MovieManifesto

I’ll be honest: It could have been a lot worse.

I went into the nominations hoping to achieve an 80% success rate with my predictions, a goal my father accurately labeled “audacious”. I wound up at either 68% or 72% (27 or 28 of 40), depending on how you count (the ambiguity is courtesy of Kate Winslet, who complicated things as promised). Sure, I was hoping to do better, but I landed four out of five correct picks in three big categories (picture, director, and actor), plus I swept the Best Adapted Screenplay nods.

Could I have done better? Sure. I knew Best Original Screenplay would be tough, but I didn’t expect to butcher it the way I did, and I entirely misjudged the critical perception of Revolutionary Road. But if you’re expecting me to beat myself up, frankly I’m still more mad at myself for throwing away that inbounds pass in a corporate league basketball game two years ago. (Although frankly, it wasn’t my fault that nobody on the team knew how to set a cross-screen to break a press, but never mind.)

Anyway, here’s a recap as promised. Stay tuned to the blog over the next month, as the Manifesto picks the predicted Oscar winner of each category, as well as my personal preference and my thoughts on those who missed the cut. In the meantime, though, here’s how I did (incorrect predictions struck out in red and replaced with actual nominations): Read More

Every year, I attempt to predict the winner of each category of the Oscars. For all of the Manifesto’s bluster, this is its primary function, and frankly, it is a rather unoriginal one. People all around the country participate in haphazard Oscar pools (my sister even won one once, primarily because she went against my advice), and countless bloggers attempt to impress their readership with their powers of prognostication (though if I may say so, the Manifesto possesses a rather unique élan, but never mind). And in spite of the flamboyant touches I employ in an effort to distinguish the Manifesto from other commentaries of its ilk – the sports analogies, the base humor, the “are you fucking serious dude?” length – it remains at its core a simple handicapping system, much like any other.

As such, I need a challenge, something to put the Manifesto on the map, as it were. To wit: It seems to me that a more difficult undertaking than picking the winners of each category of the Oscars is to predict the nominations themselves. Of the hundreds (thousands?) of movies released in the world every year, only five merit a nomination in each category from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; correctly forecasting these selections is no easy task.

Yet such is my mission. Is it foolhardy of me to publish my predictions so brazenly, risking ridicule from my readers for years to come? Possibly. And yet if I am successful, glory shall be mine forevermore – I expect to be rewarded like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange, with naked women feeding me grapes while Beethoven plays in the background. Or I can just brag about it to my Dad before we move on to discuss Mike Dunleavy’s latest exploits. Either way, the nominations will be announced Thursday, January 22, so stay tuned for news of my success or failure. (For the record, if I make four out of five correct picks in a category, I’ll be happy. Also, I’m only doing the top eight categories because after that, people get bored. Or so I’ve been told.)

And so, I now present the Manifesto’s predictions for the 81st Annual Academy Awards Nominations: Read More