The B+ Oscar Ballot: Guide to the 96th Academy Awards
Here we are again. Another year, another Oscars.
One thing I really liked about this year is that there’s a consensus about the nominees. Most people seem to generally feel like the Academy got it right. You can quibble about a few specific categories and nominations and omissions, but overall, the films that got the majority of the nominations are largely ones everyone agrees are very good films. And it’s rare to have that kind of unanimity for an Oscar year.
The downside to that unanimity is that it typically leads to a feast or famine type of year, with films being either wholly embraced or wholly rejected. I don’t know if we’re gonna get that smorgasbord of films winning like we have in recent years. But that’s why we do the analysis, to see what’s actually gonna happen.
I will say the thing I say every year — I’m not doing this anymore to see how well I can guess. I, of course, want to get everything right, but the end goal for me is more to see how accurately I can pick apart each category to predict how well things are going to go. To me, having the film I chose as the secondary choice beating the first choice is almost as good as getting it right. I’m okay if the analysis is correct and I just got beat. I’m just here to try to help everyone else do as well on their ballots as they possibly can.
Now let’s see how well we can do this year. (more…)
