Thursday, January 14, 2016

How'd I Do? 2016 Edition: Results of My Oscar Nomination Predictions

Ummmm. So I got 19 out of 20 acting nominees correct. But only 35/43 (81%) in the Big 8 categories, a slight improvement over last year. My overall is 77/106 or 73%, a minor improvement over last year.

Here's the breakdown.

Nominees marked with an asterisk are the ones I missed.

Best Picture 6/8
I predicted 9 nominees. There were actually 8. Normally I make a graduated list, indicating the 5 certain nominees and the each successive most likely. I forgot to do that this year, but if I'm honest

Spotlight
The Revenant
Brooklyn
The Martian
Bridge of Spies
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Big Short
*Room

predicted but not nominated: Inside Out; Carol

88th Academy Awards Nomination Predictions

These predictions get harder and harder to make not so much based on what I've seen of the movies, but more on how much I've read from other prognosticators. The last couple of months have left me bone-dry for reading material on the topic of awards season. I used to read a lot of the buzz, which provides a sense for what people in Hollywood are talking about. You see the ebbs and flows of popularity and the ways in which smaller films creep up from behind to overtake some studio film. I don't have a sense of any of that this year, so I'm winging it.

Of the roughly 13 films from which I believe the 5 - 10 Best Picture nominees will come, I have yet to see two of them.

I've got my eyes on about 25 films that are in the running for acting awards. I haven't seen 9 of them.

But here it goes anyway. My nominations for predictions to be announced tomorrow morning...

Best Picture
I'm going with a prediction of nine nominees this year.

Spotlight
The Revenant
Brooklyn
Inside Out
Carol
The Martian
Bridge of Spies
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Big Short

With outside chances for one of these to sneak in:

Room
Sicario
Straight Outta Compton

Wednesday, January 6, 2016

Everything I Saw in the Second Half of 2015

So in the final six months of 2015 I watched a total of 61 feature-length films
(only 59 different films as two of them were repeats within the same period).
I also watched 29 TV episodes and 5 animated short films.

My feature film viewing is down by 3 films from the same period a year ago.
However, I watched more films that I had never seen before, tallying up 42
from July - December 2015 compared with 35 in the second half of 2014.

Trips to the cinema is where I'm really down. I saw only 13 films in the
cinema compared with 16 in July-December 2014, which itself was way off
the 31 of 2013.

My totals for 2015 are as follows: 143 total feature films, which is only 1 less
than in 2014. I managed only 31 films in the cinema for the whole year. That's
down from 38 in 2014. But 102 of all the feature films I saw in 2015 were
films I'd never seen before, an improvement over 2014 by 8 films.

Here's the list of everything I watched on purpose complete with the
date/s seen, the film's original year of release and the method by
which I saw it. Asterisks indicate films or shows I'd seen before.

How'd I Do? 93rd Academy Awards Nominations Edition

I got 36 out of 43 in the top eight categories. That's 83.7%. Getting 19/20 in the acting categories made up for the fact that I went on...