Finally, this crazy wide open Best Picture race will have its major shaping (most likely) by the Producers Guild announcement tonight. I thought this would be a good time to revisit the stats once again before tonight’s ceremony, to evaluate which ones are going to fail and which ones will hold. While it’s true that “stats don’t matter,” as Kris Tapley and David Poland always say, stats are the only part of the Oscar race that is interesting to me after covering it for so many years.
In every year since the Oscars and the Producers Guild changed to the preferential ballot with more than five nominees, there have been two, sometimes three leading Best Picture contenders. This year, there are four, which makes this year unusual. Let’s run through the stats from the most important to the least important.
How do we measure stats? We don’t look at wins overall (as some might be tempted to do, and I know that’s how they’re doing it at FiveThirtyEight.com) because, the only wins that have come in so far have been from the critics and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. The Social Network is the film that broke the significance of stats on critics awards because it won an unprecedented amount of critics awards — every single one you can win in order to win Best Picture — but once the bigger industry guilds got involved, for whatever reason, The King’s Speech took over and won everything. A similar thing happened last year with Boyhood: when the race got to the big guilds phase, Birdman took over and ultimately won the whole thing. Films that have managed to do well with both the critics AND the industry include The Hurt Locker and The Artist, which essentially won all of the critics awards and the big guild awards as well. The film critic stats, for the most part, are therefore not as trustworthy as those for the bigger guilds. When you win the big guilds now with the preferential ballot, you tend to win Best Picture. This will not likely change as long as the preferential ballot is in play.
Things to know:
- The Producers Guild has around 7,000 members. The PGAs started in 1989, but at that time they were held after the Oscars. In 1990, the PGAs began to be held before the Oscars, and thus became an “influence.” Since 2009 when the PGA expanded their ballot to ten nominees, their winner has predicted Best Picture 100% of the time, even in the year when there was a split vote between 12 Years a Slave and Gravity. Prior to that, they missed with Little Miss Sunshine, Brokeback Mountain, The Aviator, Moulin Rouge, Saving Private Ryan, Apollo 13, and The Crying Game. For the past six years, they have predicted Best Picture. Many believe this is because they have roughly the same number of voters as the Academy and are the only group that uses the preferential ballot other than the Academy.
- The Directors Guild has around 15,400 members — twice as many as 30 years ago, as recent decades have seen a large influx of television directors. The DGAs were inaugurated in 1948 and have the strongest and longest track record with Oscar. They have a five nominee ballot. They ordinarily accurately predict either Best Picture or Best Director except in the rare off years. The last year they didn’t predict Best Picture was 2013, though Alfonso Cuaron won Best Director at the Oscars. Before that, you have to go back to 2005 with Ang Lee who won for Brokeback Mountain and also won the directing Oscar. They were also more hit-and-miss in the years before the Academy moved up the Oscar dates by a month in 2004. Back in the old days there were 4-6 more weeks for voters to contemplate, which is how you got Braveheart beating Apollo 13 the way it did. 2000 was the weirdest year because you had Ang Lee winning the DGA for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but then you had Steven Soderbergh winning the Oscar for directing Traffic, and Gladiator winning Best Picture. Since 2009, however, the DGA has predicted either Best Picture or Best Director.
- The Screen Actors Guild (now SAG-AFTRA) has around 160,000 members. The SAG Awards started around 1995. They merged with AFTRA in 2012, broadening their membership significantly. If you work at all in broadcast television, anywhere in America, for instance, you can be a voting member for the SAG Awards. That makes them less reliable in terms of predicting Best Picture. But in the post-2009 era of more than five nominees, no film has won PGA, DGA, and the SAG Awards Ensemble and not gone on to win Best Picture. Those include Birdman, Argo, and The King’s Speech. The Help beat The Artist, American Hustle beat 12 Years a Slave, Inglourious Basterds beat The Hurt Locker. Where the SAG Awards have never failed in the post-2009 era is that no film has ever won Best Picture without at least garnering an Ensemble nomination there.
- The American Cinema Editors guild has around 6,000 members. The Eddie awards started in 1950. No film since Driving Miss Daisy has won Best Picture without an ACE Eddie nod. Before Driving Miss Daisy, Terms of Endearment and Ordinary People are examples of films that won Best Picture without an ACE Eddie nod. Since 2009, however, such has not been the case.
- The British Film and Television Academy (BAFTA) has around 6,000 members. BAFTA stats can only really be counted from 2012 onward, which is no stat to go on at all because of the small sample size. But the reason they matter is because there is increasingly more membership crossover between the BAFTA and the AMPAS, which is why they often are mutually influential in terms of some borderline acting wins. The way we use them for our purposes, however, is to measure who’s most likely to get a nomination. Since they changed their voting procedure a few years ago, no film has won Best Picture without at least a BAFTA nomination for Picture and Director.
- The date seen — Only those films seen at or before Telluride have ever won since 2009: The Hurt Locker (TIFF, a year before release), The King’s Speech (Telluride), The Artist (Cannes), Argo (Telluride), 12 Years a Slave (Telluride), Birdman (Telluride). Before that, you have to go back to Million Dollar Baby in 2004 to find a late breaker that won Best Picture. That’s right around the time the Oscars changed to an earlier date and the compressed awards schedule became a major factor in Best Picture voting. Before the date change, Telluride and/or Toronto had no reliable impact on the awards race.
- The Golden Globe nomination for Best Director – for some reason, this stat has merit even if the Globe voters only number 90 or so. No film has won Best Picture since 2009 without that. The last film that won Best Picture without the Globe Directing nod was Crash in 2005.
- Rotten Tomatoes negative number – no film since 2009 has won with more than 30 negatives on Rotten Tomatoes. The Hurt Locker: 6, The King’s Speech: 14, The Artist: 7, Argo: 13, 12 Years a Slave: 11, Birdman: 21.
- The ACE Eddie/DGA connection – no film has ever won both the ACE Eddie and the DGA and lost Best Picture, except Saving Private Ryan. It’s a reliable, though slightly imperfect, stat.
- Academy nomination for Best Director (or Editing or Screenplay) – it’s extremely rare to win Best Picture without a Directing nomination. Ben Affleck did it in 2012, wiping the stat away but it’s still a pretty heavy hitter unless there is growing sentiment for the film throughout the season. No one is yet predicting a split between The Martian and Mad Max, which could easily happen. The Martian could take Best Picture and Mad Max take Best Director. The Martian’s Ridley Scott missed out on a directing nomination so no one is predicting it to take Best Pic, but theoretically it could happen.
Since the current voting process has been in effect only since 2009, we don’t have long standing stats as we would need to prove them reliable or unreliable, but so far these stats have not failed under the new system. Sooner or later they will and this could be the year that they do.
So which film breaks which stat of those above? All of them. From most to least:
The Martian – no directing nomination, no SAG Awards Ensemble nomination (RT negative – 20 = grade A)
Mad Max: Fury Road – missing a SAG Awards Ensemble nod + BAFTA nominations for Picture or Director, no screenplay nomination (RT negative – 10 = grade A+)
Spotlight – missing an ACE Eddie nod, no BAFTA directing or editing nods (RT negative – 8 = grade A+)
The Revenant – missing SAG Awards Ensemble, no screenplay nomination, not seen at Telluride (RT negative – 44 = grade C)
The Big Short – not seen at Telluride, no Globe nod for Director – (RT negative – 28 = grade A-)
A quick and dirty analysis of the Big Split
In 2013, I was Chicken Little (“They call me Chicken Little. They call me Bubble Boy”) as I kept telling good predictors like Steve Pond, Pete Hammond, Scott Feinberg, and Kris Tapley that splits are so rare that you can’t really predict them. That was why, even with a tie at the Producers Guild, so many were predicting Gravity to take both Best Picture and Best Director (not because of me but because splits are nigh impossible to predict). The thing about Gravity, though, was that it did not have a screenplay nomination or a SAG Awards Ensemble nomination. But even with that, it still seemed like the favorite to win because of the combo of the PGA and the DGA.
Then a funny thing happened. I went back through Oscar history to take a look at the recent splits. Driving Miss Daisy was an interesting situation because poor Bruce Beresford, for whatever reason, did not get a Globes nod, a DGA nod, or an Oscar nod for Directing. I have no idea why. That movie kept winning anyway. It was an agreed upon split heading into the Oscar race. Similarly, in 2000, people sort of knew that Gladiator was going to win Best Picture, but since Ang Lee had won the DGA people assumed it might split come Oscar time.
Those examples didn’t really fit what we were potentially looking at with Gravity and 12 Years a Slave. For one thing, Alfonso Cuaron kept winning Best Director everywhere. It was a non-stop award-athon. It seemed like he couldn’t lose. But there was also the sense that 12 Years a Slave needed to win, like The Hurt Locker, for historically important reasons. That wasn’t the case with Gladiator, though it might have been a factor with Driving Miss Daisy. Both 12 Years a Slave and Driving Miss Daisy dealt with Civil Rights issues. Driving Miss Daisy was released the same year Do the Right Thing was shut out. The former was told from the white community’s perspective and Do the Right Thing was told from the black community’s perspective. But still, history seemed “important” when Driving Miss Daisy was up.
When I looked closely at 1968, however, everything clicked into place. Mike Nichols kept winning director (Globes, New York Film Critics, DGA) for The Graduate, and yet In the Heat of the Night was the more historically important film, and also dealt with Civil Rights issues, like 12 Years a Slave and Driving Miss Daisy. In the Heat of the Night won Best Film at the Golden Globes and at the New York Film Critics, where Nichols won Director. I’ll never forget trying to explain this to Steve Pond in the press tent at the Spirit Awards. He looked at me the way he always does when I rattle off some crazy stat — with polite bemusement. I could not convince him, especially since I had spent many months before trying to convince him that splits never happen. “But they can be predicted,” I said, “when they are agreed upon in advance.”
Argo is an example of a forced split because there were no other options. 12 Years a Slave and Argo, the only two years where splits occurred since 2009, were agreed upon in advance. Every other year when pundits predicted a split it did not happen.
The reason this year doesn’t seem to be “agreed upon on advance” is that George Miller, who won the Critics Choice award for Best Director, didn’t win the Globe and isn’t nominated for a BAFTA. Compare that to Alfonso Cuaron winning everything that wasn’t nailed down. There’s a difference there. Now, I’m not saying it won’t happen — I could not do that to you again. But I am saying predicting a split this year is a tricky proposition because it hasn’t really been agreed upon in advance, and because we don’t have two movies anyway in the Best Picture conversation. We have four.
The thing about stats is that they can all fly out the window if voters like a movie enough. What they can show is how much voters like a movie. We know that 2,000 people at the SAG liked Spotlight and The Big Short enough to nominate them for Ensemble. We know that 6,000 in ACE liked The Big Short, The Revenant, Mad Max and The Martian to put them in their Eddie nominations. We know that 15,000 in the DGA liked The Big Short, The Revenant, Spotlight, Mad Max and The Martian to name them among their nominations. Those are the big numbers. We also know that tonight at the PGAs the stats will be put to the test. This will be the first vote from any big guild – roughly 7,000 people on a preferential ballot.
Many years ago, a PGA winner may or may not have gone on to win the Oscar because there was more time to mull over the nominees. There isn’t time now. SAG/WGA ballots are due this week. All of the votes and winners heading up to the Oscars will take place roughly at the same time. There is less time to turn the ship around – it’s headed for the iceberg and not much can stop it. It’s going to hit. The only question is, how hard will it hit, and how much damage will it do.
The Producers Guild will announce tonight at around 10 p.m. Pacific.
![2025 Oscars: Can a Late-Breaker Still Win Best Picture? [POLL]](https://www.awardsdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/gladiator-350x250.jpg)
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There is still plenty of time. The dust will settle. The general election is on November 8. Vote to make America great again. Don’t let fear and lies cloud your vote. Vote for whomever you believe in. Never waste a vote by not voting. It is a privilege, honor and personal responsibility to vote. Please vote.
#6 😛
*Bridge of Spies 😛
True. Spotlight or The Big Short look the most likely winner. But if it’s neither of them, then Brooklyn or The Martian would be the alternatives – in my opinion.
Fair enough – though that WAS before the switch to preferential. Those are both movies probably way too divisive to win a preferential vote. (Correction: LMS has only 19 ‘rottens’ on RT – very nice! I love that! Moulin Rouge has 46, though.)
It won’t.
Brooklyn has no DGA/SAG Ensemble nom. The Martian has no SAG nom and no Best Director nom. Those are powerful stats too…
And ties are always broken by AMPAS. Only the PGA (of those two) allows for a tie for BP.
That’s an exaggeration, to me. I might think the same 10 years from now, but I doubt it. There are just so many others that are even better, in my opinion…
Could happen…
Could definitely happen… Losing to the SAG winner in this scenario is very likely, given the other snubs MMFR has been hit with already.
Yeah, it’s close. I don’t think it’s clear either way (Spotlight OR TBS could be consider the stats favorite right now), if you consider everything. It just depends what you weigh more.
Oh, come on… You WOULD be surprised! 🙂 Just not as much as if something like this had happened in a less crazy year…
Biggest mindfuck in Oscar race history…
Exactly.
🙂 Well put! I suspect you actually didn’t like The Revenant – for me, it’d be annoying mostly because it’d be too counter-intuitive, stats-wise. I don’t have big problems with the movie itself.
That stat isn’t as strong as the others. There are too many exceptions, and too many recent ones as well.
TBS? Really?
🙂 Good point.
Interesting scenario. Could happen, I guess… but Argo had performed SO much better with precursors than The Martian has that I seriously doubt it.
“stats are the only part of the Oscar race that is interesting to me after covering it for so many years.”
I love that! Stuff it, haters!…
Stick with it, Sasha! The stats are ALWAYS interesting… (We’ve been blessed in recent years, especially, but even when the race isn’t quite so close, there’s still plenty of stuff to look at.)
“The thing about stats is that they can all fly out the window if voters like a movie enough.”
I posit that that’s not true. Some of them can, but not more, because if voters like a movie enough it shows in the stats. Especially in the guild stats. Inevitably, in my opinion. Like it did with Argo, for example.
“What they can show is how much voters like a movie.”
Exactly. I’ve had to try and explain this to people so many times… (Not very successfully, apparently, since so many have come to hate my rants.)
“When you win the big guilds now with the preferential ballot, you tend to win Best Picture. This will not likely change as long as the preferential ballot is in play.”
Actually, this has been true for a much longer time than that. All Best Picture winners since Braveheart have won either the PGA, SAG or DGA, and Braveheart won the WGA. The last BP winner to have not won any of the four (back when only the DGA and WGA were awarding, anyway) was, in fact, Out of Africa (1985), 30 years ago.
“The Golden Globe nomination for Best Director – for some reason, this stat has merit even if the Globe voters only number 90 or so. No film has won Best Picture since 2009 without that.”
In fact, since 2006. I get that you’re only counting preferential years – just saying. I think this stat is relevant because it’s a direct precursor to the BD stat at the Oscars. Which is why all GG stats that are relevant work, in my opinion.
“Since the current voting process has been in effect only since 2009, we don’t have long standing stats as we would need to prove them reliable or unreliable”
Probably correct, but it’s too unlikely for the preferential system winner to differ enough from the winner under the old system (having run yearly simulations, I know the first round leader wins most of the time, and never something that isn’t very close to being the leader to begin with), so it’s a very reasonable assumption to make that the old stats should all remain valid most (if not all) of the time.
“That was why, even with a tie at the Producers Guild, so many were predicting Gravity to take both Best Picture and Best Director (not because of me but because splits are nigh impossible to predict).”
Fair enough, though I, personally, would always predict BP first, and only then worry about BD, because BP has a lot more stats/clues to go on than BD, and is generally more predictable. Also, if I remember correctly, there are stats that show splits are a bit more likely under the preferential system.
“The thing about Gravity, though, was that it did not have a screenplay nomination or a SAG Awards Ensemble nomination. But even with that, it still seemed like the favorite to win because of the combo of the PGA and the DGA.”
Which is why (there are other examples in the past) you look at all of the stats, not just the guild stats. You just give the guild stats more weight, but Gravity only had the DGA over 12 Years, and, thus, the (many) other stats working for 12 Years and not Gravity were more important. Gravity didn’t even have the full PGA+DGA, because the first one was shared, not won ahead of 12 Years a Slave.
We stayed up very late in 2001 and out popped/pooped Moulin Rouge. Then a few years later Little Miss Sunshine, wrecking all our PGA stereotypes, so, no I would not at all be surprised to see The Martian win it.
You misspelled it dear , it’s Straight Outta Compton. Check urban dictionary for more references.
The Martian is not the best film of the year., It is in no ones radar as th best film of the year.
Neither is The revenant, a film hated by critics, nor the big short.
Straight Outta Compton ftw!
IT should be about quality not sympathy. But whatever, these awards mean nothing anymore, they are a waste of time. Its never about the best.
Or maybe DGA truly thought the winner was the best of the year and that the Academy blew it.
I hate how these awards instead of awarding the best of the year, give sympathy awards.
If you think The Martian and The Big Short are bad films you’re living on another planet.
I hope the person who gave you that information is wrong, because all the films that start with “the”, were really bad films.
Oh. It’s short alright… Wait.
Team Max is growing! 🙂
Scott Feinberg at Hollywood Reporter tweets: ”I think something totally unexpected might happen tonight at the PGA Awards: ‘The Martian’ winning. Imagine if that happened and then it won the DGA?” … A couple of weeks ago, I suggested that Ridley Scott could win DGA on sympathy. The DGA did that for Ben Affleck when the Academy snubbed him. Ditto, for Spielberg when the Academy snubbed him for ”The Color Purple.”
Exactly, it is the best film in the last 10 years.
I love Mad Max Fury Road, so I hope it goes all the way tonight
very cool. I have zero interest in The Martian, but I like the intrigue.
I’m pulling for Spotlight. I know a lot of people who were abused. It’s an insanely difficult subject that this film manages to address with truth, without being creepy. And I love the ensemble, I am nearly as much pulling for it to win SAG ensemble as I am pulling for it to take BP, maybe more so since I like Mad Max and The Big Short so much. But I fell hard for the Spotlight ensemble cast. Especially happy about Keaton since I really did not like his Birdman performance.
Thats because #8 is the best film of the year.
WITNESS IT!
I’m stanning for Star Wars but since it lost nomination, I’m going by what’s on the list.
Any other hints?
I’ve seen all 8 BP nominees, here’s how I rank them:
1. The Big Short
2. The Martian
3. Room
4. Spotlight
5. The Revenant
6. Bridge of Spies
7. Brooklyn
8. Mad Max: Fury Road
#s 1 to 6 + Sicario, Inside Out, The Hateful Eight & Carol make up my top 10 films for 2015 thus far. The Danish Girl is 11th.
Hoping my #1 The Big Short wins the PGA, but I fear that #8 Mad Max will win.
The Martian, The Big Short or The Revenant!
Hmmmm….
EX MACHINA!
FUCK
EVERYTHING
UP
BURN
IT
ALLLLLLLL
In recent years BP has been somewhat of a head-to-head: Birdman/Boyhood, 12 Years A Slave/Gravity,
The Kings Speech/The Social Network and even perhaps Argo/Zero Dark Thirty and The Artist/The Help.
But most pundits see this year as ‘wide open’ with four films in particular being seized upon: MMFR, Spotlight, The Big Short and The Revenant.
For me that uncertainty means that all 8 BP nominees are in with a chance. However, I’d probably rule out MMFR and The Revenant (no Oscar script nom – only 1 out of the last 50 BP winners had none), and Room (no PGA nom – since 1989 every BP winner has has a nom). I’d also rule out Bridge Of Spies, which I don’t think is Oscar BP worthy.
That leaves Spotlight, The Big Short, Brooklyn and The Martian – one of them (and I believe it could be anyone of them) will win BP this year.
Nah. I dumped him when I heard he was hanging out with the likes of Penn. I should have waited until after tonight.
What about Fleshlight?
OH MY GOD!!! A source who’s in charge of the dinner tonight just told me the Winner for PGAs best picture !! I won’t spoil it by giving away the whole title. I will say this :
The winner has the word “The” in its title.
You can probably get a better idea based on that information.
Sorry I ruined it but it seems I have a duty here with my AwardsDaily family to tell the truth.
And you can have the most diverse movies made, but if you don’t diverse Academy members who’ll watch them, let alone nominate them, you’re still screwed. Diversity needs to happen on both ends.
A few months ago after I saw Brooklyn I thought that would be quite possible. Still strange to me it hasn’t taken off.
Don’t worry Cherry! Just watch with your boyfriend. The prison he’s in currently gets satellite channels.
These are the Lyrics to Spotlight the song from the movie with the same
Theme as Flashlight :
Spotlight
all night
Spotlight
Journalists fight
Till midnight
Priests spite …
Oh
Nope. I hear “Side Dish” by The Roots.
These are the lyrics to Spotlight the movie with the same theme from Flashlight –
Spotlight
All night
Spotlight
Journalists fight
Till midnight
I’m all out of tin foil, so I won’t be able to get that channel.
I’m attending the dinner tonight at the PGAs and along with my psychic companion Judy Blindsworth, I’ll also be seated with eight other voters. So far three have disclosed that they hated Mad Max and Spotlight so much, they wouldn’t even attend screenings again when offered from others. The consensus seems to be The Martian because Ridley Scott got shafted out of a best director Oscar nomination. So watch out.
If you watch the event on television wave to me. I’ll be sitting in the middle, at Table 48 and I’ll be wearing a midnight blue gown and a pearl necklace.
TR will win PGA and BP.
Miller or AGU will get DGA
Spotlight will get SAG.
That’s how I see it.
They’re my #1 and #2 favorites of the nominees, respectively, so yeah…I would literally react like Flash the Sloth from Zootopia.
Oh man so gonna have to wait until 1 on the east coast? Well, I don’t think they can go wrong with Spotlight or Mad Max or Revenant. A tiny bit of me is almost starting to hope that Revenant edges out for a win, which feels odd as Spotlight’s been my number one for the whole season. I’d still be ecstatic for any.
love those guys, too. Been waiting for another meaty Best Actor opportunity like this for Casey since his one two punch of Gone Baby Gone/Robert Ford in ’07.
any chance to see Casey Affleck and Kyle Chandler in the same screening is one I will never be willing to miss
In other news, the new Kenneth Lonergan film debuted at Sundance to rave revie-uh, tweets. AD’s favorite Jeff Wells said it was a BP lock. Electricity in the room reminded people of Boyhood when it debuted at Sundance.
As a big You Can Count on Me fan, I can’t wait for this shit. Especially to see Michelle Williams on screen again, I feel like its been half a decade since Meek’s Cutoff.
Go Revenant. Mainstream critics would be knocked out.
Counter-argument: Lincoln is a beautiful, nuanced masterpiece of a film from Spielberg with great performances across the board (minus Joseph Gordon Levitt). Beautiful cinematography, gorgeous sets, and a fantastic, dense screenplay.
Argo is a pretty good political Hollywood thriller.
Yeah, very unlikely, but who would have known 12 Years A Slave would be tied with Gravity.
“Who the f— gave this guy a green card?”
[/ducks]
“is at the end of the chain”. Exactly!
You can have the most diverse Academy but if the movies that get there in the race are countable on a foot missing a toe then what happens?
I guess what will never happen and has never happened: a Jada/Clooney/Lupita/Lee outcry #agents-so-white #studios-so-white #executive-so-white #networks-so-white.
For MMFR to win Oscar, it must not be a tie. It must be MMFR only. Genre movies have hard time winning even PGA where blockbusters should be more present given that they were success in producing (TFA snub here is unforgivable).
Right, if the Revenant were Lawrence of Arabia, then okay, history gets made with consecutive winners, but that 81% RT score, while not directly influencing the Academy, is indicative of it being too divisive of a film to make that particular history
Critical too.
RED LIGHT
Am I the only one who hears P-Funk’s “Flashlight” every time I see someone put Spotlight on a list, or hear it as its own sentence? If no one up votes this, I’ll assume the answer is yes
Argo was the dynamic thriller with the A-list cast of Walter from Big Lebowski and Walter from Breaking Bad (HEEeeyyyyy….. 😉 ) giving kick-ass performances. It was about a stranger-than-fiction true life story about the Iran Hostage Crisis and how Hollywood helped save lives.
Lincoln was the kind of boring, overlong, Oscar bait history lecture you get just about every single year.
Or Mad Max! OR they could tie, though that’s extremely unlikely.
Don’t forget The Departed with just 5 nominations, losing only for Supporting Actor Mark Wahlberg.
Or Mad Max!
I’m honestly hoping Mad Max and The Big Short tie!
Yeah but the thing is, Mad Max is not a good film…it’s an extraordinary film 😉
Boyhood and Lincoln were the “safe choices.” Did the PGA choose those? Go The Big Short!
It’s the best movie on the list. By a large margin. It’s a masterpiece. End of.
I know The Revenant won’t win now since it has 44 Rotten reviews on RT. Thanks for the tip, Sasha! 😉
At the PGA Nominees Breakfast today, Alejandro G. Inarritu had this to say about the Academy’s diversity plan:
“These changes the Academy has made are a great step, but the Academy, in a way all these awards, all these things, is at the end of the chain…. Hopefully these active changes, these positive changes they are taking. Which is definitely to start getting more and more people in TV and film, in entertainment media, in the magazines, in the reviews. The demographic complexity of this country should be reflected not only at the end of the chain, but since the beginning, in order that more of these people can be… integrated… and their stories can be greenlit, that there’s more choices, that there’s more exhibition and distribution of films, that represent all minorities.”
The ”Revenant” director -producer also drew a huge round of applause for pointing out that the diversity issue is “not only about African Americans. I want to say how many Latin Americans… what about Native Americans?”
http://deadline.com/2016/01/pga-nominees-breakfast-inarritu-talks-diversity-in-hollywood-1201689100/
Mad Max all the way, baby! Witness me.
You are in minority.
I found Mad Max much more yawn-worthy than Spotlight.
Spotlight would be fine
but pls God in heaven let it be Fury Road
Anything that isn’t MMFR will be embarrassing.
NGNG for the season: Mad Mad: Fury Road wins PGA, DGA, every tech and Directing at the Oscars, then loses BP.
Though an argument could be made for this order of likelihood as well:
1. Spotlight
2. The Revenant
3. The Big Short
4. Mad Max: Fury Road
It remains to be seen if Black Sunday would have repeated under the preferential ballot.
the last time a movie with as much haters as the Revenant won, Crash beat BB
It just seems to me that the stats point way more towards Spotlight than to The Big Short, though I wish it weren’t so. No Eddie nomination or no BAFTA directing nomination — those just don’t strike me as very big deals. The bigger thing is that The Big Short hasn’t won *any* Best Picture awards in any precursors. The Critics’ awards have gone to Spotlight and Mad Max, and the Globes went to Revenant and The Martian, and BFCA went to Spotlight.
I still think TBS has a real chance, but I don’t think it can be called the “statistical” choice by any means. … Not yet. If you’re going to guess it, then credit a strong intuition, which may indeed prove correct.
Likelihood:
1. Spotlight
2. Mad Max: Fury Road
3. The Big Short
4. The Revenant
Agreed. I’m just not convinced the passion for The Revenant is there — that enough people would put it as #1, ESPECIALLY given they would be awarding the exact same person they did last year. Inarritu could win director, but I think it’s more likely that Spotlight or even The Big Short wins Picture than The Revenant taking Picture as well.
AKA “The Big Short”
…..
(please forgive me)
did John Ford eat raw bison liver tho
What a stark erection i would have.
The tension is KILLING me. 0.0
I actually wouldn’t be surprised if they did go that way.
Except for the fact that a director has never, ever won Best Picture in consecutive years, much less in consecutive nominations. I remain highly skeptical that AMPAS will afford this honor to Inarritu with The Revenant when they couldn’t do that with William Wyler, Frank Capra, John Ford, or Joseph L. Mankiewicz.
That would be both awesome and ridiculous. 😀
the stunt ensemble natch 🙂
I read Beasts of No Nation, The Big Short, Spotlight, Straight Outta Compton and Trumbo on their website. What did you read?
I heard Blizzard is gonna have freakin’ Linkin Park performing
in 2016
C’mon Brooklyn!!!
Well, actually Mad Max does have a SAG Ensemble nod 🙂
I think the safe choice is Spotlight(Yawn), I am hoping a MAD MAX upset.
Lol- I may actually watch that.
NGNG: The Revenant and Mad Max tie
Safe bet: Spotlight
Fun bets: The Big Short, Mad Max
Annoying bet: The Revenant
Go fun bets go
One stat you have failed to mention is the impact of a low nomination
count on your likelihood of taking Best Picture. Argument could be made that the number of nominations you have on the Oscar ballot shows the breadth of your support within the Academy itself. Thus, the film with the most nominations often wins, but not with such a certainty that a lower count cannot win. Movies that are not technically driven will obviously not be racking up nominations in the tech categories. However, the Big Short has a mere 5
nominations. 5 important ones, to be sure (Picture, Director, Screenplay, acting, editing). And it would be silly to think that the sound effects guys or art directors only vote best picture for a movie which excels in their area of expertise. However, only three movies since the ‘50’s have sniped Best Picture on only 5 nominations: The Greatest Show in Earth in 1952, Annie Hall in 1977, and The Departed in 2006. In the case of the Departed, though, none of the Best Picture contenders that year had scored big on nominations (Babel had 7, The Queen had 6, the other two contenders had only 4 nods). So, you’ve gotta go back almost 40 years to see a movie as tiny nomination-wise as The Big Short to take out something with a nomination count like THE REVENANT.
Is SPOTLIGHT really that much better off with 6 nominations? It’s still on the light side, but ORDINARY PEOPLE and CRASH did it.
I think it’s George Miller and either Spotlight/The Big Short/The Revenant for Best Picture
Because people think that Mad Max can’t win Best Picture, but consider it a flawless director’s vision (plus Miller is the veteran filmmaker of the category)
I don’t understand. What is the split that is or isn’t decided upon this year?
Figure skating is on.
I still feel this goes to The Revenant (the film with the greatest momentum at the moment) which will be the one choice that will keep the Oscar race in flux — because Inarritu won the Oscar Best Director last year. The Revenant might then go on to win the Oscar for Best Picture, but Best Director is still up in the air. (Winning Best Director two years in a row is far more rare than a Picture/Director split.)
what a great year. I wish from now on those great movies will be the focus and not everything else. I mean, those are all very good motion pictures, all of them, my ballot would be:
1. Brooklyn
Producers: Finola Dwyer & Amanda Posey
2. The Revenant (WILL WIN TONIGHT!)
Producers: Arnon Milchan, Steve Golin, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Mary Parent, Keith Redmond
3. Spotlight
Producers: Michael Sugar & Steve Golin, Nicole Rocklin, Blye Pagon Faust
4. The Big Short
Producers: Brad Pitt & Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner
5. Mad Max: Fury Road
Producers: Doug Mitchell & George Miller
6. Bridge of Spies
Producers: Steven Spielberg, Marc Platt, Kristie Macosko Krieger
7. Sicario
Producers: Basil Iwanyk, Edward L. McDonnell, Molly Smith
8.Ex Machina
Producers: Andrew Macdonald, Allon Reich
9. Straight Outta Compton
Producers: Ice Cube, Matt Alvarez, F. Gary Gray, Dr. Dre, Scott Bernstein
10. The Martian
Producers: Simon Kinberg, Ridley Scott, Michael Schaefer, Mark Huffam
Even though I would LOVE to see the wild ride that has been this season so far, continue (for example, seeing something like Brooklyn win the PGA to result a collective “the fuck?” from pundits), I have a weird hunch about The Martian winning the PGA/DGA/WGA trio, resulting another BP/BD split at the Oscars. I mean, come on, am I really the only one thinking that if the Academy could go “poorBen” on a previous Oscar WINNER just because he failed to receive a BD nod, then they won’t do their best to turn Ridley fucking Scott into an Oscar winner, something that thanks to their fuckery (BD snub), they can now only do if The Martian wins BP (Scott is a producer) ? My two cents.
Ugh 10pm LA time. I will have died of boredom from Blizzard 2016. Everything is closed in NJ/NYC now. EVERYTHING. My hope/prediction for PGA is Mad Max. Realistic/Backup is The Revenant.
Rooting for Spotlight, but realistically thinking it will go to The Big Short.