OscarPredictions Tagged Articles at Cinematical

It's hard to get a statistical breakdown of the Academy's membership, but over the years I've formed a mental picture of the Academy's average member. He's male; he's been in show business for decades, usually as an actor; he's wealthy enough to be "liberal"; he's white. He sees the nominated films at home, on screeners, possibly while enjoying a sandwich, instead of in the theater. And he's more inclined to go for a glossy feel-good movie over a grimmer one, or for a sweeping, old-fashioned Hollywood period epic over a gritty drama about actual present day concerns. (See also Forrest Gump vs. Pulp Fiction; Gladiator vs. Traffic.)

In short, Ernest Borgnine.

So, when I try to handicap Oscar picks, I ask: WWEBD? This is often a very different set of films from what I'd like to see win, and the Virtual Borgnine process isn't foolproof (last year, VB went 5/6; in 2006, VB tanked with a record of 3/6, somewhat damaged by my overlooking when Borgnine -- the real one, not the virtual one -- publicly stated he wouldn't see Brokeback Mountain). But, mostly, it's an exercise in looking into the thought process behind the maddening nature of the Oscars. All quotes are, as ever, rough intimations of the Borgnine thought process ...

Writers are whores. We love assembling random letters of the alphabet into words, phrases, sentences, and articles, and will happily do almost anything (except sell our integrity) that allows us to ply our trade. That's how I ended up on a Caribbean cruise last week, happily working away as the waves crashed outside and the sun shone brightly on miles of publicly exposed flesh that, in a better world, would only have been revealed in private to a loved one. Travel tip: to keep from overeating on a cruise, simply stroll by the pool before lunch and take a close look at all the out-of-shape bodies. Yuck! I immediately started exercising ...

Movie choices were slim on board. I brought a few DVDs to watch on my laptop computer, and watched a little TV. (It may be a 500-channel universe, but only a handful are evidently available at sea. And did you know that TCM Latin America shows old TV shows with commercials in addition to classic movies?) Yet the eager, if not quite ready for Vegas, live entertainment shows and, especially, the bars consistently lured me out of my cabin.

It's hard not to feel like an over-privileged colonialist when you see how hard cruise ship personnel work. They sign up for months at a time and have very little "free time," which means, for our purposes, that they fall very far behind current theatrical releases. To my mind, that makes them perfect representations of the world at large which will be tuning in for the Oscar telecast with zero advance knowledge of any of the nominees.

The last movie José saw was The Simpsons Movie. And he didn't seem to know much about this year's Oscar race. And he was much more interested in telling me about the fare before me, a beautiful woman who apparently flashed him. But I decided to ask him for at least some random predictions anyway. See, it was late Friday night (actually technically early Saturday morning), I'd had a few too many to drink and I really, really wanted someone to just make sense of the 2008 Academy Award nominees. Aside from the Best Actor race, none of the categories seem to have a sure thing. It's really anybody's guess who will pick up Best Picture, Best Director and Best Supporting Actress. So why not ask José, a NYC cab driver originally from El Salvador, for his less-than-expert opinion? He's got a good chance of bettering the predictions of the pundits anyway.

Before I get to José's picks, though, I must acknowledge that I borrowed the ask-a-cabbie idea from the NYC publication The L Magazine, which includes in each issue a regular feature called Fare is Fair, in which random cab drivers around the city are asked their opinions on a topical issue. I've never before seen The L do this with the Oscars, so I've done it myself, and I hope they don't mind. Consider it a form of flattery, because really it's my favorite piece to read on the subway every other week when the latest issue arrives in the street corner bins.

And now a transcript of my and José's conversation:

It's been a battle of the rainy-day games on our Oscar derby this week, with Erik's magic 8 ball going head to head with Kim's kids and their post-it plastered paper donkey. Though the donkey method produced the prediction that George Clooney's going home with the biggest bounty on Sunday night, most of our experts are still pinning their tails, and hopes, on the cowboy craze. Elsewhere, we learned that fictional characters from the 70s don't have a *whole* lot to say about this year's races, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman would be wise to stop the Capote press train long enough to take note – Johnny Cash is on his ass.

As you know, the Oscar winners are determined by a highly secret, very scientific process guaranteed to ensure the very best of the nominees in each category will go home with the coveted statue of a naked golden man - and, let's be honest - who doesn't want a naked golden man on their bedside table or mantel? This year, as part of our extensive coverage of the awards show everyone loves to bitch about, we here at Cinematical headquarters are making our own highly scientific Oscar predictions in the top five categories, to assist you in placing bets with your bookies or office betting pools.

A few days ago, James Rocchi gave us his Oscar predictions, based on the Virtual Borgnine (tm), Rocchi's own invention based on the theory that Oscar winners are largely determined by old, rich, white men who have spent their whole lives in show business. Today, straight from the pristine lab located in my kitchen, we bring you Oscar predictions based on the Official Cinematical Pin the Oscar on the Donkey Oscar Prediction Game!

To assist me in the prediction process, I used my five assistants - my four (yup, I said four) younger children, ages 9, 6, 4 and 2, and my husband, Jay (he got to pick Best Picture, so I didn't have to deal with four kids fighting over who got to choose the last winner, but to keep it fair, the kids spun him around no less than 10 times. He's still recovering.) Each assistant was thoroughly blindfolded with an Oscar-worthy purple velveteen blindfold and spun around an appropriate number of times to ensure dizziness and slight nausea, which is pretty much what we feel when watching the Oscars anyhow. For purposes of determining the winner, the nominee that Oscar's head was closest to was judged to be the winner.

Without further ado, the Pin the Oscar on the Donkey Oscar Predictions: