Saturday, October 18, 2014

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

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

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.