The Manifesto’s Guide to March Madness 2012

Jeremy BeckUncategorized

This year, the NCAA Tournament committee is finally disclosing its “Seed List”, in which it ranks every team that made the tourney from 1 through 68. In terms of generating Internet traffic, this won’t exactly be the Starr Report or casting news from The Hunger Games, but it’s still guaranteed to get thousands of basketball nerds salivating. Yet the mere acknowledgement that such a list even exists reveals a grave problem with postseason collegiate basketball: March Madness is deeply unfair.

Look, I love March Madness – it’s unequivocally my favorite sporting event of the year. And in terms of amateur athletics, I probably shouldn’t be griping about basketball’s system given that college football could have a Planet-of-the-Apes-level uprising on its hands at any moment. But that doesn’t change the fact that the current bracketing system, while numerically satisfying and visually sexy, is prone to wildly illogical results. Read More

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Oscars Analysis 2011: Show recap

Jeremy BeckOscars
I’m posting this before I’ve had a chance to filter through the media consensus on tonight’s Oscars, which is probably for the best. Despite investing a disturbing amount of energy to analyzing and predicting the Academy Awards, I’ve never been particularly passionate about the show itself, and I’m hardly qualified to critique a ceremony that functions primarily as a self-affirming exercise in importance. That isn’t to say that I dislike the show – I typically like it fine – but for me, the hoopla, fashion, and resulting snark are tangential to the raw data of the awards themselves.My guess, though, is that most people were thoroughly ambivalent about tonight’s telecast. Self-congratulatory chuckles aside, the return of Billy Crystal paid its expected dividends – in addition to a solid introductory montage, he crushed his opening monologue and song – but it added little actual spark. Following Brett Ratner’s firing and Eddie Murphy’s subsequent departure, the Academy sprinted toward Crystal, ever the safe choice, and he gave them exactly what they wanted. The show also clocked in at a lean 188 minutes, which is still far too long but an improvement over years’ past. (Trimming the song performances helped. Next up: Axe the utterly useless talking heads of actors yammering about why they like movies. I like movies. I do not care why Reese Witherspoon or Adam Sandler likes movies.)If Crystal was predictably serviceable (and a happy improvement over James Franco), the speeches were typically boring, and most of the presentations seemed strained. Those with promise (specifically the Downey, Jr./Paltrow pairing, as well as Ben Stiller playing straight against Emma Stone) meandered without ever hitting the bull’s-eye, and even the Farrell/Galifianakis combo failed to deliver a true belly laugh. In general, the show was a vaguely pleasant snooze.
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Oscars Analysis 2011: Prediction roundup

Jeremy BeckOscars

Sobering note: In the extraordinarily unlikely scenario in which all of my predictions are accurate, then the actual Oscar winner will match up with my chosen winner in only seven categories. But I can hardly expect the Academy’s collective taste to match with my own personal preferences, so perhaps it isn’t all that sobering. Besides, if they agreed with me all the time, then I’d have nothing to complain about.

In any event, here you have it: the Manifesto’s complete 2011 Oscar predictions, condensed into a single post for maximum convenience. Predictions are listed in order from least confident to most confident (as always, I’m omitting the shorts). Read More

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Oscars Analysis 2011: Best Picture and Director

Jeremy BeckOscars

Fact #1: The Manifesto has correctly predicted each of the past five Best Picture winners.

Fact #2: The Manifesto has correctly predicted each of the past eight Best Director winners.

Am I gloating? Not at all. Perhaps it’s due to the rise of the Internet era – in which every news nugget, every minor awards’ ceremony, every incident that could possibly impact the Oscars is immediately devoured, over-scrutinized, and spat back out by the blogosphere – but there hasn’t been a truly suspenseful Best Picture race since 2006, when The Departed held off a late charge from Little Miss Sunshine that would have sent Martin Scorsese on a murderous rampage, not to mention caused my father to have a heart attack. (For the record, I got that one right. My last miss was the year before, in the Oscar Race That Shall Not Be Named.) This year, the procession has been even more formulaic than normal, and tonight’s opening of the envelope feels less like a suspenseful announcement than a dutiful, long-awaited coronation. Read More

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Oscars Analysis 2011: Best Actor and Actress

Jeremy BeckOscars

Is there an industry in America right now experiencing a bigger talent boom than the acting trade? Pick a movie playing at your local multiplex, and regardless of its overall quality – which is typically dependent on the talents of the director and the screenwriter – it’ll invariably be headlined by highly talented lead performers, whether they’re in-their-prime movie stars, chameleonic character actors, ageless veterans who can still reach 95 with their fastball, or frighteningly self-assured up-and-comers. Throw in a preposterously deep pool of imported talent, and English-language actors are on a “UCLA in the ’60s and ’70s” run right now.

Don’t believe me? I’ll break it down for you: Read More

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