We're less than 14 days away from The Academy Awards and it's time, again, to think about which movies have the best chance of taking home the Oscar for Best Picture.
Before I continue, let me explain that I just learned while doing a cyber walk for this blog, that Pixar, based in Emeryville and for which I have an increased respect for selfish reasons (and perhaps am a bit annoyed that I'm still not on their press release list), has a movie in Toy Story 3 that has almost an equal chance of taking home the prize as The Social Network does.
That's not from me - it's from The Oscar Guy. And note, I said almost.
It's fun to whirl around the Internet and see what movie observers are thinking. But for me, there's only one person who has a real history of looking at the Oscars from a "win probability" perspective, and that's Wesley Lovell, who goes by the moniker "Wesley The Oscar Guy," and has for about 14 years.
Wesley is a gem: he writes his blog while working as an insurance broker in Springfield, MO, and has what he calls an "utter aversion to having my picture taken." While Hollywood media types chase after Nikke Finke for a photo, they should be swarming around Springfield in search of Wesley. That they don't says as much about the problems with mainstream media as anything else.
Wesley specializes in predicting which movie will win what Oscar, and explains why including calculated odds. For Toy Story 3, Wesley says that it has a 6 / 29 chance, but The Social Network is not far off at 8 / 26.
The front runner's The King's Speech at 10/15 odds.
Overall, The Oscar Guy has a 55 percent success rate at correctly predicting The Best Picture winner. To put things in perspective, that's about just less than a 66 percent sure thing in stats. There's only one person I can think of who has a better track record.
Me.
Over the last 10 years, I've correctly guessed The Best Picture winner 7 of 10 times. I missed three times: for Brokeback Mountain at The 78th Academy Awards, and for Slumdog Millionaire and for The Departed in 2008 and 2006 respectively. But my overall rate is 70 percent for Best Picture.
For a glorious unbroken period from 2001 to 2005, I correctly guessed an average of 80 percent of the Oscar winners for all categories. The reason was simple: my friend had an annually raging San Francisco Oscar Party with a cash prize pool and they asked me to score the ballots for it. I believed I had to go in prepared because of this great responsibility.
So while everyone was running their mouths - and about what they were going to wear or who they were going to bring - I came having spent a good two weeks researching what AMPAS (The Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences) members might do on Oscar night.
So, armed with a ton of data, as well as the knowledge that a good portion of the party patrons were going to play the pool while totally drunk, I decided to enter myself. Preparation being the friend of fortune, I won year after year and developed my own "picking" technique in the process.
So, my prediction this year is solidly for The King's Speech for Best Picture and in the face of my personal desire to manufacture a reason why Toy Story 3 will win.
Tom Hooper winning Best Director at The DGA's nailed it for the film. The DGA's is a shockingly effective "domino effect" predictor.
Still, anything can happen. After all, that's why we play the game.
Stay tuned.
That's not from me - it's from The Oscar Guy. And note, I said almost.
It's fun to whirl around the Internet and see what movie observers are thinking. But for me, there's only one person who has a real history of looking at the Oscars from a "win probability" perspective, and that's Wesley Lovell, who goes by the moniker "Wesley The Oscar Guy," and has for about 14 years.
Wesley is a gem: he writes his blog while working as an insurance broker in Springfield, MO, and has what he calls an "utter aversion to having my picture taken." While Hollywood media types chase after Nikke Finke for a photo, they should be swarming around Springfield in search of Wesley. That they don't says as much about the problems with mainstream media as anything else.
Wesley specializes in predicting which movie will win what Oscar, and explains why including calculated odds. For Toy Story 3, Wesley says that it has a 6 / 29 chance, but The Social Network is not far off at 8 / 26.
The front runner's The King's Speech at 10/15 odds.
Overall, The Oscar Guy has a 55 percent success rate at correctly predicting The Best Picture winner. To put things in perspective, that's about just less than a 66 percent sure thing in stats. There's only one person I can think of who has a better track record.
Me.
Over the last 10 years, I've correctly guessed The Best Picture winner 7 of 10 times. I missed three times: for Brokeback Mountain at The 78th Academy Awards, and for Slumdog Millionaire and for The Departed in 2008 and 2006 respectively. But my overall rate is 70 percent for Best Picture.
For a glorious unbroken period from 2001 to 2005, I correctly guessed an average of 80 percent of the Oscar winners for all categories. The reason was simple: my friend had an annually raging San Francisco Oscar Party with a cash prize pool and they asked me to score the ballots for it. I believed I had to go in prepared because of this great responsibility.
So while everyone was running their mouths - and about what they were going to wear or who they were going to bring - I came having spent a good two weeks researching what AMPAS (The Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences) members might do on Oscar night.
So, armed with a ton of data, as well as the knowledge that a good portion of the party patrons were going to play the pool while totally drunk, I decided to enter myself. Preparation being the friend of fortune, I won year after year and developed my own "picking" technique in the process.
So, my prediction this year is solidly for The King's Speech for Best Picture and in the face of my personal desire to manufacture a reason why Toy Story 3 will win.
Tom Hooper winning Best Director at The DGA's nailed it for the film. The DGA's is a shockingly effective "domino effect" predictor.
Still, anything can happen. After all, that's why we play the game.
Stay tuned.