Better yet, the Director of that movie has won this award 15 of the 20 times.
American Cinema Editors Award for Editing, Drama & Comedy/Musical: Like the Globes, this is broken in two, so the numbers are a bit inflated, but the Editors have nominated the Oscar winner for best picture the last 20 years. Their winner only matched the Oscar Best Picture winner 13 of 20 times, which is still pretty good.
American Society of Cinematographers Award for Cinematography in a Film: This one's not all that reliable. They've only nominated 14 of the last 20 Best Picture winners. I wanted to give you an idea of the drop off after the top six.
A movie needs support across many branches of the academy so the more nominations and wins by the seven groups above the better. Over the last 20 years, the best picture winner has been nominated by six of the seven groups all but three times. The least recognized winner (Braveheart) still got at least four groups to recognize it and that was an odd case, as well as so long ago that the politics of the season are nearly unrecognizable. Still, that sets an easy parameter: 4 of the 7 needed. As for wins, the last 20 best picture winners have all come away with at least one win out of the seven groups. Normally, it's two or more wins, but again, this gives us a good parameter: 1 win in the 7. Looking at this year's nominees, what does that mean?
Birdman: 7 nominations. 4 wins.
Boyhood: 6 nominations. 3 wins.
The Grand Budapest Hotel: 7 nominations. 2 wins.
The Imitation Game: 7 nominations. 0 wins.
The Theory of Everything: 4 nominations. 0 wins.
American Sniper: 3 nominations. 0 wins.
Whiplash: 2 nominations. 0 wins.
Selma: 1 nomination. 0 wins.
That puts things into focus, doesn't it? I already determined that
Selma and
The Theory of Everything are out.
Selma doesn't meet either of the minimums I set here either. Neither does
Whiplash or
American Sniper. The
Theory of Everything and
The Imitation Game have the nominations, but no one has been willing to award them. It's awful strange to expect an Oscar then, since the voters are made up of these groups more or less.
That means
Birdman,
Boyhood, and
The Grand Budapest Hotel are our thoroughbreds. Looking at what they've won though, you can scratch
Budapest off there too. It's only wins have come with the "Comedy/Musical" distinction and in the world of award voting, you have to be able to beat the dramas in open competition somewhere to be considered. The only three Comedy/Musicals to win in the last 20 years (
The Artist,
Chicago, and
Shakespeare in Love) had to power through their seasons
Other Considerations
Of course, the Oscars aren't pure statistics. There's a lot of things to consider.
There's the fact that
Selma pretty much ignored all the precursor awards and only focused on getting screeners to Oscar voters. It's a risky strategy that failed to get it many nominations, but it could result in a last second upswing of support since only the Oscar voters had a great chance to see it in time.
There's
American Sniper's MASSIVE box office success, coupled with the Academy's proven love for Clint Eastwood (
Million Dollar Baby was another late season surger). But, the box office has proven to have little or no influence on Oscar voters beyond an argument of visibility.
There's
The Imitation Game being a Weinstein Company feature. Harvey Weinstein is the greatest Oscar tactician of the last 20+ years. Although, his tactics normally yield some wins on the award circuit of which,
The Imitation Game has won none.
Most importantly, there's the ballot itself. The Oscars use something called preferential balloting to determine nominees and winners. It's a confusing (but technically pretty sound) method. I looked it up and the best site I found to explain it was
here. What it all means though is that while everyone's vote gets counted, in a split year like this, it's possible that your second or third pick could matter. So, say that only a few people have
The Imitation Game as their top pick but it's universally everyone's second or third pick. That could set it over the edge to win. Or, say that voters hated or loved
Birdman divisively (voting it first or last exclusively), then if it doesn't outright win it gains little from any additional rounds of tabulating. We'll never know the whole story of the votes, only the final results, so it's hard to predict how this will go. The only other group who currently votes like this is the PGA. That's why they're considered so important to the season.
Between Oscar history, precursor awards, and the other considerations, I'm more interested in the first two since I can actually track them. Those other considerations are what will get you though. Finally, it's time for me to get around to my pick for Best Picture, as always, ordered from most to least likely.
Predictions
Most to least likely to win
Birdman
PGA - Winner
SAG - Ensemble - Winner
DGA - Winner
Cinematographers Society - Winner
BAFTA - Nominee
Golden Globe - Comedy/Musical - Nominee
Eddie - Comedy Musical - Nominee
As soon as
Birdman won the PGA Award, it became the front runner. More generally though, think about it. Producers, Actors, and Directors I'm pretty sure make up the vast majority of the Oscar voters. While the guilds and Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences aren't exactly the same people, I have to assume there's enough overlap to be indicative of where things are going. The last time a movie won all three of those awards but lost was
Apollo 13, when
Braveheart won the Oscar. Seriously,
Braveheart has killed almost every statistic I've gathered.
Boyhood
BAFTA - Winner
Golden Globe - Drama - Winner
Eddie - Drama - Winner
DGA - Nominee
PGA - Nominee
SAG - Ensemble - Nominee
The Golden Globe Win is nice. The Eddie is a stronger indicator than I thought. The BAFTA is huge, given their current run of matching with the Oscar winners. It's certainly the critical darling and has some massive support all-around. The lack of Guild love from the big three (PGA, SAG, DGA) really hurts though. I can make a nearly equal case for
Boyhood to win (much like Gravity last year) but I like
Birdman's credentials just a little bit more.
The Imitation Game
BAFTA - Nominee
DGA - Nominee
Cinematographers Society - Nominee
Golden Globe - Drama - Nominee
PGA - Nominee
SAG - Ensemble - Nominee
Eddie - Drama - Nominee
I can't shake the feeling that this could pull a
Braveheart, although, even
Braveheart had a couple wins.
The Imitation Game has fallen to competition at every turn. It's looking like a movie that everyone likes and no one loves. However, that is the exact description of the kind of movie that could benefit by the Oscars' preferential balloting.
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Golden Globe - Comedy/Musical - Winner
Eddie - Comedy Musical - Winner
BAFTA - Nominee
DGA - Nominee
Cinematographers Society - Nominee
PGA - Nominee
SAG - Ensemble - Nominee
The Eddie win over
Birdman would mean more if
Birdman even got an Oscar nominations (Clearly, I was more impressed by the single take trick than people with a vote were). The Globe win is meaningless. On paper, this has a better chance than
The Imitation Game, but it lacks the intangibles. It's a known quantity, having been release nearly a full year ago. It lacks the Weinstein backing that's pushed many movies over the edge many years. There aren't whispers of "It's Wes Anderson's time" like the ones that pushed
The Departed over the edge for Scorsese. There's no stealth narrative for a win here.
American Sniper
DGA - Nominee
PGA - Nominee
Eddie - Drama - Nominee
The only reason this isn't further down is that the Oscar voters love Clint Eastwood. It needed to steal at least one precursor award for me to trust it though.
The Theory of Everything
BAFTA - Nominee
Golden Globe - Drama - Nominee
PGA - Nominee
SAG - Ensemble - Nominee
It's a dumb rule, but if a British movie doesn't win the BAFTA, I don't assume it can pull off the Oscar win.
Selma
Golden Globe - Drama - Nominee
They gambled with the late release and who to send screeners to. So far, it hasn't paid off and it's increasingly looking like it won't.
Whiplash
PGA - Nominee
Eddie - Drama - Nominee
Really, truly, just happy to be nominated.
