Oscars 2010: The Results

Another year, another Oscars ceremony.

The Hurt Locker won six awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, trouncing Avatar which failed to a win any of the major gongs. Acting prizes went to the expected recipients and Precious won a writing award. Generally speaking, positive results across the board.

Staying up to watch the coverage on Sky was another interesting experience. Considering they probably pay a bit of money for the rights it seems strange that their studio guests were quite as irrelevant. Don't get me wrong, I quite like Ronni Ancona and David Baddiel but I'm not sure how exactly they were booked.

Anyway, to my central point: all four members of the studio team guessed every single one of the awards on a piece of paper before the ceremony began and the top score was 16 correct answers out of 24. Similarly, on the Guardian Unlimited podcast two critics that I admire immensely - Xan Brooks and Jason Solomons - managed the same score. This ultimately isn't important, but for the fact that I did the same exercise and got 17 correct (although admittedly the difference may have been a flukey guess on Best Short Documentary). This means either the awards are incredibly predictable or I am a genius and I'm fairly sure what the answer to that is.

The betting mentioned in previous blog posts wasn't quite as fruitful. I comfortably made my money back and although I wasted £8 of my £24 profit on my two outsider bets still ended with a £16 return on the evening. It added a little spice to proceedings, if nothing else.

The ceremony was actually not too bad; I thought that Steve Martin was exceptionally funny and made me laugh out loud on a number of occasions (Meryl Streep's Nazi memorabilia in particular). What unfortunately let the event down was the fact that the awards were so obviously nailed in, there wasn't really any tension except for the final and critical Best Picture decision going to The Hurt Locker.

That said, I can't pretend that I didn't whoop for joy when Tom Hanks read that result out. I had been certain - despite betting on Bigelow's masterpiece - that Avatar was going to win and it came as a real surprise that it lost out.

And finally, it was nice to see that the Academy managed to make their traditional balls-up with the Foreign Language film. Given that A Prophet and The White Ribbon were both films at a supremely high level, it rather tickles me how they can never quite get it right. I almost think that its a wilful attempt to be subversive in an award category that none of the voters actually care about. The White Ribbon? Boo sucks to you Haneke. A Prophet? Boo sucks again. Lets reward some film that nobody's seen, it'll be a right laugh.

Either way, there wasn't many wrong decisions on the night and I'll take a Hurt Locker victory any day of the week. Roll on next year.

Oscars 2010: The Betting

Depending on how you look at it, betting on the Oscars is not an especially fruitful pursuit. The odds you generally get are hardly worth the flutter, especially if we have a procession of Award season winners floating through.

Because of the fact that nearly all the categories can be predicted without a great deal of ease, it means that you've got to put a few quid on to make any real return. Despite all this, I ultimately like to bet on who I think will win to try and spice up my evenings entertainment and this year thought I would publish who I've gone for and why. I put on £40 worth of bets (and got a free £20 bet courtesy of Paddy Power) and this is where my money lies:

Ms Bullock was obviously the free bet, chosen to try and bring in some cash. I've chosen to back The Hurt Locker for Best Picture and Best Director (and a double for both to happen) - and this is purely as an anti-Avatar bet. Bigelow is highly likely to take away Director although I still have the strong feeling that Avatar will nick the main prize.

Jeff Bridges is another no-brainer and he'll win me next to nothing but its virtually money in the bank so there's not so much risk. That leaves my wildcard bets: if either works then it will bring in some excellent returns, although that is probably unlikely.

Inglourious Basterds would be a fantastic winner for the Academy, purely on the basis that it would be a massive shock and a popular result, given that Tarantino is a hero to many. The reason why I've bet on it is not as much a subversive piece of anarchy, but because a view expressed by many is that the new voting system could benefit Inglourious (prinicipally this view was championed by Harvey Weinstein so it isn't entirely ridiculous). At the relatively long odds of 12-1, it was worth a gamble.

Carey Mulligan is my other special bet. I don't think she'll win, but Best Actress is a seriously poor field this year and if Sandra Bullock can be considered a strong favourite then there must be issues. Mulligan's performance is exceptional and more importantly, she seems to be very popular in Hollywood so it's a good outside bet.

Anyway, the dead cert bets should result in me making a small profit guaranteed. Lets all hope Inglourious makes me some real money...

Oscars 2010: Why Less Isn't Always More

So, it's Oscars night and in a matter of hours there will have been several bouts of tears, a load of undeserving awards (don't worry, I'm saving my Avatar rant until after it wins) and lots of expensive dresses waltzing up the red carpet.

This year sees a change of voting with the Best Picture award, with an increase in nominees up from 5 to 10. This means that there is room for films like A Serious Man and District 9 in the short-list and comes on the back of a number of issues from previous ceremonies.

Ultimately, this decision was based upon the performance of two movies last year: The Dark Knight and Wall-E. Both were good enough to be nominated for Best Picture but neither did; although they both picked up awards (Animated Feature for Wall-E and a posthumous acting gong for Heath Ledger). These were big, popular films that made the Academy seem out of touch with the general public who were increasingly switching off from the ceremony. What was billed as the Greatest Show on Earth was being serious questioned by the American public.

So this year, to accommodate such films the list was increased to ten. It was hailed as a good idea at the time, the chance to reward a foreign film perhaps or a film like Star Trek which was both successful and also an excellent production. Unfortunately these ideas haven't been followed through.

The biggest miss of the Academy was by ignoring any foreign films. Both A Prophet and The White Ribbon are better than any film of the Best Picture longlist but are left shunted out in their own Foreign Language category. When you take into account that Let The Right One In didn't even get nominated, it raises big question marks over the selection criteria.

So instead, we get District 9 and Up being nominated - two films that deserve such rewards and probably wouldn't have infiltrated the 5 film shortlist. You can probably add the Coen Brothers' excellent A Serious Man into that category too and I have no real complaints. My issues relate to two key points:

1) Most of the extra films nominated have absolutely zero chance of winning. It is ironic that in the year of widening the margins that there is the normal two horse race going on (with Avatar and the Hurt Locker)

2) By looking at the Best Director category, you can pretty much work out who would've been nominated if there was only 5 pictures in the category (i.e. those five films: Avatar, The Hurt Locker, Precious, Inglourious Basterds and Up In The Air). I can't help but feel that this devalues the whole process.

Finally - and this perhaps isn't the most important point for Hollywood - it allows a lot of substandard films into the list. An Education is a good film and I really enjoyed it but I struggle to feel that it is at the standard of an Oscar nomination. You can literally triple that sentiment for The Blind Side. Even films like Up and District 9 - despite my comments above - fall into that category.

For Hollywood, this is a side point. If it increases revenue to the film industry and gets a few more ticket sales for a few more films, then all the better. If it adds a little spice to an ailing ceremony and adds a few more million onto the TV figures then that's perhaps more important. Even if it actually adds no extra excitement at all.