Steven’s Oscar predictions: how good were they?

February 23, 2015 • 7:29 am

On January 20, my nephew Steven, a movie maven of great insight, made his predictions for the 2014 Oscar winners, which I posted here. Let’s see how well he did this year. In the list below, Steven’s predictions are in regular type, and the actual winners are in bold:

Picture: Boyhood WRONG: Birdman
Director: Richard Linklater, Boyhood WRONG: Alejandro González Iñárritu for Birdman
Actor: Michael Keaton, Birdman WRONG: Eddie Redmayne for The Theory of Everything
Actress: Julianne Moore, Still Alice CORRECT
Supporting Actor: J.K. Simmons, Whiplash  CORRECT
Supporting Actress: Patricia Arquette, Boyhood CORRECT
Original Screenplay: The Grand Budapest Hotel WRONG: Alejandro González Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Armando Bo – Birdman
Adapted Screenplay: The Imitation Game CORRECT Graham Moore – The Imitation Game
Song: “Glory,” Selma CORRECT
Foreign Language Film: Ida CORRECT
Animated Feature: How to Train Your Dragon 2 WRONG: Big Hero 6
Documentary Feature: CitizenFour  CORRECT
Score: The Theory of Everything WRONG: Alexandre Desplat – The Grand Budapest Hotel
Production Design: The Grand Budapest Hotel CORRECT
Cinematography: Birdman CORRECT
Costume Design: The Grand Budapest Hotel CORRECT
Film Editing: Boyhood WRONG: Whiplash – Tom Cross
Makeup and Hairstyling: Guardians of the Galaxy WRONG: The Grand Budapest Hotel – Frances Hannon, Mark Coulier
Sound Mixing: Interstellar WRONG: Whiplash – Craig Mann, Ben Wilkins, Thomas Curley
Sound Editing: Interstellar WRONG: American Sniper – Alan Robert Murray, Bub Asman
Visual Effects: Interstellar CORRECT

Total score: 10/22 = 45% correct

This is at least credible, for of course random guessing would yield a much lower percentage, but it’s not nearly as many hits as my nephew predicted. Doubtless he will have his excuses, but, like the justifications of theologians, those are post hoc confabulations.

Steven also awards his own trophies, the fabled “Golden Steves” to the pictures and achievements he sees as best, which often diverge wildly from the Academy’s choices. His list of winners is at his website, “Truth at 24“, where you can also see the nominees. There were a few convergences between his winners and those of the Academy (including Julianne Moore and J. K. Simmons), but his other choices aren’t the same. You might want to see the winning films, for, despite the lad’s hubris, he does have good taste—taste marred only by his horrible and inexcusable choice of “The Tree of Life” for Best Picture of 2011. Excuse my rant, but I still cannot see how anyone, much less Steven, could like that bloated piece of directorial pomposity.

I must confess, though, that I’ve seen only one of the Best Picture nominees this year (The Grand Budapest Hotel, which I walked out on), for the Albatross largely kept me from such activities. But I do plan to see the others as soon as I can.

38 thoughts on “Steven’s Oscar predictions: how good were they?”

  1. I managed to lose only £3.85 at a British online betting site with a range of bets placed solely placed on the criteria of betting “Birdman” to win all categories in which it had nominations. This is based on my HUMAN VANITY strategy, which theorises that any human grouping will find material that plays to its own vanities wins over material that does not.

  2. Jerry,

    Could you please explain why you walked out on GBH? I am very curious. I have not seen it and I have seen such mixed reviews that I’m dubious. Any assistance would be much appreciated.

    1. I explain below. I wasn’t in the right mood to watch movies that day, as there were other things on my mind, and so I found the beginning rather twee; it didn’t pull me in. Had I been in a different mood I would have watched the whole thing, and could have provided a much better take. I will watch the whole thing the next chance I get.

  3. 45% is pretty good given that each category has, what, 5 candidates? 20% would signal information no better than chance, so Steve is doing twice as well at prediction as someone with little/no film knowledge would do. Like, probably, me. 🙂

    I have not seen any of them except Dragon II (for the kid). But I’m planning on netflixing many of them.

    1. .2 is the expectation assuming no information and there are 5 entries per category (which isn’t entirely correct) but as evolutionary biologists we should be thinking about the error in random sampling and not just the expectation. What is the probability of 10/22 (or higher)? I get .006 using a binomial calculator with prob of success = .2, which seems to be pretty good evidence against the null (but not a measure of evidence for Steven having information!). On the other hand, if 10^7 people randomly guessed then we’d expect about 60,000 people with scores as good as Steven, just from guessing! Hope I did my calcs right!

      1. Well, Steven professes to be almost unerringly accurate in his predictions (and I think called all the major awards right last year). And some of them, like Julianne Moore, could have been discerned simply through the betting odds, though Steven didn’t do that.

  4. You walked out on grand Budapest hotel??? I’m not sure I can order a book from such a person :0

  6. I haven’t seen GBH – for some reason the trailers for it don’t entice me. I totally agree with you every word you chose regarding Tree of Life. I have only seen 4 of the 8 Best picture nominees; I enjoyed the The Imitation Game more than Birdman.

    1. I haven’t seen Birdman yet, but it seems doubtful I would like it more than The Imitation Game. I must admit to some bias though.

    2. One thing I have learned is never rely on the trailers as a guide the the quality of a film – I seen several that put me totally off seeing the film – but when I did go to the film relying on word of mouth, it was great. The smarmy voiceovers that trailers love starts the negative process.

  7. I agree with Professor Ceiling Cat on “Tree of life” (JAC: bloated piece of directorial pomposity). And I say that as somebody who thinks highly of Malick’s “Days of Heaven”, “Badlands” and “The Thin Red Line”

    Inexplicably, the 2011 Sight and Sound poll of international movie critics had “Tree of life” as the best movie of that year:
    http://old.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/49804

    I strongly recommend the second choice in that poll: the Iranian movie “The Separation”. To my mind, a true masterpiece. (It won the Academy Award for best foreign movie.)

  8. I have seen five movies that were Oscar nominated. I will see most of the rest before the year is over. My ranking of those 5 –
    1. Ida – loved it. By far the best movie I saw in the past year.
    2. Grand Budapest Hotel – enjoyed it in all of its quirkiness
    3. Boyhood – fascinating exercise in filmmaking. Not sure if it is that great of a movie.
    4. Gone Girl – may be better than I am giving it credit. The character of Amy is the very ideal of misogynists characterization of women.
    Last by a huge margin. American Sniper – HATED IT!!!! Supposedly this is about a man and his family. Of course he would rather be in Iraq shooting people than be with his family. Went with a friend who read the book. Said the movie bore little relation to the book. He liked the book, hated the movie. I have not liked any of the Iraq/War on Terror movies. Despised The Hurt Locker. Just disliked Zero Dark Thirty.

    The rest, I will have to wait until they are out on DVD. Maybe Jerry should post something every week or two so that readers can reply with their movie recommendations.

    1. Have you seen Three Kings?

      I like that film (about the Gulf War, not the Iraq War) very much. Seems like a quirky concept and it is; but it has a serious core to that is quite good. Hollywood all over the place; but still quite good, IMO.

      I did not care for The Hurt Locker at all. It made me dislike Jeremy Renner until I saw the Bourne Legacy where he redeemed himself for me.

      Can you say more about American Sniper? The very idea of the thing puts me off; but I’ve heard a lot of good things (opinions) about it.

      Cheers!

      P.S.: My favorite film I’ve seen recently is the French film: Intouchables. Really good and fun.

      1. I really liked “Three Kings”, but at the time, I wasn’t overly sickened by our involvement in the Middle East like I am now. Being set in the shorter, less violent and less invasive “Desert Storm” of course accounted for this.

        It looked to me that “American Sniper” was basically an American military propaganda film. Plus I don’t respect Clint Eastwood’s worldview. Not planning on watching it.

  9. I watched GBH on my ipad on the way back from Maui earlier, thoroughly enjoyed it. Looking forward to viewing it on a much bigger screen.

  10. In fairness, these were my predictions on January 20th. A lot of things change over the next month and a lot of new data comes to light, notably the winners of the industry guild awards–very helpful prognosticators. My final picks were 18/24 correct, or 75%, including all three short films which I didn’t address here. Still the worst I’ve ever done, as I bet the Boyhood ticket for picture and director. Boyhood is a much better film than Birdman and I wagered on quality over politics, timing, and industry self-regard. Silly of me. I should’ve remembered Shakespeare in Love’s upset of Saving Private Ryan in ’98. Voters, fatigued with seven months of critical rhapsody for a film so beloved and respected it was deemed unstoppable, cast their ballots instead for a too-clever-by-half showbiz satire that hadn’t had time to incur backlash. That’s precisely what happened this year too, and beyond blighting the Academy’s record (in my view), this choice further disincentivizes releasing anything of quality before the start of “Oscar season” in mid-October, leaving a nine-month dumping ground at the multiplex.

    1. I found Boyhood to be rather pointless and mundane. It took me three times to get through it; I fell asleep the first two times. I’m not saying it wasn’t a good movie or didn’t deserve more accolades, but I’m glad it didn’t. To me, Birdman was far more engaging and the actors exhibited superior performances. These are all opinions, of course.

  11. The Tree of Life is hands-down one of the worst and most overrated movies I have ever seen, probably in the top 3 if I were to actually construct a list. Self-important and self-congratulatory, simultaneously mind-numbingly cliche and vacuous.

    1. My brother-in-law loves this movie – actually, it would probably make his list of best 3 movies of all time, so I’ve cultivated quite a bit of animosity toward the film in our many attempts to enlighten the other about how misguided he is. Hate the film, love the viewer!

  12. I’m with your nephew Steven here. Boyhood was a lot better than Birdman – both very well made and acted, but only Boyhood had a soul and made you care about the characters. I also thought Tree of Life was superb…..

    1. I’m with you on all of that.

      Birdman was a fabulous stunt – a truly wonderful stunt – but I got increasingly frustrated over the past months, thinking: Why can’t people see it’s nothing more than that?

      The bizarre thing about the Oscars here, I thought, is that towards the end of the night three consecutive awards went to this film that did not deserve them, while the award Birdman really did deserve – best special effects – it wasn’t even nominated for.

      1. I’d say that Birdman was like a free jazz performance – a blast for those performing, but an empty experience for the audience.

  13. Quick thoughts: Was ecstatic to see Birdman win as many awards as it did. Was not a fan of Grand Budapest Hotel (or Wes Anderson’s last movie, for that matter). Loved Boyhood, although marginally less so than Birdman. Really want to see Selma and Whiplash. Still upset that The Lego Movie wasn’t even nominated for best animated film.

    Thanks to Steven Strogatz I found this article in the Boston Globe about an algorithm that was made by a Harvard math student to predict the Oscars. His predictions were spot on, with 87.5% accuracy.

    http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/movies/2015/02/18/oscarharvard-side/a24fmMCYN0ot5pZ8ZwAyYP/story.html#

    1. I looked at the site – the algorithm did amazingly well! My only disappointment was it was very straightforward, basing its results on (the author says) a fairly simple weighting of the previous awards received by each nominee. That certainly makes sense, but I was hoping for some unexpected twist, artistic insight, or insider politics!

  14. We got to see Song of the Sea last night, which was one of the runners up in the Animation category (and that had very limited theatrical release in the U.S.). Absolutely stunning artwork and a charming story.

    It was from the same studio that did The Secret of Kells, which I highly recommend — the animation style is just stunning, like a medieval illuminated manuscript come to life.

  15. We still have a lag in Australia for movies, so many of the films that are up for best picture are only recently at the movies, so I haven’t had a chance to see them.

    Each year I take the Oscars list for what I should rent on DVD in the upcoming months. Though I have already seen The Imitation Game (it was okay) and The Grand Budapest Hotel (loved the style). The rest I have to look forward to – especially Birdman, I regret not making time to see that at the movies when it was out.

  16. Many here seem to be teeing off on “The Tree Of Life”. I’d like to offer another perspective on what I regard as this masterly film.

    “The Tree Of Life” is a thrilling contemplation of the enigma that we creatures on the face of the Earth exist at all, the strangeness that this apparently commonplace takes on if viewed from an askew angle, the frustrations of trying to fathom it, and the bedrock truth as well as the primary value of personal love, which trumps every other element of this mystery.

    I don’t know what, if any, religious convictions Terrence Malick holds. Some remarks about have Gnosticism have surfaced in the media during the past few years. But he hasn’t given an interview to the press since a brief Q&A appeared in Sight and Sound circa 1973, when his first feature, “Badlands” (a masterwork if any movie is), was first released.

    However, the most telling invocation of God in “The Tree Of Life” comes when after a boy drowns in a swimming pool, one of the boy narrators, shattered by this event, muses balefully about how the supposedly benevolent deity could have permitted this to happen.

    No one expects any movie to receive universal acclaim, and the give-and-take of contrary viewpoints is surely beneficial to the understanding, whether pro or con, of offbeat movies like this that express the preoccupations of their directors.

    But those, like me, who love “The Tree Of Life” are not just reacting to pretty images. Because — in my view, at least — they are not just pretty images.

  17. The Boyhood snub is unforgivable. Especially Linklater not winning best director.
    Well they partially made up for it by giving Citizenfour the best documentary award.

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