Kinematoscope

1. Most Media Outlets Are Annoyingly Unfocused

I decided to include relevant quotes in previews of the acting races, so I searched the blagosphere for interviews with all 20 nominees. I will now paraphrase a couple of them for you:

THE MEDIA: Jeff Bridges, what was it like to be old in Crazy Heart!?

Jeff Bridges: Well, I-

THE MEDIA: WHO CARES!?! TRON! SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THE TRON SEQUEL!

Or, alternately:

THE MEDIA: Carey Mulligan, what's it like to play so much younger in An Education?!

Carey Mulligan: Well, I-

THE MEDIA:: WHO CARES! WALL STREET! SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THE WALL STREET SEQUEL!

Carey Mulligan: Well, I-

THE MEDIA: WHO CARES! SAY SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR BOYFRIEND SHIA LABEOUF FROM TRANSFORMERS! AAAAAH!

2. Money Can't Buy You Love

I think we all know what the biggest story is- or as Roger Ebert tweeted uber-succintly: (! > $)

3. There Are Certain Categories I Will Never Get Right

For the curious, I lost to Dave again 16 to 18, exactly the same result as last year.

But for the three years I've been doing this now, there are four categories I've yet to predict correctly even once: Documentary Short, both Sound Mixing and Sound Editing, and most embarrassingly Cinematography.

The other four I missed this year were Adapted Screenplay (the only true surprise of the night) Foreign Language and the remaining two short films (with a Wallace & Gromit film losing Animated Short the only other thing remotely shocking). Dave managed to miss only Foreign film, Sound Editing, Costumes, and Art Direction in addition to those two upsets.

4. Meryl Streep Will Never Win Another Oscar

I'm sorry, this is true. There's got to be a mathematical formula out there for the "overdue" factor- it would be age, number of popular roles, and some sort of personality index (off the charts for Jeff Bridges, negative for Eddie Murphy a few years back), all divided by total wins and nominations. So Bullock had a big number on top over nothing on the bottom (let's call it 1 because you can't divide by 0), while Streep had a huge factor to divide by. Of course this same formula would probably tell me Christopher Plummer should have won Supporting Actor..

5. There Is A Surefire Way To Win Adapted Screenply

And that is to mention the novel that was adapted every time people say the title, as with Precious: Based On The Novel 'Push' By Sapphire. Some people say that it was Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner's uncomfortable credit battle that cost them, but even so you didn't have to look hard at the list to find a replacement- it says it right there!

6. Do What The Guilds Tell You

The only mismatches for each respective guild this year were Adapted Screenplay (Sheldon and Turner won the WGA), Sound Effects Editing (Avatar), and Cinematography (The White Ribbon won the guild. Otherwise if you took the same choices as the CAS, ACE, ADG, CDG, PGA, DGA, SAG, VES, ASC, MPSE, and the WGA winners you'd have an easy 12/15 to start with, plus gimmes in Animated, Documentary, Makeup, Score, and Song. That's 17 correct choices without breaking a sweat, and then you just spitball Foreign Film and the three shorts to see if you can break twenty. Maybe that's what I'll do next year...