Prioritizing your Oscar queue

When the Oscar nominations are announced, many people rush out and try to see as many of the Oscar-nominated films that they can before the awards ceremony. (The next Academy Awards will be on February 22, 2015.)

To help you get a head start, we've looked at Gold Derby's Oscar predictions and created a weighted list based on their predictions for the top six categories: Best Picture, Best Director, and the four lead and supporting acting awards. (We figure those are the awards that casual viewers are most interested in.)

Their lists rank their predictions in each category, extending far beyond the number of available nominees for each award. This chart I've made shows:

• Predicted Noms in Top 6 Categories: For each film, the number of times in the top six categories their odds have placed them high enough to be nominated in that category.
• Total Weight: My own mathematical weight for each film that appears on any of Gold Derby's lists, even if they're farther down. The higher they appear on a list, the greater the weight. Some films may have a high weight but still not be predicted for an award if they were on many prediction lists but just below the cutoff for each category.

Rank	Film	Predicted Noms in Top 6 Cats	Total Weight
1	Birdman	5	568
2	Foxcatcher	4	628
3	Boyhood	4	483
4	The Imitation Game	3	385
5	The Theory of Everything	3	374
6	Interstellar	2	846
7	Gone Girl	2	557
8	Unbroken	2	460
9	Wild	2	427
10	Selma	1	705
11	Into the Woods	1	676
12	Mr. Turner	1	400
13	The Judge	1	372
14	American Sniper	1	355
15	Whiplash	1	353
16	Big Eyes	1	335
17	Still Alice	1	256
18	Inherent Vice		732
19	The Grand Budapest Hotel		514
20	Kill the Messenger		512
21	St. Vincent		474
22	A Most Violent Year		419
23	Fury		418
24	The Homesman		380
25	Get On Up		375
26	The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby		370
27	Men Women and Children		361
28	Dear White People		358
29	Exodus: Gods and Kings		353
30	Love Is Strange		333
31	The Gambler		327
32	The Fault in Our Stars		316
33	Begin Again		295
34	Rosewater		294
35	Miss Julie		283
36	The Good Lie		280
37	Nightcrawler		271
38	Pride		244
39	Calvary		225
40	Annie		198
41	Chef		187
42	Maps to the Stars		174
43	Top Five		172
44	The Hobbit: The Battle of the 5 Armies		160
45	Two Days One Night		90
46	Tracks		89
47	Maleficent		85
48	Locke		84
49	A Most Wanted Man		82
50	The Hundred-Foot Journey		81
51	Trash		76
52	The Lego Movie		74
53	The Giver		69
54	Noah		63
55	This Is Where I Leave You		59

Neil Patrick Harris to host the Oscars

Variety is reporting that Neil Patrick Harris has been selected to host the 87th annual Oscars, which will be televised on February 22, 2015.

All he has to do now is host the Grammys to have the EGOT of awards hosting.

There's no EGOT for hosts, just winners, but it's fun to imagine. An EGOT is someone who has won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony. If Harris is nominated for and wins a Grammy for the cast recording of Hedwig, he'll just need to win an Oscar to have an actual EGOT.

He won't be the first openly-LGBT person to host the Oscars; Cosmo-winner Ellen Degeneres hosted in 2007 and again last year. Like Harris, she has also hosted the Emmys, but has not hosted the Tonys.