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Ryan, Marshall and I got together for one Saturday night podcast pre-WGA. We went in on predictions a little, where all three of us are predicting BlacKkKlansman to win in Adapted Screenplay. Marshall and I are predicting Green Book to take Original, where Ryan is predicting Eighth Grade. Have a listen.
F*ck yes! Sasha opening with old white people music! Can’t wait to listen for the next hour and a half!
LOL yes love it when she takes Mark Harris to the woodshed! And good point on the National Endowment of the ARTS! Piss in a jar!
Great discussion guys. I’m travelling around New Zealand and listened to this whilst looking at lush countryside of the south island. Great discourse you all have. Thank you. I wish I were clearer as to whether to change my predictions. Every year I feel the more I know, the less I know. But enormous fun to consider the race from all of your perspectives as well as my own. Regards to you all 🙂
I wish I were clearer as to whether to change my predictions.
I wish I felt some clarity in my own predictions, Dave. Any clarity at all.
I feel the same way you do about this year, Sasha. Guess we will hope for better next year. Good job predicting Eighth Grade, Ryan. Hope you are well.
Congratulations Ryan for nailing Eighth Grade!
Yes Ryan what a prediction!!!
Really interesting to hear Sasha’s dislike for the favourite. Strange she says it doesn’t go anywhere. It might not go where she wants it to, but it’s hard to see that it goes no where.
Also interesting that she lacks any excitement at a foreign language female-driven film winning BP.
And I don’t get her Green Book argument- should it win because of the backlash, and not merit??
But the most telling thing is her comment that she has lost interest since First Man didn’t make it. I was quite shocked at how childish this sounded.
DIsagree. What happened to it was not right.
I’m not saying it shouldn’t be snubbed, I’m saying her reaction is OTT.
“She lacks any excitement at a foreign language female-driven film winning BP.” – whether Roma or not is unequivocally female-driven is certainly up for debate. Especially given the POV of the film really is Cuaron’s.
Good lord Andrew, I’m #SorryNotSorry that people being upfront about being bummed that their favorite film of the year not being part of the race is “shocking” and “childish” to you.
I’m just as bummed that First Man not only got the cold shoulder for Best Picture but got totally stiffed with a number of crafts awards as well. And that definitely has colored my enjoyment of this awards season, among many many other factors.
I hope Eighth Grade wins Original.
Correction: Robert Mapplethorpe did not create Piss Christ. The artist was Andres Serrano.
[Should I post here too?! Ah, well… can’t hurt, right?!]
Results for my 8th Annual Best Picture Preferential Ballot Simulation:
Some quick details about the process, first… I posted the request for ballots in 11 different threads at Awards Daily, as well as in one thread in the Movie Awards Redux forum (where a lot of the old Oscar Buzz gang from the now defunct IMDb message boards have relocated, as far as I can tell). I collected, in total, 45 ballots from Awards Daily and 28 ballots from Movie Awards Redux, plus my and my mom’s, for a total of 75. Three more than last year. As I’ve done in the past, for the separate counts, I assigned my mom’s ballot to the Movie Awards Redux lot, and my own to the Awards Daily lot. In any case, at least this year, the final result 100% would not have changed, for either, had I assigned both to one place or the other, or neither anywhere. I have, as always, a full list of the user names of the people who took part (and to whom I am genuinely grateful), which I can share with anyone who would like to look it over. (I’ve never had such a request, but I’ve always compiled the list anyway.) Nobody’s ballot got counted twice. (Unless somebody voted both places, under different user names, and didn’t tell me about it. Which I doubt.)
All that out of the way… well… 🙂 I have the results, and they’re, perhaps, unusually interesting. (I might go so far as to say they’re definitely that, but that could just be me.) In the overall count, the winner was, EASILY, The Favourite, by a final score of 45-30 over Roma. The two had almost 75% of the total #1 votes. The Favourite was ahead 31-24, and its lead never diminished one bit, but rather increased steadily. BlacKkKlansman finished a very distant third, with A Star is Born fourth. Fourth out (so, finishing in fifth place) was Green Book, third out was Black Panther, second out was Vice and first out was Bohemian Rhapsody, with a lone first place vote. More details on all of this can be found in the round-by-round breakdown below, which I provide every year.
Now, one might come up with the theory that The Favourite winning is mostly due to the votes from Movie Awards Redux, but this actually turns out to not quite be true. The margin is a result of that, but not the win. Counting only the Movie Awards Redux votes, The Favourite wins 20-9 over Roma in the final two – the same margin it had on #1 votes. But the even more interesting news comes from counting only the Awards Daily ballots, where Roma was in first place on #1 votes, 18-14, but only picked up three more votes along the way, losing out, in the end, by the same margin it had originally led by, four votes – 25-21. Not something that happens a lot in these simulations, and, I’m sure, not something most people would have guessed might happen: The Favourite benefiting copiously from the preferential ballot…
Now, why I find this to be potentially relevant even from a predictions perspective: in the previous 7 editions of this simulation that I’ve done, the Best Picture winner has NEVER finished in second place. Not once. It finished in first twice. This, of course, may well be random (the sample is still very small, and the expectancy about one second place), but, on the other hand, what would worry me about it, were I a Roma supporter, would be that it, at least in my opinion, makes a lot of sense that this wouldn’t happen. The Best Picture winner is either a movie that isn’t among the big favorites of the internet community at all (like The King’s Speech, Argo, Spotlight or The Shape of Water – or, apparently, 12 Years a Slave, which finished a rather distant third, tied with The Wolf of Wall Street) or is a movie that’s so popular/beloved, not just by the Academy, that even said community likes it more than everything else (Birdman, Moonlight). It’s true, Birdman DID beat Boyhood by just the one vote, but, nevertheless, it did beat it… And this is not the case this year. Roma lost by a very clear margin. So, maybe, as I and others believe, it is, indeed, a very vulnerable front runner for Best Picture, and The Favourite or Green Book or, who knows, something else entirely, might win instead… Or maybe it just breaks the streak. Equally plausible. However, I would like to point out one more interesting tidbit which isn’t in Roma’s favor: every single DGA winner that went on to lose Best Picture at the Oscars in the modern preferential era (whether it won or lost the PGA) has finished dead second in these simulations. Gravity, The Revenant, La La Land. True, Gravity was tied for first, but lost out fair and square (to Her) via the same tie-breaking method the Academy uses.
I give, again, the results of all of these simulations (this year’s included), for further reference and verification of my statements directly above:
2011 The Social Network —– details not saved (second place was Black Swan, I believe)
2012 – not held –
2013 Zero Dark Thirty ——— 37-24 over Silver Linings Playbook
2014 Her ————————– 33-33 tied with Gravity, won 19-18 on total first place votes
2015 Birdman ——————– 62-61 over Boyhood
2016 Mad Max: Fury Road — 51-37 over The Revenant
2017 Moonlight —————— 41-32 over La La Land
2018 Phantom Thread ——— 39-33 over Call Me By Your Name
2019 The Favourite ————- 45-30 over Roma
The breakdown
Round 1
The Favourite 31
Roma 24
BlacKkKlansman 6
A Star is Born 4
Green Book 4
Black Panther 3
Vice 2
Bohemian Rhapsody 1 OUT!
Round 2
The Favourite 31
Roma 24
BlacKkKlansman 6
A Star is Born 5
Green Book 4
Black Panther 3
Vice 2 OUT!
Round 3
The Favourite 32
Roma 24
A Star is Born 6
BlacKkKlansman 6
Green Book 4
Black Panther 3 OUT!
Round 4
The Favourite 33
Roma 25
A Star is Born 6
BlacKkKlansman 6
Green Book 5 OUT!
Round 5
The Favourite 35
Roma 25
BlacKkKlansman 8
A Star is Born 7 OUT!
Round 6
The Favourite 37
Roma 26
BlacKkKlansman 12 OUT!
Round 7
The Favourite 45
Roma 30
Awesome. I would love for The Favourite to win as many Oscars as possible except that I really still need Glenn to win her Oscar.
I’m rooting for Colman, having finally seen both movies, but I expect Glenn will win. And I won’t begrudge her the win one bit. 🙂