MY REPORT CARD: 2009 OSCAR NOMINATIONS
2 Feb
My final nomination projections, which I posted last Friday, turned out pretty well: I forecasted 9 of the 10 best picture nominees (10 of 10 if you count my alternate, “A Serious Man”); 38 of the 45 nominees in the Big 8 categories (41 of the 45 if you count my alternate picks); and 48 of the 60 nominees in the Big 11 categories (52 of the 60 if you count my alternate picks).
Here is a detailed look at how I fared in all 11 major categories that I predicted:
- Best picture: 9/10 (10/10 with alternate), missing “A Serious Man” in favor of “Invictus”
- Best director: 5/5
- Best actor: 5/5
- Best actress: 5/5
- Best supporting actor: 4/5 (5/5 with alternate), missing Stanley Tucci (“The Lovely Bones”) in favor of Anthony Mackie (“The Hurt Locker”)
- Best supporting actress: 3/5 (4/5 with alternate), missing Penelope Cruz (“Nine”) and Maggie Gyllenhaal (“Crazy Heart”) in favor of Julianne Moore (“A Single Man”) and Samantha Morton (“The Messenger”)
- Best adapted screenplay: 3/5, missing “District 9″ and “In the Loop” in favor of “A Single Man” and “Crazy Heart”
- Best original screenplay: 4/5, missing “The Messenger” in favor of “500 Days of Summer”
- Best animated feature: 4/5, missed “The Secret of Kells” in favor of “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs”
- Best documentary feature: 2/5, missing “Burma VJ,” “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers,” and “Which Way Home” in favor of “Every Little Step,” “Garbage Dreams,” and “Mugabe and the White African”
- Best foreign language film: 4/5 (5/5 with alternate), missing “The Milk of Sorrow” in favor of “Samson and Delilah”
The projection that I’m proudest of this year? “The Blind Side” earning a best picture nomination. In the aftermath of it happening, many have claimed that they saw it coming, but the fact of the matter is that only myself and only two others pundits (Roger Ebert and Nathaniel Rogers) were willing to go out on a limb and include it in our final projections. So, yeah, that one felt good. (Not as good as anticipating that the “The Reader” would bump “The Dark Knight” from last year’s best picture race — something that no other pundit did — but almost as good.)
Incidentally, my initial nomination projections — which I posted six months ago, in August 2009 — weren’t half-bad either, especially when you consider that I’d seen virtually none of the films at that time:
- Best picture: (5/10), predicting “An Education,” “Avatar,” “The Hurt Locker,” “Precious,” and “Up in the Air”
- Best director: (2/5), predicting Lee Daniels (“Precious”) and Jason Reitman (“Up in the Air”)
- Best actor: (2/5), predicting Morgan Freeman (“Invictus”) and George Clooney (“Up in the Air”)
- Best actress: (2/5), predicting Carey Mulligan (“An Education”) and Meryl Streep (“Julie & Julia”)
- Best supporting actor: (2/5), predicting Matt Damon (“Invictus”) and Stanley Tucci (“The Lovely Bones”)
- Best supporting actress: (3/5), predicting Penelope Cruz (“Nine”), Mo’Nique (“Precious”), and Anna Kendrick (“Up in the Air”)
Photo: Anne Hathaway, Oscar-nominated actress, and Tom Sherak, president of the Academy, announce the 2009 best picture nominees. Credit: AMPAS.
I wish I would have had predictions up for last year because I definitely would have predicted The Reader getting in over The Dark Knight. Just so you know that I’m not making this up, let me explain my reasoning behind it, and I think you’ll be convinced:
The Dark Knight was easily my favorite film of 2008, and I knew it was on the border of a Best Picture nomination all year. However, as time went on, it began to look like less of a lock, with The Reader emerging as its main nemesis. Well, I was DYING to see The Dark Knight get nominated, but the reason I would have picked The Reader in my predictions is so that I would have gotten at least one out of two. In other words, if I predicted The Reader and it ened up being wrong, then I could still say that The Dark Knight got nominated. But if The Dark Knight didn’t get nominated, I would have still been able to say that I predicted The Reader correctly. Not the best reasoning on my part, but I think it’s kind of ironic how this might be the one example where personal preferences and feelings towards the main contenders might have actually helped my predictions.
not to fully rain on your parade scott, but nathaniel rogers also predicted the blide side for best picture
Matt, not raining on my parade at all. Nat is a good guy and a friend and I just hadn’t seen his final picks. I’ve amended the sentence above.
Hey, if you say so Danny… it’s a lot easier to say that now, though… I can tell you that at the time there was no perception anywhere that “The Reader” was “emerging as its main nemsis.” All indications — guilds, critics, Heath-sympathy, etc. — were that it would “The Dark Knight” … except conversations with Oscar voters that led me to believe Harvey had managed to get “The Reader” seen by a very large audience and that “The Dark Knight” was seen not as a legitimate awards movie by a large portion of the Academy but rather a “popcorn movie” for that they never even considered supporting. There was more to it, and perhaps it was actually a stupid pick to make considering the hard evidence at hand… but it was very exciting to see it play out in reality.
You’re absolutely right, and for obvious reasons, it’s tough for me to defend my statement with solid evidence. Let me just say up front that my knowledge of the Awards game was much less last year than it is right now, so I can tell you that even if bloggers weren’t talking about The Reader, the fact that it got nominated at the Globes over TDK really convinced me that a snub was a likely possibility. I know now that there is often at least one Globe nominee (this year, for example, Eastwood) that will not line up with the Oscars, but like I said, last year I did not know this.
There’s one more thing I’d like to add, which builds nicely off of a statement that you made in your response: “Perhaps it was actually a stupid pick to make considering the hard evidence at hand”
Looking back on it now, you’re probably right that there wasn’t enough evidence to suggest a snub in The Reader’s benefit, but let me repeat that when I thought The Reader was going to get nominated, I wasn’t thinking about it at all like an expert pundit should, which is probably what you meant by the lack of evidence. I was looking at it entirely as a fan of The Dark Knight. I did a similar thing on Oscar night as well: I wanted Mickey Rourke to win, but I was so concerned and nervous that I ended up predicting Sean Penn in the pool that I was in, almost as a security blanket. If Rourke ended up winning, then I’d be personally happy. If Penn ended up winning, then I could still say that my predictions were correct. I used the same logic in my Reader prediction.
It’s not really important if you believe me or not, I just think that it’s an interesting story worth sharing, primarily because you (as an expert pundit) and me now (trying to be an expert pundit) consistently try to eliminate all personal feelings when making predictions, and base it primarily off of evidence and buzz. I think my picks of The Reader and Sean Penn are rare, ironic cases in which personal feelings actually helped my predictions.
Then again, if I were to predict those same categories with the “pundit knowledge” I have now, I probably would have picked The Dark Knight, simply because that’s where the evidence was pointing. Hopefully this isn’t too confusing to understand.