The Oscar Formula: Wall-E, Best Picture Lock?

So... that happened. Wall-E won best picture at the LAFCA. Now a critics award was always going to be in Wall-E's future, and they aren't always strong Oscar indicators... but this is the Los Angeles Film Critics Assosciation. It's not only important because of its geography, but because of its "dead-on-balls" accuracy (in the words of Mona Lisa Vito).

Want some stats? How about this- 28 out of the last 34 LAFCA winners have gone on to a BP nomination. In other words Wall-E has a better than 4 to 1 chance of getting a nomination for Best Picture.

Now the film's status as Animated would seem to dampen its chances quite a bit, but it doesn't rule it out in my mind. Take for example the somewhat recent nominations for Life is Beautiful and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (another LAFCA winner) despite the existance of a Foreign Language Film Category. Also, Wall-E could become the recipient of a nomination because of the overall excellent body of work of Pixar.

Whatever the reason Wall-E and Eve (EVAH!) have reason to pop in that Hello Dolly tape and dance around to "Put On Your Sunday Clothes" because their awards chances just got a majory boost.

The Oscar Formula: Follow the Money

The Dark Knight will be nominated for Best Picture.



It's not a particularly bold statement but some doubt has been cast upon its award hopes. There are all the usual hangups assosciated with a comic book movie, espescially a franchise that was nearly ruined by Joel Schumaker. There is a backlash to its immense popularity. The buzz around it has been relatively quiet. But don't fool yourselves, TDK will be there on Oscar Sunday. Money never lies.



A shrewd awards watcher might point out that The Academy has been trending away from big moneymakers to smaller films released by sattelite companies. This is quite true, but that still does not negate the inevitability of Batman's presence at the Oscars.



Here are the facts



- From 1990 all the way to 2003, one of the top five grossing films of the year was nominated for best picture.



- When Brokeback Mountain made under 100 million domestic and was the highest grossing Best Picture nominee, it was the first time that happened in 20 years.



So this less monetary focused Oscars could simply be a trend that could be broken in favor of longstanding traditions. But even if it's not, the highest grossing films of the past four years have averaged $115 million and have been at least the 22nd most successful films of their year. If The Dark Knight is not going to be your top grosser, then who is?



Tell me which of the following films you could see breaking 100 million.



-Benjamin Button

- Milk

- Frost/Nixon

- Slumdog Millionaire

- Gran Torino

- Rachel Getting Married

- Revolutionary Road

- The Reader

- The Wrestler



I see only two REMOTE possibilities. Slumdog could catch on, but I don't see it cracking the century mark. Benjamin Button has the wattage and the fanboy hype, but I don't see the broad BO appeal. And then what are we left with? Are Frank Langella and Michael Sheen going to sell a movie to the general public? Is Milk going to outgain Brokeback? Is Gran Torino going to outgain Million Dollar Baby? The Reader is too distant, Revolutionary Road too depressing, ditto The Wrestler, and Rachel Getting Married has been out for weeks and is languishing.



And don't forget that the Oscar telecast has been not-so-slowly declining in ratings since it went smaller. Oscar is in need of a big film. One the general public has seen in droves and approves of highly. One that has broken longstanding records. One that has sparked a pop culture and counter culture phenomenon. One the critics adore and generally agree was of good quality. One that has that wow factor that will give people a rooting interest in watching the Oscars. One that will get morons like the two Peters on Shootout to shut up about "Small depressing films no-one has seen" being nominated for Best Picture. Who will answer that call?

Bet on it

The Oscar Formula: Ranking the NBR's Top 10 (which goes all the way up to 11)

Another great thing the NBR gives is their top 10 which sets up a possible Oscar paradigm from which we usually get around 4 nominees for best picture. Over the last 20 years, here's how the NBR's Top Ten has fared at predicting the Oscars

40% Top 10 contains 4 Best Picture Nominees
25% Top 10 contains All Best Picture Nominees
25% Top 10 contains only 2 Best Picture Nominees
10% Top 10 contains 3 Best Picture Nominees


So we can be fairly certain that 2-4 nominees will be taken out of this group. The question remains which ones? We can place the winner Slumdog Millionaire at the top without worry. Only 3 of the past 20 NBR winners have missed and Slumdog seems a strong contender. However that's the only one we can place in the running and not worry about.

Next lets eliminate the pretenders from this list. Changeling has fallen below the "Ligne Chocolat" and therefore can be readily dismissed. The early reviews are lukewarm on Defiance (even the positive ones) and the NBR has shown a pro-Ed Zwick bias in the past that hasn't panned out with Oscar(Blood Diamond, The Last Samurai, Glory) so I'm ready to put that one to bed. While I am absolutely in love with Wall-E, one must distance one's self and realize that no Animated movie will be nominated without a groundswell the breaks the richter scale. So, it's out too. While I enjoyed Burn After Reading, it wasn't strong enough to break through that Academy backlash that goes with "having your year" as the Coens did last year.

So we have our #1 and our bottom 4, which leaves us with 6 left (what? I thought it was a top 10? Those sneaky NBR guys!) Of those 6, The Wrestler seems to have the least chance. That's just a judgement call and not based on anything statistical, so take it as you will.

7 of the last 10 films that had a a best actor win and a top ten appearance (and whose actor wasn't winning for dual performances, including dual perfs it's 9 out of 16) have gone on to a best picture nomination. That makes things look pretty rosy for Gran Torino, although I'm still not a full believer.

6 of the last 10 films with a best supporting actor win and top 10 appearence have gone on to a best picture nomination, which helps Milk.

Benjamin Button's numbers are too contradictory to say anything. The long term stats for best director winners are very good (9 of 15) but the recent trend is very bad (2 of 6), so where does that leave monseur Button? Somewhere in the middle.

I have a good amount of confidence in The Dark Knight for several reasons, several of which will be covered in a later column.

Frost/Nixon is still a mystery.

So here is the top 10 (or, you know, 11) as I see it

1. Slumdog Millionaire
2. Milk
3. The Dark Knight
4. Gran Torino
5. Frost/Nixon
6. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
7. The Wrestler
8. Wall-E
9. Defiance
10. Burn After Reading
11. Changeling

Key- Bold and Underlined- Lock
Underlined- likely
italics - unlikely

So, if four of the 11 are going to make it, where is the other nominee going to come from? More on that tomorrow!

The Oscar Formula: 6 things we know after the NBR Awards

The NBR is one of my favorite awards, if for no other reason than they are the first significant precursor. The awards picture just got much clearer, and here's what the numbers tell us.

1) Slumdog Millionaire will be nominated for Best Picture.
I feel confident in saying that without equivocation. An NBR win does not guarantee a nomination... but Slumdog was already a prohibitive nomination frontrunner and the statistics support that. The winner of the NBR has received a Nomination for best picture 19 out of the last 21 times. The odds of a win are up in the air. As of last year NBR hadn't predicted a winner since 1999, but it could be trending toward picking the winner. I'm not ready to call it either way.

2)Clint Eastwood will be nominated for Best Actor, and might win
The best actor stats for the NBR are even more impressive if anything. They had a bad run from 2001-2 with failed endorsements of Billy Bob Thornton and Campbell Scott, but every other winner has gone on to a nomination going all the way back to 1986. Of those 20, 9 went on to win best actor. We all know the academy loves them some Clint, and it looks like he's an even money bet to take home the trophy.

3) Anne Hathaway will be nominated for Best Actress, and will lose
NBR winners of the Best Actress awards are sure bets for a nomination. One has to go back to 1990 to arrive at an NBR winner that missed a nomination. However, only 4 of the last 15 have won. And if you want a trend, only one of the last five have won, and that was Helen Mirren in full juggernaut mode.

4) Josh Brolin will be nominated for Best Supporting Actor, and will lose
Starting from 1979, every film year ending in 9, the NBR Best Supporting Actor does not get an oscar nod. Every other year they do. That's 3 out of the last 29 (Alan Alda, P.S. Hoffman and Paul Dooley being the snubees) of those 27 only 5 have won and none have won in the past 5 years. Add to this the smell test of Brolin beating out Ledger and I'd say it will be a pleasure for Mr. Brolin just to be nominated. I also feel bad for the poor sap who wins next year's NBR Best Supporting Actor.

5) Penelope Cruz will not win Best Supporting Actress, might not be nominated

Easy statistics here. The NBR has whiffed on the past 11 winners of the Best Supporting Actress category. The NBR is trending better in this category as 4 of the past 6 winners have been nominated for an oscar. While 4 out of 6 looks good for Penelope, one must also consider that if you extend the years it becomes only 4 of the last 11.

6) Fincher and Benjamin Button will probably NOT get nominations.

Fincher's win brings about the most interesting statistic: it may hurt his chances and the chances of his film. Only 3 of the last 10 NBR Best Director winners have been nominated for Best Director. And only 4 of them have had their film nominated for best Picture (in 98, Elizabeth was nommed, Shekar Kapur was not) I will not call them out of contention for several reasons, not the least of which is the absurdity of downgrading a film due to its success. But if it gets no other help like Burton did last year, or Mann did in 2004 etc. then I would tell Fincher and his fanboy legions to worry quite a great deal.

The Oscar Formula: Mathematically Eliminated

The following films will not be nominated for Best Picture. Their broad appeal numbers have fallen below the "Ligne Chocolat" and none of them have enough of an X-factor. It's not a shocking list, but it's good to say it definitively.

The Duchess
Changeling
Secret Life of Bees
W
Australia
Body of Lies

The Oscar Formula: Broad Appeal

The function of this metric seems intuitive: If the movie appeals to a wide variety of people then it has a better chance of appealing to academy voters and therefore has better chances for a Best Picture Oscar. Rottentomatoes is the very best resource for such information and has been for a decade.

However, the statistic is not as simple as High=good, low=bad. If such things were true, then documentaries and animated films would dominate the awards festivities. Certainly if a film falls below a certain level of broad appeal, you can count them out. But is there a ceiling to the broad appeal metric to go with the floor? There is some statistical data that says: yes.

Contention Threshold

There is a clearly demarcated line at which a film no longer becomes a contender. I like to call it the "ligne chocolat" because it is set by Lasse Halstrom's charming film Chocolat which garnered a puny 62%. Anything below this would require some super mojo to overcome. This line eliminates a large number of films. Chocolat's mojo was called Harvey Weistein in his heyday.

Also, there is a low water mark for Oscar Winners as well that I'd like to call the "Crash Barrier" because it was set by Paul Haggis' controversial film "Crash" which claimed only 75% broad appeal, the lowest for an oscar winner in the past decade. Love it or hate it, one must recognize Crash as an event film with unprecedented appeal. It's still the #1 most rented film on Netflix. So any film that falls below the "Crash Barrier" better have something extra special working.

Too good to win?

It seems strange to contemplate, but only 7 of the last 50 nominated films were rated above 95% on Rottentomatoes: only 14%. Of those 7, none of them won. It seems if a film reaches that upper 5 percentile its chances decrease greatly. Why is this? Perhaps a great number of those films are animated and documentary films and therefore are transported to their own separate categories.

But what of the live action fiction films that do get nominated but cannot win? My educated guess is that the film's broad appeal can have a downfall. If it appeals to almost everyone, then perhaps it does not risk enough to be truly loved as opposed to simply admired.

Oscar Profile

The average oscar nominee has an RT score in the mid-80s whereas the average winner's score is in the late 80s to early 90s. In terms of broad appeal the nominee range is a very broad 62-96 and the winners range is 75-94. Tomorrow I'll take a look at what films we can eliminate from competition based solely on this metric.

Magic Number?

One curious thing I noticed while pouring over this data is that the mode, or most frequently occurring number, of both the nominees and the winners was the same, and it was a very high number: 94. It may be a useless statistic, but, just for fun, let's say it isn't. Guess what film is currently sitting pretty at the very popular percentage of 94: Box office champ and critical darling "The Dark Knight."

Raw Data

mean
winners: 87
nominees: 86

median
winners:90
nominees: 87

mode
both: 94

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.