Despite the 11th hour notion that The Revenant is indeed the film to beat (and it might be), we are still left with a needling question: when each guild picks a different movie to win, which guild most reliably prevails for Best Picture?
First, let’s look at what The Revenant has against it, knowing what we know about what films normally win Best Picture:
- No SAG Ensemble award nomination (since the SAG Awards began, only Braveheart has won without this)
- No Screenplay nomination (Titanic is the most recent BP winner to win without this)
- No PGA win (so far, no film has lost PGA and then won the Oscar after both started using the preferential ballot in 2009)
- Late breaker (no film that have been released after October has won Best Pic since Million Dollar Baby)
- Oscar History (no filmmaker has directed Best Picture winners in consecutive years)
- Divisive (with 50 negative reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, The Revenant sits alongside films like Crash and A Beautiful Mind)
But Anne Thompson makes a pretty good argument for why The Revenant might win, and likely will win Best Picture. She goes more on buzz and intuition, and thus probably knows what she’s talking about. Not to mention that the latest Gurus of Gold rankings show that prediction all-stars like Dave Karger, Steve Pond, and Scott Feinberg are all predicting The Revenant to win. Indeed, if you aren’t a stats or history person, The Revenant is regarded as the “most likely” to win.
Still, those of us who do make use of stats have trouble reconciling this win. For one thing, if you take away the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs — neither group awarded Inarritu or Birdman last year, as the Academy did — then we’re left with these precursor wins:
The Big Short
PGA/ACE/WGA
The Revenant
DGA/ASC
Spotlight
SAG/WGA
Producing, editing, and writing for The Big Short is a tight and powerful combination, and has often led to a Best Picture win, though admittedly the DGA is usually needed to complete the picture. A Revenant win would bust all of the stats wide open such that there would be little point even writing about them ever again. It would be like when the iPhone replaced land lines.
It does “feel” counterintuitive to not predict the film that just won big at the BAFTAs. But imagine yourself as an average BAFTA voter who didn’t pick Birdman last year. Are you really not going to pick Inarritu again? I doubt you ever would.
Now imagine your average Academy voter. Are they going to pick Inarritu again after just picking him last year? He already made history at the DGA. But why would he at the Oscars, where every branch of the industry has a strong divergent voice?
Let’s look at each guild and how many guild members vote.
The first thing to note and to remember is that only two groups vote with the preferential ballot: the Producers Guild and the Academy. That’s it. To explain a Revenant win with a preferential ballot, you have to first explain why it didn’t win the PGA. The going over-budget by $45 million is one explanation; the supposition that no one knew if The Revenant would succeed or fail is another explanation (I don’t buy that one, though, they pick what they like best, period).
Okay, so now that you’ve explained the PGA, you then have to wade through the SAG Ensemble award nomination miss. The theory that SAG-AFTRA members didn’t see The Reveant doesn’t wash. So SAG didn’t see The Revenant, but somehow they knew enough to nominate Leonardo DiCaprio and then give him the win? Apparently we’re told enough of the 2,000 SAG voters on the nominating committee didn’t see it. Okay. So no one at PGA wanted to pick it until it was successful enough, and no one in SAG had seen it.
Now that you’ve explained away both of those, you then have to figure out why it didn’t win the ACE Eddie Drama award against Mad Max: Fury Road (Mad Max had better editing), and also why it didn’t get a screenplay nomination. Not enough dialogue? I’ll buy that. After all, it just won the BAFTA without a screenplay nomination. Why can’t it win the Oscar?
Finally, you then have to explain away the widely divisive reviews. Joe Morgenstern has a long history of giving raves to almost every Best Picture winner, and even when he didn’t like a movie all that much, he still generally gave it a decent enough review. But not with The Revenant. He gave The Revenant a review that scored 40 at Metacritic. In other words, passionate dislike. The film also has passionate likes. And that passion may have helped drive it to win the DGA, with 15,000 members voting, the largest group of industry voters it has won over. Spotlight won over an even larger group — SAG-AFTRA and its 160,000 members — but it wasn’t up against The Revenant.
Let’s say we’ve pushed all of those supposed stumbling blocks aside — which we could do and you probably should do because you can’t stop what’s coming. Let’s now look at previ0us years when the three major guilds split three different ways.
It has only happened four times. 2000, 2001, 2004, 2013. Two out of those times, the PGA winner won Best Picture. The other two times, the DGA prevailed, and both those times happened before the implementation of the preferential ballot.
The Revenant actually has much in common with Million Dollar Baby; namely, that both films have an acting frontrunner. Hillary Swank then and Leonardo DiCaprio now. Both won the Golden Globe for Director and both won the DGA. The only difference is that Million Dollar Baby also had a SAG Ensemble award nomination.
All About the Guilds
The Producers Guild – 7,000 members. Their PGA Award started in 1990, just 25 years ago. Since then, 18 of their winners have gone on to win the Oscar. They PGA expanded their field of nominees and switched to the preferential ballot in 2009, to match the Academy’s decision to expand their Best Picture race and also implement the preferential ballot. Since then, no film has lost the PGA and won Best Picture, 6/6 years. Granted, almost every one of these years, the DGA matched the PGA, except once, 2013 (where it half-matched). The Producers Guild also tend to be more gender-diverse than the other guilds: according to Wikipedia, “As of 2015, the gender ratio of the PGA’s membership is 57% male and 43% female.”
The Directors Guild – 15,400 members. According to Wikipedia, they are composed of “assistant directors, unit production managers, stage managers, associate directors, production associates, and location managers — that representation includes all sorts of media, such as film, television, documentaries, news, sports, commercials and new media.” They handed out their first award in 1948. No director ever won back-to-back DGA Awards until Alejandro G. Inarritu. His second win makes this the third consecutive win for Mexican directors at the DGA.
SAG-AFTRA – 160,000 members. Their history might have to be tossed and reevaluated because since 2012, SAG merged with AFTRA, which may or may not dilute their Oscar influence. The jury is still out on that one. They are described as “film and television principal and background performers, journalists, and radio personalities.” They use a nominating committee of around 2,000, selected each year by a process not unlike the lottery. Some members live in big cities, some don’t.
Now, let’s look at the dates.
SAG nominating ballot deadline: December 7, 2015. Definitely too early to have seen The Revenant in theaters except at VIP screenings, but then how do you explain Leonardo DiCaprio’s nomination?
PGA final ballot deadline: January 22, 2016. Not buying that they didn’t see it. That’s plenty of time. Also not buying that they didn’t know The Revenant was making money because it already made around $80 million by January 15. This voting deadline was well after The Revenant’s Golden Globe wins as well as after it received 12 Oscar nominations, leading the Best Picture field.
DGA final ballot deadline: February 5, 2016. That’s late enough for everyone to have seen The Revenant, the money came through, the sex with bear thing died down… Inarritu made history. Shortly thereafter, he went on to the BAFTAS to win there, too.
Now, let’s quickly run through these guilds, and how they matched or split over the years:
1995 – PGA/DGA/SAG – Apollo 13 / Oscar Mel Gibson, Braveheart (no SAG ensemble nomination)
1996 – SAG – The Birdcage, PGA/DGA/Oscar – The English Patient
1997 – SAG – The Full Monty, PGA/DGA/Oscar – Titanic
1998 – PGA/DGA – Saving Private Ryan, SAG/Oscar – Shakespeare in Love (won ACE)*
1999 – PGA/DGA/SAG/Oscar – American Beauty
2000 – SAG – Traffic, DGA – Crouching Tiger,Hidden Dragon, PGA/Oscar – Gladiator*
2001 – PGA – Moulin Rouge, SAG – Gosford Park, DGA/Oscar – A Beautiful Mind
2002 – PGA/SAG/DGA/Oscar – Chicago*
2003 – PGA/DGA/SAG/Oscar – Return of the King
Date Change. Oscars moved up a month.
2004 – PGA – The Aviator, SAG – Sideways, DGA/Oscar – Million Dollar Baby
2005 – PGA/DGA – Brokeback Mountain, SAG/Oscar – Crash (won ACE)*
2006 – PGA/SAG – Little Miss Sunshine, DGA/Oscar – The Departed
2007 – PGA/DGA/SAG/Oscar – No Country for Old Men
2008 – PGA/DGA/SAG/Oscar – Slumdog Millionaire
Preferential Ballot put in place. Expanded Best Picture slate.
2009 – SAG – Inglourious Basterds, PGA/DGA/Oscar – The Hurt Locker
2010 – PGA/DGA/SAG/Oscar – The King’s Speech
2011 – SAG – The Help, PGA/DGA/Oscar – The Artist
2012 – PGA/DGA/SAG/Oscar – Argo*
2013 – PGA/Oscar-12 Years a Slave, PGA-Gravity, DGA – Alfonso Cuaron, SAG – American Hustle*
2014 – PGA/DGA/SAG/Oscar – Birdman
2015 – PGA-The Big Short, SAG – Spotlight, DGA – The Revenant
*Resulted in a Picture/Director split
Five times in their collective past, the guilds have given out a different award to 3 different films. Only in 2013 there was a tie for the PGA.
Of those times, PGA has called Best Picture twice – Gladiator and 12 Years a Slave. The DGA called it twice, with Million Dollar Baby and A Beautiful Mind. Although, it’s worth noting that we can’t REALLY use 2013, since there was a tie. We know that the PGA did fail, and the PGA didn’t fail. So in a way, we have to kind of throw out those results. And if we do that, the DGA still loses.
Since the preferential ballot, though, only once has there been a three-way split — even though with a tie you can’t really say it’s a clean split.
A couple of key points:
- Once we fold in the SAG Ensemble award, we’ve never seen a year when the DGA called Best Picture without that key nomination.
- SAG Ensemble has never predicted Best Picture without also winning the ACE Eddie Award (Crash)
Considering the unusual nature of The Revenant, though, which can’t be discounted — it could be in the “too big to ignore” arena, like Gladiator, like Titanic, like Schindler’s List, where you just can’t ignore something that massive. It could be one of those years, like 2000, where you have to throw out the stats and be done with it.
Even after all of this, I still can’t tell you not to predict The Revenant. Despite the stats, it just seems to have the Big Mo. Nothing can be done about that. But I’ll keep ticking off check boxes, analyzing how the Oscar race goes down each year. You’ll forgive me for being wrong, won’t you?
![2025 Oscars: Can a Late-Breaker Still Win Best Picture? [POLL]](https://www.awardsdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/gladiator-350x250.jpg)
Only if you forgive me for being wrong about BP at the Oscars for the past 3 years in a row. I thought Lincoln would be the massive Braveheart to Argo’s Guild-sweeping Apollo 13, the warm, fuzzy, feminist, and most importantly, HOPEFUL Gravity would beat the dark and consistently nihilistic 12 Years A Slave, and that the more traditional, epic, “it took 12 years to make!”, personal Boyhood would beat innovative, cerebral, darkly satirical, even fantasy-esque Birdman.
I’m tired of being wrong, this year I’m listening to the herd in almost every category. I have Mad Max: Fury Road winning Costume Design, and I’m still seriously debating putting that Claude Lanzmann short doc in #1 instead of my current pick Body Team 12, if not only because Claude has said he will attend the Awards this year, his first time ever doing so. To give Spectres of the Shoah the win, might also act as a way of the extremely Holocaust-sensitive Academy (Just look at Ida last year, or Son of Saul this year even) making up for snubbing his landmark 9 hour Shoah Documentary in ’85. 😉
OMG that game is genius! Thank you for sharing.
no dialogues no screenplay nomination? what about the much-worse-than-revenant The Artist’s screenplay nomination without a single word?
I’m still sticking to my guns to say that Spotlight’s win at SAG had a lot more to do with the AFTRA addition. If it was just SAG, the nominees and winners would look different.
I think Spotlight winning Best Picture by SAG was very telling. I think Pic will go Spotlight, Director to Revenant
in all this excitement i made a mistake : Del Toro was supporting, so it doesn’t count, 23/25 which makes 92% even though it’s not as scientific as the SAG ensemble nom correlation with BP.
My point was : BA + BD + BP …… what i tried to say is this : could TR miss BP with Di Caprio and Inarritu taking it ? …….. the answer is : i have serious doubts, but you’re right i missed traffic in my stats : 22/25 which makes 88%
Kind of hard to separate the two in this case. Plus, do you honestly think The Revenant is winning BP, but not BD? I think that’s close to impossible at this point. Not quite, but as close as it gets.
Very true for the individual, however not the material.
Wait… does this mean Larson is expected to get 6.7x more votes than Ronan (who’s supposedly in the #2 position)?
That strikes me as totally absurd.
They voted for 12YAS to take a political stance. Many of them without even watching it. That movie was unstoppable from day 1. Remember the campaign’s tagline? “It’s time”. Big Short is another political movie but not as strong as that. Not even close.
Yeah, but, see, if you don’t go on the record with that… it’s pretty worthless… just my opinion. 🙂 You’re just mirroring what most others are saying, but don’t have the guts to take the criticism if you end up being wrong. I do. That’s one difference between you and me, I would say. Not that it means anything – just saying.
Thank You for removing me. And by the way, The Revenant is going to win
So you don’t want to be in the database. OK. I apologize! Removed.
“if anyone thinks their proclamation was misunderstood and/or doesn’t belong in this database, just let me know and I’ll remove it! With apologies!”
I’ll accept your apologies, thank you.
So, in short: do you want to be included in the database or not? 🙂
I never said I wanted to shit on anyone after the Oscars. I just want people to commit to their predictions, like I’m doing, so there’s an even playing field, and we know who’s predicting what. So not only I have to come out and say I was wrong on the 28th, should that be the case, but also all of the Revenant crowd, should they be the ones who are wrong. This seems only fair to me.
That’s not bullying, because I’m not using force in any way. What’s the threat? There has to be a threat for it to be bullying. What exactly did I say I would do to people if they didn’t agree to go into the database? In fact, if you’d read my original message, where I announced the project, you would have seen the following: “if anyone thinks their proclamation was misunderstood and/or doesn’t belong in this database, just let me know and I’ll remove it! With apologies!” Trust me, you took it the wrong way. I admit I probably should have been more explicit this time, as well, and not just assumed everybody knew what database I was talking about… For that, I do apologize!
‘Stupid’ is your opinion, and it’s not something that can be argued over. But you probably shouldn’t say it, regardless. It’s still rude, no matter whether you’re right or wrong.
You made a reply to my post saying “Everyone who makes this claim will be added to the database” how is that bully?! Going around pushing people to confirm things because you want to shit them after the Oscars in my opinion stupid and stupidly bully
OK, but we can be nemeses without stooping to that level, right? Aren’t you better than that? Can’t we just fight with our arguments?! You know, like civilized people…
And it’s very insulting to presume stuff like that about anybody, but especially about me, since I take pride in few things (if you DID know me, outside of the over-confident persona I sometimes portray here at AD, simply because I believe in the stats so strongly, you’d know just how true that was), but one is definitely my ability to be objective about myself and my mistakes. I take that shit very seriously, and I just can’t tolerate when people act like the opposite is true about me.
And by the way I was not condescending just mocking. Sorry. But I really cannot resist, you are just my Oscar nemesis.
Then measure your own again! I’m sure you’ll find it’s a little bigger now…
“I will say I was completely wrong that The Revenant wouldn’t win, obviously. Is that even necessary?” Yes, thank you.
“What kind of kindergartner do you think you’re dealing with?!” The one who statsurbates…
“Now go back to measuring dicks with all of your macho friends, and leave me alone!” I sadly don’t have macho friends who let me measure their dicks…
OMG, that’s so fucking condescending, I can’t even begin to fathom it… you thinking you know me AT ALL… I have zero respect for you right now… and that’s still more than you deserve!
Now here’s the breakdown, so you’ll understand how far off base you are: my claim these past few years has been that the stats favorite will win at least 19/20 times over the next two decades. If The Revenant wins, that will be, let’s say, just to be nice, the second exception to that rule since 1996 (let’s say Saving Private Ryan was the favorite, even though the direct WGA win, to me, is quite important, but, OK… let’s!…) So, the percentage will go down from 95% (19/20) to 90% (19/21), right? Now, please tell me how that completely invalidates the stats, based on one exception after almost two decades of no exceptions! And how a 5% difference is worth my saying I WAS COMPLETELY WRONG about the stats.
I will say I was completely wrong that The Revenant wouldn’t win, obviously. Is that even necessary? Won’t that be self-evident? In any case, I WILL say it. For dummies like you, who need it spelled out. But I will obviously (because I’m NOT a moron) never admit to something that simply isn’t true: that I was completely wrong about the power of the stats. Not for a 5% drop in predictive accuracy. What kind of kindergartner do you think you’re dealing with?! Now go back to measuring dicks with all of your macho friends, and leave me alone!…
The only reasonable argument this year is: LOVE for LEO filled whichever shortcomings The Revenants would have had compromising its win any other year or if it weren’t the year of the LEO!
“I do promise to acknowledge that I probably overestimated the power of the stats a bit”
God I’m laughing hard… I tell you what will happen cause I see the future into the past: The Revenant will win and you will say you probably were a little hesitant in being right, that the stats for or against it were not too strong and you were just balancing them. I know you are always right, no need to wait to just say you were right but the stats were a bit less powerful this time. The Stats or other people will be a bit wrong, you are always rational and right
I can write down whatever I want and post whatever I want as long as it’s not insulting to anyone. It’s called ‘freedom of speech’. Pointing out that someone was wrong (or right – which, like I said, I also intend to do, should that be the case) is in no way insulting. People are known to be wrong, and there’s certainly no shame in being wrong on something so unclear as this year’s Best Picture race.
If Ryan disagrees, he can tell me and I’ll cancel the database project (which, since you demand explanations, is a list of people saying The Revenant is winning or is the favorite to win, which I began compiling after the BAFTAs) and present the appropriate apologies.
Now, please explain to me how I infringed on YOUR freedom of speech with my message (which is clearly what you’re accusing me of) and what rational justification you could possibly have for calling me a ‘bully’ and my actions ‘stupid’!
Unless Ryan decides I was the one out of line (in which case, see above), I expect an apology!
THE DATABASE?!? What is it, a crazy proscription list for people daring going against your stats?
I really do not care about your database. I think I’m free to say whatever I want, be wrong, be incoherent if I please or whatever… I can predict or not predict, I actually don’t care about predictions, It’s only a way to talk more about movies for me. I honestly don’t understand who gave you this bully license, who are you, the statements’ patrol?? The “who said what” police?? A database to point the finger “you were wrong I was right and viceversa” is completely stupid in my opinion and so please leave me alone.
Again you prove you have no idea what I’m talking about… ever…
There’s almost always this or that minor stat (and sometimes even one major stat) going against even the best positioned movies in the race. That’s inevitable. But you just don’t get it, bro. You just don’t get that I’ve never said a movie can’t beat this or that stat, when it’s inevitable that some stats will be broken, like this year. Just that the movie that has to beat the fewest stats prevails pretty much every time (which was the case with both Crash and The Departed, so of course they were going to beat whatever insignificant, dime-a-dozen stats were against them, since the others had much bigger stats to overcome).
Repeat this 1000 times: “All I’ve ever claimed is that the movie that has to beat the fewest and least significant stats in each given year prevails pretty much every time” – REPEAT IT! Maybe you’ll get it, eventually…
Again I feel obliged to say it – either you’re trolling me (and you have to be – nobody’s this dumb) or you need to take reading classes again. That, or memory pills. I’m being dead serious.
Apologize to you? 🙂 Cute… Apologize for what – defending myself from your incessant malicious attacks? Or for standing up for what I believe in? Ain’t gonna happen.
I do promise to acknowledge that I probably overestimated the power of the stats a bit, and to be more open to predictions that contradict the stats for Best Picture in the future. This seems fair to me. But I won’t stop using the stats or believing in them, unless something of the same nature as a Revenant win happens again within the next few years. So far, The Revenant hasn’t won yet, and probably won’t. So, let’s deal with that when we get to it!
Interesting point. And I notice it didn’t win the PGA.
Still, a number of Holocaust documentaries have won both before and after Schindler’s list. And I’m sure there are other examples. So where do you draw the line, as far as “been there, done that” goes? I’d say this across-the-categories correlation of yours is more likely a stretch than The Big Short winning BP a few years after Inside Job won Best Documentary. And, if not, then what about Inarritu winning BP and BD two years in a row? It doesn’t get more “been there, done that” than that…
From @PrincipaD
Data Scientists Predict Oscar Winners
Following a highly successful initiative of using Machine Learning to predict last year’s Rugby World Cup results, we’re trying our hand again at predicting the future and revealing some interesting insights along the way about another major event: The Academy Awards, or the Oscars.
During the 2015 Rugby World Cup, we successfully predicted the outcome of 91% of the matches played using Machine Learning and Predictive Analytics – out-performing 99.32% of users on sports prediction site, Superbru.com. Our team of data scientists are now applying the same principles toward predicting this year’s Academy Award winners for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Actress.
According to the team, our algorithms are predicting the following winners in the following four main categories:
1.Best Picture: The Revenant – winning by a very slim margin over Spotlight
2.Best Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio – winning by an 8 fold margin over Matt Damon
3.Best Actress: Brie Larson – winning by a 6.7 fold margin over Saoirse Ronan
4.Best Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu – winning by a very slim margin over George Miller
Lol you just proved my argument. I’m sure you don’t even realise it.
A film can win against some stats, when the conditions are right.
It can be done.
Thanks
If TR wins, do you promise to apologise for being dogmatic about stats?
Yes or no?
3 votes made a difference btw spotlight and the bigshort and since it didn’t get sags ensemble it not safe either. spotlight could still get best picture and I believe that did be hilarious after tbs and revenant came out of nowhere to take its spot.
So I guess the same feeling is mutual if TBS wins right? Lucky? So in that case if a film is “lucky” to win…is it deserving then?
Yeah but again. Been there done that. Inside Job is an academy award winning documentary about the same subject.
Precisely!
Actors(SAG Ensemble) snubbed it, producers(PGA) snubbed it, writers(WGA and Academy branch) snubbed it. These are three big groups TR have to overcome. TR supporters are putting their hopes on techs to rescue but MM: FR has that shares support too and probably has more.TR is not a well produced film and it was no surprise when the producers went for TBS instead. I think the producers and Brad Pitt will win it for TBS.
I know it’s not very clear, but what I was trying say is that a BD and BA combination are not necessary in order to win BP. But it is nigh on impossible to win BP without either both SAG and screenplay nom, never mind missing both.
Yes, it does seem like the Academy voters are not going to give BP favourites extra awards. They seem to be more resistant to give many awards to a single film especially if there is big competition, which there is this year.
Of course. But, honestly, most likely, it WILL be a two-Oscar BP win. Either for The Big Short or Spotlight. I base this on how we’ve kept assuming, since the preferential has been in place, that the BP winner would get some extra wins, in several years, like the Argo and 12 Years a Slave years, but it always ended up winning just the ones it was a favorite to win. Birdman too, really, since it was, going by the proper interpretation of the stats, also the favorite for screenplay. This is probably because BP is won on 2nd places more than 1st places these days, and people putting the winner in 2nd place or lower don’t have that urgency to give it extra awards. The Revenant will have to win the same way – by getting those 2nd and 3rd places (a lot – I seriously doubt it can win mostly due to getting a lot of 1st places; the way the season has gone suggests the opposite), which is why I don’t buy the “it’s winning this and this and this, so it has to get BP as well” (I’ve given a more detailed explanation of this point in several posts before.)
I can see TBS getting editing and Mad max getting techs from TR, such both sound awards. It could win Visuals from TFA too.
Well said!
Some people don’t seem to know the difference between breaking stats and setting a new precedent.
There have been many times when a director has won BD without Best actor and vice versa. The two can win without the other and it is very understandable when they do win together that they win BP too. It’s not that big of a coincidence since BP and BD very often go together. Screenplay and SAG nominations are not just happy coincidence because they absolutely must have them, so there is real correlation there. Every coincidence is not really a stat and certainly not like SAG or screenplay. For example, 20 of the last 25 BD winner have been nominated for cinematography. That is better than PGA winners matching BD. But I wouldn’t go with it ahead of the PGA. That is a better stat than just a coincidence like BD and Best Actor = BP.
If you read what I wrote to Birdienest81, you’ll know that I don’t actually think it IS a stretch, and CERTAINLY not a big one.
“Spotlight is a really good movie, but it doesn’t have that feel of a Best Picture after seeing it.”
“I thought the documentary handling that subject, Inside Job, was way more informative and captivating”
Purely subjective.
There were two directing categories , so “Seventh Heaven” win is not clear cut,
There are few BD and acting award combination without BP.
Best Lead Actor: Victor McLaglen, “The Informer”
Best Supporting Actress: Jane Darwell, “The Grapes of Wrath”.
Best Supporting Actor: Walter Huston, “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre”.
Best Lead Actress Liza Minnelli, “Cabaret”
Best Lead Actor: Adrien Brody,”The Pianist”
Best Supporting actor: Benicio del Toro, “Traffic”
Both “The Informer” and “The Pianist” won BD, BA and screenplay. De Toro was lead at SAG but won in Lead at the Oscars.
Then we really will be against statistics now wont we. Its a stretch. A really big one. In the end it just doesn’t have enough. The more interesting thing, is no one is really talking about it around town. Its all revenant. It is big film with a big star and it has mass appeal that was extremely well done and is a new stepping stone on how far you can go with production. It is a strange year, but you have three films. Spotlight is a really good movie, but it doesn’t have that feel of a Best Picture after seeing it. Sure it was well done, but I felt like it should have left you with more. It received a SAG because that was one heck of an ensemble. I mean The Birdcage won in 1996, that was a heck of an ensemble too but it wasn’t the Best Picture that year. Moving on to the Big Short, it tackles a big issue sure, but it isn’t like we the public don’t know about it, I mean you see the devastation of the housing collapse all over the place. I thought the documentary handling that subject, Inside Job, was way more informative and captivating than just having Christian Bale beat on his desk with drumsticks while listening to rock music.
all the three movies have something against it so we shall see how things turn out on feb 28th
I disagree. It can win with two Oscars, and it wouldn’t even be that big of a deal, given the preferential system being used. I presented my case for that to Birdienest81 in this very thread, just moments ago.
“Only Crash and Departed have been able to win BP & editing w/o sound mixing nom”
Very telling, isn’t it? The exact same movies that are the most recent BP winners with 6 and 5 nominations, respectively… To me, this only serves to prove that it can be done, when the conditions are just right. 🙂 Which they seem to be this year, with Spotlight and The Big Short – even more so since there’s a preferential ballot in place this time around, so it’s statistically easier to win with fewer Oscars/nominations.
It will “need” Editing for any chance I would presume. It is the only award it has a “shot” to win in addition to Screenplay. If it loses editing, I cant imagine the Academy voting for TBS for Best Picture when it will only hold one other award all night. It has been a while since we had a Best Picture winner with just 2 wins.
What proof? A survey of the 2000 nominating members? Speculation is not proof.
Well, I’m not saying The Big Short and Spotlight are huge favorites over The Revenant. 🙂 The Revenant stans are the ones saying stuff like that… I gave some percentages earlier (44% The Big Short, 30% Spotlight, 20% The Revenant) which clearly show how close I think the race is.
Birdman, The Artist. Both won under the preferential system. If The Big Short is a comedy, then those two definitely are as well.
The Revenant could win editing, but it has no precursors to indicate it. The Big Short does have two, even though Mad Max clearly has more. But the LAFCA win for The Big Short proves it’s a contender, albeit not the favorite. It proves it CAN win. Even more so than the ACE win. I would be very surprised if The Revenant won editing and, of course, would immediately concede it’s very likely also winning BP, if that happened.
You’re right i really assume Leo will win and Inarritu too, and i don’t think it’s too risky at that point of the race, first because Di Caprio is in the rare position that no actor knows in his career : everybody wants to see him winning ….. i mean everybody….. and since te DGA we know that Inarritu’s fanbase is huge, plus this: there is no competition ! ……..Mckay, McCarthy, Abrahamson ? ……. no way ! …… ok , maybe, George Miller but i don’t think so …. i really don’t ….. so 90% multiply by 92% gives you the percentage of chances to see TR winning BP, compared to the 95% of the SAG ensemble …… the odds are in favor of Spotlight or TBS but the margin is not that big…..
From Oscarologist
MattyNegs @NegsBestThing · 10m10 minutes ago
Interesting Best Film Editing stat – 22 out of last 25 years, also a nominee for sound mixing. 14 of those 22 years the film won both awards
MattyNegs @NegsBestThing · 7m7 minutes ago
Only Crash and Departed have been able to win BP & editing w/o sound mixing nom @NegsBestThing @SamRS72 @Road2Oscars @mikemovie
MattyNegs @NegsBestThing · 5m5 minutes ago
Idk about you guys but TBS would have to pull some sort of a “Crash” like win here with stats like that @SamRS72 @Road2Oscars @mikemovie
So much so, they even nominated Tom Hardy with no other nominations elsewhere. They love the movie.
Sure there is.
Exactly why The Revenant will probably beat Mad Max. The Big Short was really well edited for a comedy though. Plus, the Oscars really don’t like to vote for comedies as Best Picture.
Article Schmarticle. There’s no proof of not enough people seen TR. The proof of enough of the 2000 SAG nominating committee members seen the film is the nomination of Leo. It’s ridiculous to think that they’d nominate someone due to buzz.
http://www.ew.com/article/2015/09/03/revenant-hateful-eight-christmas-sag-deadlines
Here is the link.
Doesn’t need to be the best edited in order to win…
This is true. I read an article yesterday, that they did nominate Leo purely on the fact that they knew he was going to be a major player this year. Given enough time, it probably would have been nominated for Ensemble.
Oh, of course, me too – it’s just nice to know for sure. 🙂
The Big Short was not the best edited film this year. Mad Max’s editing was extraordinary, and even then may lose to The Revenant. The Big Short will come up short. TBS team will need to be satisfied with their one and only win for screenplay.
Yeah, right. Right now im rooting for Mustang… but im already guessing that Son of Saul will be a well deserved winner.
🙂 Exactly!… But it’s OK, we’ll see it after the Oscars. Has to come out in some form. Just sucks now knowing if I’m rooting for it to win or not.
Its really a shame. I heard the movie was even one of those you must show in schools. But Batman vs Superman will hit every goddamn theater around the world at the exactly same day, same hour lol
Sabu was nominated with zero chance of getting it……… N’yongo was the force of 12 years …… which makes a big difference …. pretty hard to lose with 3 noms in the acting categories unless all of them lose which indicates you’re not the favorite, see what happened to Brokeback mountain.
I probably won’t be able to see it before the Oscars – it’s definitely not going to come to the cinema I go to…
For those of you who keep harping about PGA being half-wrong in 2014, keep in mind that AMPAS was never going to let two pictures tie for Best Picture (which is strange since all other categories are allowed ties). So one way or another, the PGA was bound to have one of their winners named Best Picture and the other not (unless American Hustle or the other six films winning).
http://www.thewrap.com/academy-promises-best-picture-tie-oscars/
Right!? Don’t know what happened with that one. Here in Portugal only premieres 25 February in one or two movie theaters… :/
The fact that there is no correlation makes it less impressive. And the base doesn’t matter – the stat is about movies strong enough to win BD and BA, which is 25 (or whatever the exact number was.) Also, there’s the Traffic category fraud issue… AND this is assuming The Revenant does win BD and BA, which should deduct some more percentage points, because that double (especially the BD part) is actually NOT guaranteed, however likely. I’d say it goes below 90%, if you look at it objectively, so, even if you ignore the lack of correlation, it’s still a sub-par stat for BP-stat standards.
Damian has a very good point : i can’t see TR sweeping with Leo and Inarritu getting it and making history without BP ….it’s impossible ….
Sandra Bullock was nominated. And 12 years winning is the entire point of the example.
Bad example. Gravity didnt have 2 acting noms and 1 locked up. Plus we know why they gave 12 years of slave oscar. political aspects.
ok……. i see…… 23 out of 25 is definitely lower than the SAG stat but the base is just …..4 times bigger or so, and the fact there is no correlation makes it a little bit more impressive don’t you think ? ……. what are we talking about ? …… 2 % difference : 95% compared to 92% ? ……
Gravity won 7 Oscars and even tied at PGA and still lost BP. So yeah, tech awards mean nothing for BP.
The 2015 calendar, as Sasha pointed out.
Fair enough – I didn’t know about that. See, this is what I wanted from Marshall, but he refused to explain, for some reason…
Still, the evidence against The Revenant, based on those precursor wins, is quite a bit more than that for it, so I don’t think it’s as diluted as all that this year…
And, of course, again, until you count the blogs/tweets/articles you’re talking about, those are still a worse thing to go by, because of inherent bias. We need numbers! 🙂 Unbiased numbers.
And it’s not 86/88, it’s something like 23/25 – somebody checked the actual number of such occurrences, at one point. 92% is lower than the SAG stat, and definitely lower than the 6/6 of the PGA under the preferential (and 25 is still very low of a sample size, about as low as 6, really, if you’re going to compare to what actually valid sample sizes should look like.) AND, again, it’s a 92% based on something that has no clear correlation.
Yes the voting bodies for the precursors are LARGE, but your stat is based on the ONE winner of the vote. Hence why I say things like “aggregate”, “reduce”, “truncate”.
It’s common knowledge that 1) a larger population yields a more confident probability, and 2) an aggregated statistic loses information and is less accurate than the fine-grained statistics which it aggregates (e.g., one winner vs. individual votes).
The assumption that winning BD+Best Actor should lead to Best Picture, or that, if it has more often than not, in the past, there’s some logical reason that it should again – that IS circumstantial. I’m sorry – it’s way more circumstantial than all of the serious stats we normally use for BP…
True. But some are more open to interpretations and some less. The identities of precursor winners and nominees aren’t open to interpretation.
Yeah, I read it – but, again, until you actually quantify, selective memory could easily be ruling your interpretation.
Also, if you add up all of the voters for all precursors in one season, I bet that number is actually quite large… QUITE large… I dunno how many tweets and blogs you’ve read… but it’s not that many. 🙂
88 years ??????? circumstancial ?????? …… compared to the 20 years of the SAG , the 25 years of the PGA ? ……are you kidding ? you can’t dismiss it just by saying ” hey, that was right only 86 times out of 88 “
Chicago had to win to please the fanbase, and Mutiny had a stellar cast that helped a lot plus the 3 actors nominated in leading i guess …..; and yeah, despite that, the loss you mentioned doesn’t make big sense.
Umm, everything we’re doing here is an assumption…
Did you read my reply about the tweets, blogs, articles,…? That’s a much larger population than past winners. Plus it’s more fine-grained.
“I don’t have the time to try it myself, but if someone cared enough to, I think it would be fruitful.”
Until you (or anybody else) actually do it, that’s still just an assumption, like all other assumptions.
“Word of mouth can be quantified too”
How? By polling 1% of the voters? Please!…
It doesn’t have to be ranked last. Even if it’s as high as third, but behind Spotlight and The Big Short, the ones it’s fighting against, it’s the same thing. Also, I’ve said it before – the people voting for those guys to win (which could be as low as 20-30%, and probably are, and still be enough for them to win) will probably be the ones that rank it high, but the problem is most of the others will rank it very low (assuming it IS divisive within the Academy as well, which is what the whole argument hinges on in the first place). And you need 50% to win a preferential, as opposed to 25-40% (realistically) to win any of the non-preferential, 5-movie categories.
Word of mouth can be quantified too, thus making it a stat. The benefit is that it doesn’t rely on any correlations from previous years. See my reply to my reply below of one way to track word of mouth as a stat. I don’t have the time to try it myself, but if someone cared enough to, I think it would be fruitful.
The Pianist and The Informer won Best Director, Screenplay and Actor, as did Seventh Heaven (Actress). Their Best Picture losses make no sense, but that’s the Academy.
Yeah, you’re right. I didn’t present the best counter-argument.
Like others have said before, if Gravity gets one more vote there, there’s absolutely no guarantee that it doesn’t, as a consequence of group think, also win BP at the Oscars.
Also, OK, let’s say the stat is volatile! Though that’s the ONE instance where we absolutely know it was close, and it still worked out in favor of the stat, so I would actually count that as a plus. But, in any case, even if you think it’s volatile, you can’t tell me it’s any more volatile than basing your predictions on word of mouth. Stats are clearly more valuable than that.
This preferential ballot talk is getting me sick. Ok, maybe you all are gonna be right in the end but i just CANT see how people who vote for Leo (he will get like 90% of votes?), for Lubezki, for Inarritu, and for sound categories will all of the sudden rank Revenant last in BP? HOW? So i think Revenant actually could get a lot of 2nd place and 3rd place votes and win.
And It wasnt the case with PGA! only producers vote there. I hope you get the point. My english is not perfect
One argument (especially a rather circumstantial one) does not a case make.
What you said just reaffirms my point; the stat is volatie.
OR it would have won without anyone having a clue Gravity was even close at the PGA, and without all of this ridiculous half-right-half-wrong talk – if you can assume one scenario, you can assume the opposite one, too, just as easily…
You’re quite happy to forget the screenplay/WGA noms and SAG Ensemble snubs (and many other things) and base your prediction on only the total number of Oscar wins (let’s say the PGA-ACE-WGA and DGA-BAFTA combinations cancel each other out, even though, really, the former is more powerful, but let’s say that, for argument’s sake!) A number which hasn’t even been decided yet. Who’s better?
Son of Saul is one I’m having great difficulty locating as well…
“If The Big Short had to compete with Mad Max, he would have lost.”
I honestly even have my doubts about that…
2014 and 2010 are years where the major guilds were split? That’s news to me…
Was McQueen talked about any more than this? How about Haggis?
“Film Editing – Spotlight and The Big Short are highly unlikely to win here.”
Bale could EASILY still win. Stallone is a very suspicious front-runner with huge snubs behind him, and Rylance is an even weaker second place, in my opinion. And editing (for The Big Short) is obviously nowhere near as unlikely as you seem to think it is.
Nathaniel’s sticking with The Big Short, in spite of all the “momentum” – very nice! I trust Nathaniel as a pundit, even though he got it wrong last year with Boyhood (if I’m not mistaken), and I don’t think he’d make the same mistake two years in a row…
OMG, THIS SO BADLY NEEDED TO BE SAID!… THANK YOU!!!
if we agree that Inarritu will win BD back to back and if we are sure that Di Caprio is poised to get its Oscar, the question is which movie dit that in the past and was passed over for Best Picture ?………….. in fact there are two cases : The Pianist in 2002 ….and ……..The Informer in 1935 ! ! ………. i guess Miss Thompson and those who bet on TR have got a pretty good case.
“TR a much stronger favourite on GD than Birdman was.”
That alone is an obvious, massive mistake.
“we are recognising that the stats are not absolute, they help us predict trends.”
Which, again, for the 1000th time, nobody has ever claimed wasn’t the case…
Well it wouldn’t be very noble of me to present a problem but not propose a solution to it, so here’s one idea:
Somebody mine all the tweets, blogs, articles,… and look for keywords like “love/hate”, “best/worst”,… along with movie titles. Then track the trends pre-nominations, post-nominations, pre-SAG, post-SAG, pre-PGA, post-PGA,… and correlate them to BP.
The sample set of winners is just way too small and heavily reduces/truncates the real question at hand: how much do they like movie X?
Now who’s clutching at straws?!…
I’d never considered this stat. Awesome work, as usual!
Excellent point!
Right, I did mention that. I do think the fact that it’s a film about the actors/industry propelled it through because like TR this year, it ranked the lowest with the Audience Score among last year’s 8 nominees. Incidentally, Shakespeare in Love also ranked the lowest among the fellow nominees. So it’s safe to say, if you want to make an Oscar bait movie, make one about a bunch of actors.
It should also be noted that the Audience Score can change over time as users can rate a movie long after its release. So it’s also possible that an Oscar winner might get downgraded by new users due to over expectation or retaliation because the users’ favorites lost. I doubt that Titanic would get a low 69% rating around its release.
Everyone who makes this claim will be added to the database, and get props on the 28th, if they end up being right! (Or the opposite, if they end up being wrong.)
So, if you’re really confident in your prediction that The Revenant is winning Best Picture, hurry up and jump on board! What could possibly go wrong?!…
We support you 100%, Sasha! Don’t pay any attention to these stubborn stans! At the very least, you’re absolutely right to doubt The Revenant’s BP bid. Anyone who thinks it’s a lock is clearly deluding themselves. Of course it MIGHT win, but to think nothing else has a good chance… they’ve clearly been following a completely different awards season from the one we’ve been following…
One vote, one measly vote, made the difference between 12YAS breaking the PGA stat and affirming it. Had it not been for that one vote, 12YAS would have won BP without winning any of SAG/DGA/PGA.
Hence the volatility of using stats based on only winners of aggregate voting bodies.
“Why didn’t ”The Big Short” win SAG, after winning PGA? Or DGA? And why didn’t ”Spotlight” win the PGA or DGA?”
The DGA, because they’re clearly not seen as great directing achievements. We were obviously being way too optimistic in thinking McKay even had a shot at winning the DGA. The SAG and PGA, respectively, because there’s probably a very close race between them (see the “three votes” theory), and it’s perfectly normal that one come out on top once, and one the other. Both couldn’t win both of those… It’s in no way an anomaly. It’s just what happens in tight races. Why didn’t 12 Years a Slave win SAG Ensemble? Why didn’t it win the PGA outright? Did those things mean it wasn’t the BP favorite? Obviously not…
But don’t think that means they’ll split the support – that can’t really happen under the preferential system. And, besides, even if it could (which could only happen very early on in the elimination process), The Revenant has Fury Road to siphon votes away in the early rounds as well, if needed, so it’s in just as much danger – perhaps more, if you consider the other clues.
“You can bet that if ”The Big Short” or ”Spotlight” had won either (or both), its supporters would be pointing them as evidence of an imminent Best Picture win.”
Yes, but there was no reason to give makeup awards to either of those, like there was for The Revenant. (Not that I completely buy that argument – The Revenant should lose BP for other reasons…)
“Being half-right still means PGA was half-wrong.”
Again, you’re just being stubborn for no particular reason…
“The longer the stats hold the more likely it is they will break. If TR breaks them, it doesn’t mean they’re no longer valid. In fact, they are more likely to start a new cycle of the stats holding. I don’t think TR is about to start an era of similar films. Screenplay and acting have always dominated BP and will continue. Nothing in the past decade has indicated TR happening and in fact, screenplay has become even more important as 9 of the last ten BP winners have won screenplay.”
All this!
“I don’t think enough of the SAG nominators saw ”The Revenant” in time”
And I AM THE ONE reusing the same tired arguments over and over… Riiight…
“SAG Ensemble has never predicted Best Picture without also winning the ACE Eddie Award (Crash)”
I love the article, it’s one of your best stats articles this Oscar season, but this particular claim is incorrect – Shakespeare in Love lost the ACE to Saving Private Ryan. (But it did, like Crash, like Spotlight, win the WGA.)
Irrelevant. They didn’t see The Revenant in time, this is a FACT.
I think Revenant won DGA because it’s hugely impressive, and because there weren’t any other realistic options. I don’t think Spotlight and Big Short had a chance in directing, no matter how much people loved them, and George Miller directed a crazed (though impressive) genre picture.
Agreed. This year is an exception. Where Argo or Birdman might have been a quirky winner, enough so that Sasha had some doubt about its being able to win, there are real hurdles for Revenant despite its late-breaking momentum. Folks who weren’t predicting The King’s Speech could still point to its many guild nominations in key areas, guild wins, popular and critical support, and could hear from journalists like Anne Thompson how members of the Academy were clearly favoring it over The Social Network.
But The Revenant is a different animal. I think the key thing to look at is the most elusive – the on-the-ground chatter among Academy members that Anne Thompson’s article above noticeably fails to mention (despite saying Revenant is likely to win). Spotlight is still the one that folks speak of in loving terms – as reported by Pete Hammond, Anne, and others. So I think there’s real doubt that a movie that failed to win PGA, that failed to be nominated at SAG – while a film like Beasts of No Nation was nominated with just 2 or 3 actors listed – that’s such a grueling sit, that has such a thin story to begin with, can win the hearts of Academy voters, despite winning awards for its direction (which we’ve seen split recently) and acting (which has little bearing on BP). I can’t account for BAFTA or HFPA (just as I couldn’t account for them last year).
We all know why each contender is STRONG. But it’s crazy how – historically – many things go AGAINST each contender, too.
The Big Short – lost the DGA, lost the SAG Ensemble (surprising), lost at BAFTA, lost BFCA BP. A LOT of losses, there — Wow. It wasn’t nominated for Director by GG or BFCA, either. It managed only 5 Oscar nominations. On the flip side, it’s been nominated the most out of the contenders for the big “5” (pic, dir, acting, writing, editing) and, it’s won PGA, ACE Comedy, and WGA — bigggeees, but not exactly a dominant showing.
Spotlight – lost the PGA, lost the DGA, lost at BAFTA, and it wasn’t nominated for Director by BAFTA – bigggggg misses. Eek. On the flip side, 6 Oscar nominations is pretty good, though not amazing. It has won the SAG Ensemble (wow), BFCA BP, and WGA. Strong stuff in there, huh? But ……. winner?
The Revenant – lost PGA, lost BFCA BP, missed Writing noms at WGA, BAFTA, & Oscars. Won DGA, GG BP, BAFTA BP, ASC, and an ADG. It has definitely won the most. BUT … kind of crazy how low-regarded the screenplay is by these major groups! Big weakness there. That said, the only weakness shown IS with the Writing. Actors came through for The Revenant at SAG (Leo), and 2 noms with AMPAS (Leo & Hardy). Tech onslaught. But can this film win with no PGA win or any Writing accolades?
Time will tell!!!! Each of these films will get lots of 1s and 2s on ballots. I think The Revenant and The Big Short has detractors. And I think Spotlight will have the fewest detractors. So yeah, again, no clue. Haha 🙂
It’s been a strange season but we have reached the point which almost everyone is happy to give TR actor, director and cinematography. Despite this, those that back Spotlight or TBS to win think it’s fine to accept that they will only win 1, at most 2 (tbs for editing) other awards, and their directors, despite their being about to win BP, are not even in the running for BD
Those that bang on about screenplay nom or SAG ensemble nom are quite happy to forget the rarity of BPs winning only 1-2 other awards.
the guild love is an interesting thing, because we assume the nominations are purely for the category. I saw Crimson Peak tonight. There is simply no way that the art direction in TR is better than that, or that in Danish Girl, but TR won the guild because they liked the film more. TR’s unexpected nominations are signs of general love, not just technical love.
So in last 20 years only 2 DGA winners did lost both BP and BD at oscars (Crouching Dragon and Apollo). 18 of 20 won at least one big award.
at the end of the day, I am happy this year turned out this way. so many great movies, so many great achievements in acting, editing, scoring, writing, photography… Even though my favorite film of the year (Mad Max: Fury Road) will most likely lose Picture and Director, I can’t find fault on many of the other nominees. Wish more love had been thrown at Mad Max (score, actress), Straight Outta Compton and Beasts of No Nation, but 2015 is going to be hard to beat.
come on Feb 28 !
vote for Mad Max if you’re reading this and you’re an Academy Member!
That’s correct. Their main awards attention is purely screenwriting. If we look at seasons where the major Guilds were pretty split, you saw great buzz in multiple categories.
2014 – Birdman was competitive for best actor, director, and screenplay. Boyhood was for director, supporting actress, and editing.
2010 – TKS was competitive in directing, acting (all three), and writing. TSN was competitive for directing, writing, and editing.
2006 – Departed for director, writing, and editing. LMS was competitive for writing and Arkin.
I could see a scenario where a Best Picture winner could win just 2 Oscars, but we would have to see a clear separation in the major precursor awards.
Honestly, my guess is he probably didn’t do a ton for either film–kind of like the person who gets fourth or fifth authorship on a scientific paper. Doesn’t surprise me at all about his Spotlight ties; that film is a Rocklin-Faust picture if I recall correctly. Those two women put in Herculean efforts to get such a wonderful film made on a budget.
Yes the total Oscar haul is a factor.
Another factor: if Spotlight and TBS are such strong BP contenders, why are neither of their directors talked about in the BP race?? Makes no sense.
ACE for COMEDY.
If The Big Short had to compete with Mad Max, he would have lost.
Off topic, i know. But, now that i saw all those best picture nominated movies plus 110 movies. (only missing Son of Saul) Here’s my top10 list (alphabetical order)
45 Years
Anomalisa
Carol
Inside Out
Mad Max: Fury Road
Room
Sicario
Spotlight
The Look of Silence
The Revenant
Honorable Mention : Beasts of No Nation
It seems like the pundits (except Sasha & Tom O’neil) & the Oscar followers forgot about or don’t want to acknowledge this years PGA + ACE editing winner & how big of a deal it is to win those awards….
“Shakespeare in Love” did not win ACE award. There was only one award then (not two as it is now: for comedy and for drama) and “Saving Private Ryan” won that award.
Here’s the problem with Sasha’s analysis: Its been a long time since a film won Best Picture without a SAG Ensemble nomination (1995) and a screenplay nomination (1997), but its been an even LONGER time since a film won only two Oscars.
Film Editing – Spotlight and The Big Short are highly unlikely to win here. Mad Max won the ACE, BAFTA, and Critics Choice. Spotlight hasn’t won any Editing award period. TBS won the LA Film Critics and ACE. But the ACE happened in a category with non-Best Picture and editing nominees.
Supporting Actress – McAdams hasn’t won anything for that performance. Not saying it was bad, but it’s really a Vikander vs. Winslet competition.
Supporting Actor – The favorite is Stallone. Bale hasn’t won anything for his performance. Ruffalo is a possibility. He’s won 2 critic circle awards. Rylance won the BAFTA and won the 2nd most critic circle awards.
Director – McKay has won nothing for his direction. McCarthy won a couple of critic circle awards, but nothing in the Globes/Critics Choice/DGA/BAFTA arena. In fact, he wasn’t even nominated for the BAFTA.
So if we’re going to dock The Revenant for missing out on a screenplay and SAG Ensemble award, why aren’t we docking TBS or Spotlight for being favored for only screenplay? Its a contradiction.
I am leaning toward The Revenant here for the following reasons:
1. Won the DGA. That’s the most accurate of the major Guild awards.
2. Scored the most Oscar nominations.
3. Outside of the Guilds, it won the BAFTA and Globes. I suspect it’s going to win the Satellite soon. Spotlight only won the Critics Choice. The Big Short won nothing.
4. It’s the favorite to win at least 3 Oscars (Actor, Director, and Cinematography) and has a great shot at the Sound Oscars.
Having watched all three stongest contender (just finished watching Spotlight this morning), I’d still pick “The Big Short” as the winner for BP. Spotlight would be my second choice though. Both are pretty good films to be honest but TBS is just smarter. As for the Revenant… Well it’s a visually stunning film, but far from great from my point of view.
Enjoyed Mark Ruffalo’s performance in the Spotlight. Hope for an upset
First time all season TR is #1
Now #1 at Gold Derby & Gurus O’Gold, although by a smaller margin at Gurus
Only for those who don’t want to acknowledge the importance of DGA, GG, BAFTA, 12 nominations, BO, buzz, momentum…
All right. *stubs out cigar* *rolls up shirtsleeves* *combs back thoroughly Brylcreemed hair* *hooks thumbs in suspenders*
Bridge of Spies is sweeping, Tom McCarthy is winning Director, and I’m buying my bookie flowers.
*pivots on heel and leaves*
Variety’s Tim Gray offers some perspective ‘Behind the Never-Ending Debate Over Oscar Campaigning.’
He quotes one filmmaker who suggests that the Oscars be given out every 3 months: “The disadvantage of the present formula is that the awards invariably go to pictures that were released between September and Dec. 31.”
The filmmaker: Alfred Hitchcock, who said that in 1972. … More proof of how some things never change..
http://variety.com/2016/film/columns/oscar-campaigns-debate-awards-season-1201708491/
In such an unusual Oscar year, is it any surprise that the likely winner (Revenant) will have broken so many precursor rules?
It’s amazing how people are not seeing a total Revenant sweep..If Inaritu had directed The Big Short he would not have won back to back DGA awards!!No one is saying the nominated movies are not great,they are ..But the Revenant is a MASTERPIECE. .
Updated Gurus of Gold rankings for BP and the rest of categories:
http://moviecitynews.com/2016/02/gurus-o-gold-battleground-categories-top-3/
THE HURT LOCKER
question, when was the last time Best Picture winner was shut out at the Golden Globes, not winning at least, 1 award? No point to prove, just out of curiosity?
thank you, this is all too laughable
to be fair, I’ll just delete a couple of words from each comment and then ask if you both can please stop cussing with each other
outcome 1: The Revenant is going to win = I’m happy
outcome 2: Spotlight is going to win = I’m happy
outcome 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 = I’m happy
outcome 8: Room wins = I’m not happy
The Revenant is going to win even if it doesn’t end up with Best Picture.
It is sooo obvious that you are new here and don’t know me at all. FYI I NEVER insult anybody or am rude to anybody really.. unless I get insulted.. so [deleted]!
It’s amazing that people are treating a REVENANT win as a fait accompli in a year that saw the three main guilds go three separate ways.
This isn’t to say it’s not a favorite, but there are a lot of cocky people on here who could be priming themselves for a real upset.
The fact of the matter is it’s likely to come down to a few percentage points one way or another. That’s a statistically unpredictable margin of error. Even if you’re right, you were ultimately lucky.
Humility, please.
Well not that you guys notice or care but I was also predicting The Hurt Locker, when no one else really was, predicting The Departed when no one else was and predicting 12 Years a Slave when almost everyone had Gravity. You don’t get predictions like 12 Years a Slave right unless you are willing to take some chances. I have only heard ONE theory as to how TR might win and that’s the notion of it being a back to back phenom. That is the only thing I can imagine overcoming its divisiveness. I was annoyed at Birdman, Argo and The King’s Speech – I would never have predicted them because they annoyed me so much. I don’t care about my “score” and I don’t care about my “expert” status. You choose to come and read and participate in my site. That’s your choice but please don’t presume to tell me what to do, what to think or how to write and cover the Oscars.
P.s. I think I’ve outlined pretty well in a couple of articles why I have doubts about The Revenant. It is an unusual film to win – that’s just a fact. You can read all about why above.
That’s precisely what Sasha does. She knows what’s gonna win, and only about half the time actually winds up predicting that. She’ll actually go forward with making the prediction if she likes the film enough. If not for her stubbornness, she’d probably always finish tops at Gold Derby.
Dont underestimate Steve Golin fans! He produced both The Revenant and Spotlight. 😉
Maybe but it will still likely need the votes of either TBS “Spotlight” to win. I think it will struggle to those votes or rely on amassing all the votes from films like MM: FR “The Martian” and others in order to win.
Ok.Thanks. We should have just from the beginning agreed to disagree.
I dont think so. Revenant will get enough 1st place votes that 2nd place and 3rd place votes will matter little
Nobody is going to nominate for something they haven’t seen. Don’t delude yourself.
No it didn’t. But this year was Leo’s year with TR. Everybody knew that since the early talks about TR. His Oscar win was almost meant to happen and SAG was to reinforce it so it did.
Preferential ballot gives majority winner otherwise a film could possibly win less than twenty percent of the votes.
I believe whichever film gets the majority votes of the third place film will win. I believe TBS supporters are more likely to go to “Spotlight” than TR and vice versa. The Preferential ballot will be TR’s undoing.
Good point!
Since when have awards been ”common sense”? It’s been a crazy season. Some stats have stood, but others have been broken. … Does the highest rated movie always win? Last year, ”Birdman” beat ”Boyhood,” and ”Boyhood” had the higher rating. … Best Picture always is so subjective. Different groups, different results. Even with the preferential ballot, we’ve been told that if one movie doesn’t get enough No. 1’s, another movie with the most No. 2’s could win. So how is that Best Picture? 😉
It means being able to win a preferential ballot. Any film which can’t win in a preferential ballot can potentially be called divisive. There are films which have passionate support and there are films which may not have as much passionate support but get more support from other because they are not as disliked as other films. People argue that “Spotlight” and TBS are similar films and share similar support and they might cancel out each other. That’s way it usually works plural vote but in a preferential ballot this overlap of supporters actually helps. I believe since these TR, “Spotlight” and TBS are three frontrunners I think the winner will be which of them can the most votes from the third place film. And since TBS “Spotlight” have similar supporters, they are likely to benefit each other. TR will looking for help from MM: FR supporters and the Martian but that may not be enough.
I actually don’t think you ever predict wrong as such. I think you know each year what will win but stick with your favourite.
Current gold derby
experts
TR 15
spotlight 5
TBS 5
Editors
TR 7
spotlight 0
TBS 0
Total
TR 22
Spotlight 5
TBS 5
TR a much stronger favourite on GD than Birdman was.
And, again, we are not throwing out the stats if TR wins, we are recognising that the stats are not absolute, they help us predict trends. Cant be dogmatic about them.
Interesting, though BIRDMAN has an audience score of 78% compared to BOYHOOD’s 81%.
Our friend john smith nails it,
Theoretically, 79% percent of Oscar voters could despise a movie — but as long as 21% of voters in each branch love that movie, it will still be nominated in every single category.
In fact, even with only 21% support in each category, there is no possible way that it won’t be nominated.
Not only is 21% all it takes to get a nomination — 21% guarantees a nomination.
Sorry. I know you guys are sick and tired of my grade-school math examples. But grade-school math is all it takes to work this out.
*not only that. A lot of films are nominated with less than 21% support.
I know y’all enjoy the hell out of my illustrations:
Movie 1 – 40% of branch members love it and choose it
Movie 2 – 30% of branch members love it and choose it
Movie 3 – 10% of branch members love it and choose it
Movie 4 – 5% of branch members love it and choose it
Movie 5 – 5% of branch members love it and choose it
(…and then 10% of branch members love and choose 5 other random movies but none of the other 5 movies exceed 5% support)
In this example we have two movies that go down in Oscar History as Oscar nominees — and we never find out that 95% of branch members like something else better.
95% of the branch members might think those 2 Oscar nominees are twin turds. But they both still get an Oscar nomination.
Because math is magical that way.
Ok…
You do realise that the number of experts predicting it is actually a stat, right?
And this year. TR has the lowest audience score amongst the 8 nominees, though at 85%, it’s not that terrible.
1. Spotlight
2. Room
3. The Martian
4. TBS (tie)
4. Brooklyn (tie)
6. Bridge of Spies
7. Mad Max
8. The Revenant
That’s right. Thanks.
That was 1994 (or 1995 in ceremony year) when Forrest Gump was chosen as Best Picture winner.
As always, so thorough. Only you can make stats so fun to read.
I do take issues with using critics as barometer for industry voting, especially since AMPAS sometimes go against critics in the home stretch. I do think there’s another way to look at the rating of a film…
The AUDIENCE scores. Believe it or not, audience’s taste coincide more closely with AMPAS than the critics. I did a cursory glance at the recent BP winners and check their audience ratings at Rotten Tomatoes. We can use Cinemascore as well, but alas, they don’t always have scores for smaller films.
In the past 15 years or so, the film between the frontrunners with a higher audience score end up winning. Yes, even during the upset year of Crash and Brokeback Mountain. Crash had 88% and BBM 82%.
The only two times that a film with a lower audience score won was last year’s Birdman (it scored slightly below Boyhood and Grand Budapest) and 1999’s Shakespeare in Love. And without coincidence, these two films are about actors and the creative process which satisfies AMPAS’s sweet tooth.
Well, just because a film has so many nominations doesn’t mean it has majority support. That’s what we mean when we are talking about divisive.
“1995 – PGA/DGA/SAG – Apollo 13 / Oscar Mel Gibson, Braveheart (no SAG ensemble nomination)”
If I’m not mistaken, the first year of SAG, there was no ensemble category.
TR= not rated. PGA, Screenplay and SAG ensemble, those are its real hurdles. TR is lowest rated out all 8 nominated films, so its valid to point that divisive film. It failed at preferential ballot, which back up the divisive problems.
The Revenant is going to win. The Revenant is divisive. SO, the divisive film is going to win this time. Happy Divisive Oscar everyone.
It’s not only his score. TR has is the lowest rated film out of all 8 nominees. Morgenstern is highly respected film critic and he’s cited to try explain why TR is divisive even to a guy who taste usually matches the Academy. It’s not just a lone critic.
“His name alone” didn’t work for him with WoWS.
MC and RT = Straw clutching
NONE of those films had the stats against them. You could’ve gone for these or the film which, but they all had the stats to win BP. They were all great film, so if you can’t decide by stats, then you choose your favourite.
The Revenant is going to win.
Do we really need ANOTHER piece about TR negatives?
I don’t think it is a matter of forgiving you for being wrong. Its that, year after year, you stick with the film you like best despite evidence to the contrary, and against the other experts.
Social Network, Lincoln, Boyhood, The Big Short.
You have told us to predict TR.
I don’t know why you don’t just predict what you think will win.
And I don’t understand why you refuse to measure TR over performance in the noms, showing up in 4 additional categories, showing such wide support.
The other major factor is momentum. TBS won nothing major before or after PGA. TR is the ‘it’ film right now, and the DGA and BAFTA gives it a great head of steam as voting starts.
TR winning beats all common sense and not just the stats. I mean, how can the lowest rated film win BP? It’s lowest rated out of 8 films. How can that be called the Best Picture?
It’s kinda funny to me how everyone thought that the Golden Globe’s going for The Revenant was such a fluke when it happened. And here we are. ^_^
”For one thing, if you take away the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs — neither group awarded Inarritu or Birdman last year, as the Academy did.” … I don’t think it’s fair to ”The Revenant” to diminish its Globe or BAFTA wins as just ”makeup” awards. You can bet that if ”The Big Short” or ”Spotlight” had won either (or both), its supporters would be pointing them as evidence of an imminent Best Picture win. Inarritu won DGA last year; they didn’t owe him an IOU, so why did he win? … Yes, these are reasons why ”The Revenant” shouldn’t win, but: Why didn’t ”The Big Short” win SAG, after winning PGA? Or DGA? And why didn’t ”Spotlight” win the PGA or DGA?
Anyway, Indiewire’s Anne Thompson does make a good case for ”The Revenant” winning, and that couldn’t have been easy for her to write because she’s been a big, BIG booster of ”Mad Max: Fury Road” for a long time.
http://blogs.indiewire.com/thompsononhollywood/why-inarritus-the-revenant-will-likely-win-best-picture-20160218
More certainly. Some Academy members tend to watch only the big films and reward those films. That’s why some films get more nominations than it was predicted to get. SAG have better selection process because they use a committee which watch a lot films rather than blind voting like some Academy members.
What if SAG voters, by and large, see a wider variety of movies than Oscar voters? I’ll bet that more Oscar voters saw ”The Revenant” than ”Sicario” and ”Beasts of No Nation.” Which might explain why ”Sicario” has only 3 Oscar nominations and ”Beasts” has none.
Exactly! Preferential ballot makes it difficult for divisive films to win. TR didn’t win PGA but it should have if it really the frontrunner.
Well “Crash” won, so it clearly doesn’t. This one of the things preferential ballot makes it difficult for films deemed to be divisive to win BP. If TR is the frontrunner, as some have claimed, it would have won PGA. But it didn’t, TBS did.
But I specifically picked THIS critic by going back and looking at all of the best picture winners. So even poorly reviewed films like Crash and A Beautiful Mind got a 70 from him. A 40 is very harsh for a critic whose tastes seem to be in harmony with the Academy’s for a great many years.
Still, it might not matter – it might matter. We have no way of knowing. It’s only being brought up because of the preferential ballot. Without it there would not be a question.
How about the news that Fandango has bought Rotten Tomatoes? Gizmodo.com says Fandango’ll ruin it.
http://gizmodo.com/fandango-will-probably-ruin-rotten-tomatoes-1759743925
About PGA:
Sample of producers only + People can and do change their minds = STAT for 6 years is not conclusive.
And it will be proven on Feb. 28th.
Exactly! It doesn’t matter if the PGA was “wrong” with “Gravity” because one of them was bound to wrong. It doesn’t matter even if it got 99 film “wrong” as long as it right the one that mattered.
“TR is viewed divisive”, true, on critics level. But do critics vote for best picture? This is not a strong enough argument to prove that voters find TR divisive.
TR is viewed divisive due to its less than stellar reviews. The lone critic is picked because he represent these and he is such a respected film critic who is fair and never goes out of his way to not like a film.
Hey Sasha, you forgot that Hamlet in 1948 is the only Best Picture winner to not be nominated for screenplay at both Oscar and WGA. Remember, Gravity missed out on those two same nominations and that was one key factor to 12 Years a Slave pulling out that win.
TR does get the lowest MC, but that’s not my point here. I was simply commenting on this article which finds TR a divisive movie for AMPAS, based on one critic’s thought.
And if it doesn’t win will we why SAG didn’t like it? It can’t explain anything why he Hardy got Oscar. It is only baffling why he got it ahead of Elba and Del Toro.
Since Sasha uses only relative figures, not ratings (absolute):
TBS: 215 fresh reviews
TR: 235
Crash: 170
ABM: 204
Just thought it was fair to show the good as well.
One lone critic? TR has an MC score of 76. That one critic is one of the most respected film critics and he doesn’t normally not like a BP winner. There is something that and many others don’t like about TR. It was much the same when “Crash” won.
I already explained my view on SAG’s nominations and why TR missed. When TR wins BP you will see what actors really think of TR after the shocking SAGs nominations. By the way, Hardy got an Oscar nomination.. strange huh? oh no wait.. that’s because those nominations came way later and clearly they did like the acting.
TR haters are really in desperate mode. After using rotten tomatoes (which has nothing to do with the academy), now 1 single critic can show this movie is divisive for the academy as well.
I don’t tie is possible for BP. PGA was correct still correct with BP and I don’ think that “Gravity” miss is statistically relevant. and remember a cup half full/empty is still better than one that is completely empty.
Yes, I do. A lot of people think too, including SAG. Your argument just doesn’t wash TR was beaten by three films which weren’t even nominated for BP. That’s how much they think of TR as an ensemble film. And by the way, just because names are in a film doesn’t make it a good ensemble.
Being half-right still means PGA was half-wrong. 😉
So unless Best Picture was a tie, too, I don’t consider that year’s PGA to be completely correct.
“Although, it’s worth noting that we can’t REALLY use 2013, since there was a tie. We know that the PGA did fail, and the PGA didn’t fail.”
I don’t agree with that. There is nothing in the rule which says PGA cannot have more one winner. It had two shots and it got right with “12 years A Slave” but wrong with “Gravity”. The PGA couldn’t have been right with both but it could’ve been wrong with both. The more shots you have the more likely you will hit with one. The PGA was at least half right which is still better than being completely wrong like the DGA and SAG.
It’s possible. DiCaprio was the only one from the three late-breaking movies (”The Revenant,”’ ”Joy” and ”The Hateful Eight”) to get a SAG nomination. I agree that there’s a lotta respect for his work at SAG (as you noted with ”Edgar” & his double nominations for ”Blood Diamond” and ”The Departed”). Throw in his Ensemble nominations, and ”The Revenant” marked his 9th SAG nod, but the first time they actually gave him the win.
Not good ensemble?? You really think SOC ensemble is better than TR? Wow.. Maybe we saw two different movies.
LD, Hardy, Poulter, Gleeson and A. Redcloud >>> Giamatti (never saw him so bad) and the gang.
To be honest, and obviously this is just speculation, I think Leo got a nomination thanks to his name alone. There had been clips and talks about the movie and his role well before screenings so his nomination is not surprise. Clearly he is respected as an Actor with 4 previous SAG nominations (even for J. Edgar and 2 in the same year: 2006).
Love this. SO thorough! Should be fascinating to see whether The Revenant or Spotlight bucks the trend or if it’s TBS (stats).
SOC is PGA nominated film and has a good ensemble. Leo was nominated by SAG but they didn’t nominated his film because it isn’t good ensemble. I think the reason for that is obvious, it’s the lack of good screenplay and the fact that lead actor rarely shares a scene the rest of cast. TR is a one man show with silent performance.
“Not enough dialogue? I’ll buy that. After all, it just won the BAFTA without a screenplay nomination. Why can’t it win the Oscar?” No, I’m not buying that. “The Artist”, anyone? It was nominated everywhere and even won BAFTA screenplay. “why it didn’t win the ACE Eddie Drama award against Mad Max: Fury Road (Mad Max had better editing)” A film doesn’t need to win ACE or editing to win BP. It just has to be nominated unless the film was deliberately “unedited” like “Birdman”. “A Revenant win would bust all of the stats wide open such that there would be little point even writing about them ever again.” The longer the stats hold the more likely it is they will break. If TR breaks them, it doesn’t mean they’re no longer valid. In fact, they are more likely to start a new cycle of the stats holding. I don’t think TR is about to start an era of similar films. Screenplay and acting have always dominated BP and will continue. Nothing in the past decade has indicated TR happening and in fact, screenplay has become even more important as 9 of the last ten BP winners have won screenplay.
Feli, I couldn’t agree more. I don’t think enough of the SAG nominators saw ”The Revenant” in time; Hardy and the excellent ensemble definitely should’ve made the cut. Apparently enough of ’em saw it to get DiCaprio in, but if they had more time (like the Oscar voters), I bet that Hardy would’ve been nominated.
I must admit ”Trumbo” gave me a scare with those 3 SAG nominations, including awards darlings Cranston and Mirren. Gotta say I was relieved to see that the BAFTAs and the Oscars largely ignored it.
The real headscratcher at SAG was Sarah Silverman (”I Smile Back”). She got that one nomination and wasn’t mentioned by any of the other major Oscar precursors. (She got a nod from the D.C. Critics.)
I agree with the pundits who believe the SAG nominations should come out a week or two later to give the late-breaking movies a fairer chance to contend. But apparently the SAG’s priority seems to be beating the Globes to the punch. The SAGs announced on Dec. 9; the Globes, on Dec. 10. Big deal. This year, I believe SAG matched only 13 out of 20 Oscar nominees. (Oh, well, at least SAG nominated Idris Elba.)
The Revanant is winning. I say it without complete confidence, but it seemed to really connect with the boxoffice and viewers at just the right time. I think its December release really helped it. It provided the indecisive voters an alternative.
About the SAG miss of TR I can only say, we shouldn’t take the SAG so seriously this year..
Ensemble for Trumbo and SOC??
Those places should have been for TR and either Brooklyn, Carol or even SW. Leo, Hardy, Poulter, Gleeson and A. Redcloud.. did a great job so I’m afraid that most likely SAG actually didn’t see TR in time but surely, they have caught up by now and realised their mistake.
Also, Helen Mirren with 2 nominations? Sarah Silverman?
I must say though, that Supporting Male was a great line up.
I’ll just leave this here:
http://redcarpetrampage.com/