The Oscar Formula: A Noble Quest

Tilting at windmills: thus is the job of every Awards blogger. We post predictions, we create metrics, we handicap, we suppose, we put our faith in films based on the concept, pedigree, production still, trailer, or a simple gut instinct.

And we have ALL been horribly wrong.


One of my proudest moments as an aspiring blogger was to create a metric that predicted the Producer's Guild Awards. I submitted it to a prestigious awards blog and had it published. It was then linked to and discussed at length on several other blogs. Most praised it as a logical analysis and because it created some interesting results. I used my formula to eliminate Babel and The Queen from the PGA slate. It stood to reason, the financials were not good on either of those films and far stronger on Letters from Iwo Jima and my Upset Special: The Devil Wears Prada. While my formula correctly predicted The Departed, Dreamgirls, and Little Miss Sunshine for the PGA, Babel and The Queen, despite their wretched performance in my metric, were nominated for the PGA. I spent over 12 hours analyzing data and creating this formula, and ultimately it was functionally useless.

I'm not alone. Some of the best minds in the biz wrote off The Departed as "too kick-ass" to win best pic; still others claimed that No Country for Old Men wasn't popular with Academy voters.

However, sometimes we hit upon something: a new trend, a paradigm shift among the voters, a pattern of precursors and when we do, it feels sooo good.

And so again, I shall lift my lance aloft, with Sr. Panza by my side, and try to pierce that ogre with the ever waving limbs.