Final yr, I dominated my pleasant Oscar pool, with 18 out of 24 classes guessed accurately. By the point they acquired to the final 4 classes, it was mathematically inconceivable for anybody on the celebration I attended to beat me, after which I acquired these 4 classes proper, too. I say that to say this: oh, how the mighty have fallen. Maybe because of having wager towards Roger Ebert in an online competitors, and thereby permitting an excessive amount of of his presumed knowledge to affect my selections, I failed miserably this yr, with solely 15 appropriate guesses. I did handle to outguess Ebert by one vote, however not fairly as merely as that makes it sound: he picked Geoffrey Rush for Finest Supporting Actor and I picked Christian Bale, who gained; I additionally guessed accurately within the make-up class (Rick Baker and Dave Elsey for The Wolfman) whereas Ebert guessed Adrien Morot for Barney’s Model, however then he managed to get a degree again within the Finest Director class (extra on that shortly).
Within the unofficial Oscar pool on the celebration I attended this yr, nonetheless, I used to be useless final, out of the 4 of us who stayed to the top and put in our 5 bucks. The worst half was the 2 classes by which I attempted to be shrewd and voted towards my very own personal favorites, solely to see them win in any case; these had been Finest Supporting Actress, gained by Melissa Leo for The Fighter (I predicted Hailee Steinfeld for True Grit, a choice which I used to be always second-guessing), and Finest Unique Rating, gained by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for The Social Community (I deferred to the knowledge of Ebert and guessed Alexandre Desplat forThe King’s Speech, so we each misplaced that class). On the opposite hand, I had a sense Shaun Tan and Andrew Ruhemann’s “The Misplaced Factor” would pull an upset and win Finest Animated Short, however I went with my personal favourite in that class, Teddy Newton’s “Day and Night time.” “The Misplaced Factor” did certainly win, which I ought to have guessed partially as a result of the truth that everybody rightly anticipated Lee Unkrich’s Toy Story 3 to win Finest Animated Characteristic, and there was actually a very good probability of the Academy not permitting Pixar, who additionally produced “Day and Night time,” to have a monopoly on the animation classes. Politics apart, “The Misplaced Factor” is a fantastic little movie with a extremely imaginative fashion, and its win actually didn’t make me sad.