2010 Oscar Contest Results
Here at Robot Panic headquarters, staff has been working around the clock to tabulate the scores from last week’s Oscar prediction contest. It was a close race, with the runner-up coming only one point behind the winner. But we have a winner all the same, and they’ve won their choice of any one of the ten films nominated for Best Picture on DVD! That’s one hell of a prize, so be sure to send your mailing address to mailbag@drunkengamersradio.com to claim it!
Before I announce the winners, let’s give give out some superlative awards.
First is the Intuition award, given to the person who best predicted the final outcome. This was actually a tie between Alex Ma and Brian Bedard, who racked up 34 points in the prediction category. That’s a whopping 17/24 correct! Not too shabby, you two.
Next up is the In-Touch award, given to the person whose desired outcome was closest to the final results. This award goes to Grant Montgomery, who got 14/24 correct in the “want to win” category. Looks like you’ve got great taste, Grant!
The Well Duh award is given to the category or categories in which there was a unanimous outcome. This year’s award is a tie between Best Visual Effects (Avatar) and Best Animated Feature (Up).
Finally, the Who Now? award is given to the category or categories in which not a single person correctly predicted the outcome. This is another tied category. The first award goes to Best Animated Short. Our voters came out overwhelmingly for Wallace And Gromit: A Matter of Loaf & Death to win it, but it ended up going instead to Logorama. The second category is Documentary Short; Here the favorite was The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant, but the award instead went to Music By Prudence.
Now before we get to the scores themselves, let’s take a quick look at the breakdown (my statistics professor would be proud):
- Mean: 35.89
- Median: 36
- Mode: 36
- Range: 27
- Standard Deviation: 7.45 (With a standard variance of 55.56)
And now, for the part you’ve all been waiting for: The results! If you don’t see your name below, it is likely that you were disqualified, either for submitting your ballot too late, submitting an incomplete ballot or not formatting the ballot correctly.
1.) Brian Bedard – 46 points
2.) Geraldine – 45 points
3.) Alex Ma – 44 points
4.) Rusty Shackleford – 43 points
5.) David Webb – 40 points
6.) TIE: Scott Grannan & Josh Hunt – 39 points
7.) Nathan Godwin – 37 points
8.) TIE: Apoch, Tiggermango, Grant Montgomery & myself – 36 points
9.) Ryker XL – 35 points
10.) John Luedtke – 34 points
11.) Alek Shybut – 33 points
12.) Skeletonframes – 24 points
13.) Lag – 23 points
14.) Fluffynuts – 19 points
Thanks again to everyone for entering!
March 8th, 2010 at 1:30 pm
Haha, I knew I should have made secondary picks in the screenplay categories. Congrats to Brian!
March 8th, 2010 at 1:56 pm
hey, I said I hadn’t heard of most of them
March 8th, 2010 at 2:00 pm
Oops, the median is supposed to be 36 as well.
March 8th, 2010 at 4:36 pm
Since you’re making corrections, you might also want to fix the numbers for the placement of the contestants. There were 18 contestants so last place is not 14th.
7.) should be 8.)
8.) should be 9.)
9.) thru 14.) should be 13.) thru 18.)
Congrats, Brian.
March 8th, 2010 at 7:52 pm
Thanks again for doing this Mitch, even though you bailed on the live chat. That was the best time I have had watching the Oscars.
We can all look back and say gee, did The Hurt Locker deserve all those awards? And I must say, F YEAH! Go out and see this movie folks, it was truly great…
March 8th, 2010 at 8:29 pm
I did even worse than I felt like I did. And I didn’t feel very confident with my choices.
Logorama really should not have won best animated short. That’s a rare category where I actually saw all of the entries and The Lady and the Reaper (not Raper) was definitely the best of the bunch. While technically excellent, Logorama didn’t form any sort of coherent plot nor did it have a greater meaning, other than, “look how cool it is when we make every car and building out of a well known logo. and Ronald McDonald kicks a kid in the face.” OK, maybe it should have won for homicidal R-Mac, alone.
March 8th, 2010 at 8:35 pm
Also, this is for all of you Christoph Waltz fans.
A short documentary about what Waltz himself calls, “The role of his lifetime”.
Stick with it till at least a minute in. It’s worth it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUbGcRJUDu0&feature
March 8th, 2010 at 11:42 pm
@MeatMan – But any placement of those people would be completely arbitrary, hence the reason I grouped them in ties.
@Ryker – Sorry I didn’t show up, but I was at another Oscar party, and it would have seemed weird if I was chatting on my laptop the whole time. :/
@Skeletonframes – I actually disagree with you on The Lady and The Reaper. The problem I had with both TLaTR and French Roast is that they both felt like they lacked a distinct narrative style of their own. While TLaTR looked beautiful, it never really went beyond a too-long Looney Toons bit. I mean, they literally had the popping in-and-out of file cabinet drawers gag. And to say that Logorama has nothing below the surface is kind of missing the point. the filmmakers were trying to make a film about commercialism, not only the fact that the entire world was made out of corporate logos, but also because despite the fact that the film relies so heavily on a pre-existing knowledge of these brands on behalf of the viewer, it doesn’t matter, because these logos are so ingrained in our consciousness that we accept it.
But the Animated Shorts nominated this year were pretty lacking. In fact, I can name three animated shorts that are far better than ANY of the nominees this year.
1.) Skhizein – This one haunted me for days after I watched it. Amazing short about the incredible toll of schizophrenia. Watch it here: http://www.slashfilm.com/2009/12/24/watch-this-skhizein-an-incredible-animated-sci-fi-short-film/
2.) Runaway – Cordell Baker’s newest short (he directed “The Cat Came Back,” which won for best animated short in 1986) is a funny film with a ton of heart and some fairly black comedy. It’s has the slapstick feel that The Lady and The Reaper and French Roast were going for, but with a style all its own. Watch it here: http://films.nfb.ca/runaway/
3.) Kinematograph – A great short about an obsessive inventor, this may also be one of the most visually stunning animated films I’ve seen in some time. The opening shot is, to borrow a cliché phrase, absolutely breathtaking. Unlike the first two, I couldn’t find the full version online, but here is the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcHX2ta8HFk
March 8th, 2010 at 11:51 pm
Oops, looks like that was just the trailer for Runaway.