Edit: As this post goes along, it becomes an Oscar Night Gambling Post. I thought it might be fun to gamble along with me, so here are the rules:
1. You start with $100,000. You may gamble on as many or as few categories as you like. The only rule is that you have to use the same gambling odds that I did. The object is to end the night with more money than anyone else who tries this.
2. You can enter any way you please: in the comments, in another post, by emailing me, by tweeting me, by texting me, I don't care. If you want in, you're in.
3. I created a couple different parlays during this post (it's explained below). If you'd like to do a parlay as well, you can enter the odds into this parlay calculator in order to figure out what your final bet is. The calculator needs Vegas +/- figures, which just means it needs bets in multiples of a hundred. That is, if the odds are 2-to-1, you would enter in "200" - meaning, you bet $100 to win $200. If the odds are 5/4, you'd enter in "125." No decimals, though, so if the odds are 9/8, you'd enter in "113" rather than "112.50"
4. If that last rule was confusing, ignore it.
5. The contest closes at the start of the Oscars.
6. Anyone who beats me gets a prize.
7. Whoever beats me by the most gets a trophy.
On to the post!
Predicting The Oscars, Again.
I haven't done an Oscar post in a while.
I mean, obviously. I haven't posted in an exceptionally long while, either, so a lack of general content is also going to lead to a lack of Oscar content. That's just simple math.
But of all pieces to come back and do again, this does not seem like the one a sane man would choose. Oscar prediction pieces are mostly dull and all read about the same way. Each year that I do this sort of thing, I try and find a new way to go about it, with varied success. Or lack of success, frankly. Whatever the trick is for writing one of these in a way that leaps off your iPhone screen, I haven't found it.
Early on, my goal was to try to predict the Oscars with near-certainty. A couple years in, I'd succeeded – I was getting 19, 20, 21 out of 24 categories right. I'd miss out on things like Documentary Short and maybe a Supporting Actor, and that would be about it. It turns out, predicting the awards is a fairly simple task. Most of the big awards have already developed frontrunners, and the smaller awards are usually capably broken down by Oscar experts like Mark Harris and Dave Karger, so you can just copy those in. Being right is fun, but it's not that fun, unless you've got cash on the line.
Ooh, actually, that sounds like a fun angle. Let's do it that way.
Gambling On The Oscars! (We'll Make The Rules Up As I Go)
I'm going to pretend I have, say, $100,000 to freely gamble with however I chose (this is quite a leap, obviously, but go with me here). My goal will be to try and make as much money off of the Oscars as possible, by making bets based off of the gambling odds for each.
The problem being, of course, is that gambling sites only do odds for Best Picture, Best Director, and the acting categories. If there's a way to bet on Best Sound Editing or Best Documentary Feature, I don't know it. So I'll just have to invent the gambling odds for everything as I go.
That's a lot more work, but actually, that makes it a lot more fun. Feel free to bet against me! Anyone who manages to beat me at my own game gets a prize of some sort. And a trophy to whoever beats me by the most!
Before I start, I should mention: I have done no Oscar prep this year. I watched the Globes, and I've seen headlines about some of the other award shows, but I didn't read anyone's Oscar column or click through any slideshows. I'm going in blind. Let's see what I've picked up from the ether of the internet.
Category One: Best Picture
The Big Short (4/1)
Bridge of Spies (20/1)
Brooklyn (50/1)
Mad Max: Fury Road (12/1)
The Martian (15/1)
The Revenant (3/2)
Room (50/1)
Spotlight (2/1)
Early on, it looked like Spotlight was gonna run away with this. There simply wasn't a movie that everyone agreed on, so everyone seemed to say “well, I did like Spotlight a lot, so why not?”
But the Oscar season is too long to allow such a cavalier attitude. People get bored with general excellence, they want something fresh and exciting. So all of a sudden, people started talking up the other nominees, and as far as I can tell from my Twitter timeline, The Revenant is now the favorite.
But here's the thing: a lot of people hate The Revenant. They think it's ridiculous how much the filmmakers brag about how hard it was (they're right), and they think that the production mistook danger for excellence (they did, and still do). So I think the smart bet is still Spotlight at my fanciful 2-to-1 odds.
That said, I don't think anyone's that sold on Spotlight, and I'd rather go a little bit further afield. Everybody likes The Big Short, it's got a nice message for this #OscarsSoWhite telecast (this is what it looks like when white men screw everything up), and it has a likability to it that's missing from the other frontrunners. I'm betting on The Big Short, but I'm keeping my wager low: let's say three grand.
Bet: The Big Short. $3,000 at 4/1 to win $12,000
Category Two: Best Director
Alejandro Iñárritu, The Revenant (3/2)
George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road (4/1)
Adam McKay, The Big Short (5/1)
Lenny Abrahamson, Room (10/1)
Tom McCarthy, Spotlight (5/1)
Here's where all the flaws and frustrations of The Revenant don't hurt it: Best Director. People like Alejandro Iñárritu, his movies are visually incredible and have a strong trademark look to them. Plus, the other directors have serious reasons to knock them out of the race: Tom McCarthy's work was awfully subtle, and he also directed the truly horrific Adam Sandler comedy (I guess we have to call it that) The Cobbler, which is 8% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes right now. Plus, while the creators didn't exactly throw him under the bus, it was revealed that the original pilot for “Game of Thrones,” directed by McCarthy, was so awful that it had to be completely scrapped and re-filmed by another director. Not good vibes for McCarthy. The Big Short feels like a triumph of creativity but not necessarily direction, and there are some awfully dismissive “Lifetime Movie” critiques of Room. That leaves Mad Max, which isn't the sort of film of a traditional Best Director nominee but does hit an interesting voting block: those people about to be cast out of the Oscar voting.
You might have heard that after another year of all-white acting nominations, the Academy changed their voting rules, starting next year. People who have been inactive from movies for a certain period of time drop out of having voting privileges. Those people are, understandably, not happy about this. And who better to vote for then the guy who hasn't directed a live-action movie since 1998's Babe: Pig In The City?
I managed to talk myself out of that narrative as soon as I typed the words “Babe: Pig In The City.” I'm going Iñárritu.
Prediction: Alejandro Iñárritu at 3/2 odds. $6,000 down to win $9,000.
Category Three: Best Actor
Bryan Cranston, Trumbo (50/1)
Matt Damon, The Martian (40/1)
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant (11/10)
Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs (25/1)
Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl (20/1)
This has been Leo's from the beginning, but aren't you a little tired of the “Leo deserves an Oscar” narrative? I feel like that's been the only story from this Oscars we're going to remember, and at this point, he's a lock. But the major storyline to his campaign has been a) it's time for him to win one of these and b) it was really cold where they were shooting. I think the momentum for this has dried up.
You'd be smart to put all your cash on Leo at 11/10 – it's a mortal lock, you're bound to at least make a little cash out of the deal – but I'll gamble on a long shot just for the fun of it.
Bet: Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl - $1,000 at 20-to-1 to win $20,000.
Category Four: Best Actress
Cate Blanchett, Carol (15/1)
Brie Larson, Room (3/2)
Jennifer Lawrence, Joy (20/1)
Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years (40/1)
Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn (5/1)
Your best longshot here is Saoirse for her role in Brooklyn, which I believe I am required to refer to as a “luminous turn.” But Larson's been winning all these awards, she's the best young actress we have in Hollywood, and she's essentially impossible to dislike. There's been some Jlaw backlash, and I know people are turned cold by Blanchett in Room (not me, though). Plus, Charlotte Rampling said something racist, so she's out. I'm taking the smart money here.
Bet: Brie Larson, Room. $10,000 at 3/2 to win $15,000.
Category Five: Best Supporting Actor
Christian Bale, The Big Short (20/1)
Tom Hardy, The Revenant (6/1)
Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight (8/1)
Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies (3/1)
Sylvester Stallone, Creed (5/4)
There's been too much of a redemption story/give-it-to-the-old-timer narrative that you have to assume it's Sly's award going away. Meanwhile, neither Bale nor Ruffalo are even the best supporting actors in their own movies, and a Revenant sweep is not likely.
I haven't seen Bridge of Spies yet, but Academy voters have, and not everyone wants to fall in line with the going this-is-what-we're-doing-now storyline. I'll take the value bet on Mark Rylance. Why not?
Bet: Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies. $2,000 at 3-to-1 to win $6,000.
Category Six: Best Supporting Actress
Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight (30/1)
Rooney Mara, Carol (8/1)
Rachel McAdams, Spotlight (15/1)
Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl (5/4)
Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs (2/1)
I saw Winslet win the Golden Globe (not that the Globes matter much), but I know Vikander won the SAG award and maybe another big one, too – Critic's Choice? Vikander's the favorite, Winslet's the underdog, and if Vikander hadn't been nominated for The Danish Girl, she would have been nominated for Ex Machina. So assume she's picking up the trophy.
That said, I'm going way afield for this one. I thought Rooney Mara was positively effervescent in Carol (now there's a luminous turn), and I'm swinging for the fences on this one.
Bet: Rooney Mara, Carol. $3,000 at 8-to-1 to win $24,000.
Okay, so, summing up, that's $25,000 bet so far on the six major categories, for a possible winnings of $86,000. But let's make a little side bet, going the other way.
Let's throw together a parlay* of the major acting categories together: Leo plus Brie plus Sly plus Vikander equals odds just underneath 25/1 (I don't know how to calculate this. I threw it into a parlay calculator online. Don't ask me how we got here). So if I lay $5,000 on all four of those winning together, I stand to win $127,890 off of that. That's obviously outrageously high, which means I've been doing this totally wrong up until now, but I don't care because this is all imaginary anyway.
*a parlay is a collection of bets in which the odds of the bets are multiplied, but all of the bets have to come true to collect. If even one misses, you lose your cash.
Total Bet So Far: $30,000
Remaining Pot: $70,000
Okay, let's hit some of the other categories. Normally I've got more of a read on these than I do this year, since I've read at least one Oscar column at this point. This year, I'm just a babe in the woods, though unlike most babies, one who saw 35 theatrical releases this year.
However, not all of those movies are well represented. One of those movies was Pitch Perfect 2, for example, which I'm mostly sure is not nominated here.
Category Seven: Best Original Screenplay
Matt Charman, the Coen Brothers, Bridge of Spies (3/1)
Alex Garland, Ex Machina (5/1)
Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley, and Ronnie del Carmen, Inside Out (3/1)
Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer, Spotlight (2/1)
Jonathan Herman, Andrea Berloff, S. Leigh Savidge, and Alan Wenkus, Straight Outta Compton (2/1)
Tough times on this one. I picked these odds mostly randomly, because none of them really felt like a favorite. Throwing the #OscarsSoWhite problem into the mix: voters want to honor Straight Outta Compton, but they don't want to do it by giving an award to the four white writers who worked on the piece. Plus, lots of writers is always a downside – people like voting for auteurism, as opposed to the Hollywood workshop system. So even though Inside Out is probably the most creative of the pieces, and people value Pixar's creativity, I'm going the other way. I'm gonna say that this will be the consolation prize for Spotlight. But I don't feel good about it.
Bet: Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer, Spotlight. $3,000 at 2-to-1 to win $6,000.
Category Eight: Best Adapted Screenplay
Adam McKay and Charles Randolph, The Big Short (from “The Big Short” by Michael Lewis) (2/1)
Nick Hornby, Brooklyn (from “Brooklyn” by Colm Tóibín) (10/1)
Phyllis Nagy, Carol (from “The Price of Salt” by Patricia Highsmith) (8/1)
Drew Goddard, The Martian (from “The Martian,” by Andy Weir) (2/1)
Emma Donoghue, Room (from “Room” by Emma Donoghue) (5/1)
I have to figure this comes down to Drew Goddard's engaging adaptation of Andy Weir's novel – it kept a ton of what made the book feel lively and fun, while adding a lot of big-picture stakes to it – versus Adam McKay and Charles Randolph's adaptation of Lewis' nonfiction piece on the collapse of the housing market. And I'm going Big Short all the way here.
I just finished Lewis' book, and while Lewis is as good as anyone at making financial markets make sense to the average reader (I have no head for it at all, but was able to track right alongside him the whole way), the movie bundles all of that into a pack of energetic metaphors that wink at the camera in their oversimplification. See, look how easy all this is, the movie says. But the truth is, it's not easy. Making the average viewer understand what it looks like when Wall Street bankers are making side bets on CDOs means the filmmakers have to move mountains just to get the viewer up to the point of understanding “okay, so what went wrong here?” I know there were people turned off by the theatrical cutaways – Selena Gomez explaining finances at a blackjack table is a perhaps a bit too much of “let me make it easy on you, ol' sport” - but I also know people who couldn't follow everything even with those crutches, so your mileage may vary.
Ultimately, there are some fantastic bits of screenwriting here that fly by so casually the viewer never notices. In 30 seconds, Ryan Gosling explains the problem with CDOs using a Jenga tower that took Lewis three chapters to explain, and that was with Lewis trying his damnedest to make it easy on us. That The Big Short makes us feel smart - and eventually, righteously angry - in a world designed to make us feel dumb is barely short of a miracle. And so is the fact that I'm predicting the Oscar is going to the writer of Step Brothers, Talledega Nights, Good Cop, Baby Cop, and A Public Statement from Anthony Weiner's Penis.
Bet: Adam McKay and Charles Randolph, The Big Short. $5,000 at 2-to-1 to win $10,000.
Category Nine: Best Animated Feature Film
Anomalisa (4/1)
Boy & The World (10/1)
Inside Out (3/2)
Shaun the Sheep Movie (6/1)
When Marnie Was There (3/1)
This is probably the toughest group Pixar has every faced in this category, so it's lucky that a) Inside Out is one of the best features they've ever made, and b) voters are going to divide up between the other nominees, leading Pixar to come out the victor again. Possible spoiler: When Marnie Was There is the last feature film from Hayao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli, and there may be some pat-on-the-back-on-the-way-out, thanks-for-old-times to the voting.
Bet: Inside Out. $3,000 at 3-to-2 to win $4,500.
Category Ten: Best Foreign Language Film
Embrace of the Serpent (Columbia) (10/1)
Mustang (France) (4/1)
Son of Saul (Hungary) (5/4)
Theeb (Jordan) (15/1)
A War (Denmark) (8/1)
Apparently this is as good a pack of foreign language films as we've ever had, though I have seen none of them. And, importantly, neither have most of the voters – how many members of the Academy have time to pop in five different foreign films? - which means they're ineligible to vote on them.
Son of Saul is a heavy favorite – it's apparently an exceptionally well-told Holocaust story, and it won the Grand Prix at Cannes, and you never want to bet against either of those things. But I hear rumblings of people wanting to vote for Mustang, a film about five orphaned Turkish sisters, and that they hope it'll sneak out the win. Seems like a good bet to me.
Bet: Mustang (France), $4,000 at 4-to-1 to win $16,000.
Category Eleven: Best Documentary Feature
Amy (2/1)
Cartel Land (4/1)
The Look of Silence (3/1)
What Happened, Miss Simone (3/1)
Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight For Freedom (5/1)
I have seen none of these movies, but that is an unhappy looking slate. We have two documentaries about tragic music figures (Amy, about Amy Winehouse, and What Happened, Miss Simone, about Nina Simone), a movie about vigilante groups fighting in the Mexican drug war, a film about the Indonesian killings in the 60's from the same guy who made The Act of Killing, and a movie about Ukranian civil rights protests that might actually be the least depressing of the bunch.
When it comes to documentaries, always bet on music, and Amy had the highest buzz factor of any of these films.
Bet: Amy. $5,000 at 2-to-1 to win $10,000.
Category Twelve: Best Documentary Short
Body Team 12 (5/1)
Chau, Beyond The Lines (5/1)
Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah (5/1)
A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness (5/1)
Last Day of Freedom (5/1)
Is it just me, or do all of these seem like the titles you would make up if you were inventing fake documentary shorts for this category? These things are always named something that depresses you before you even hit play, like Lao-Tsu: A Girl In Shadow or Trash: Guatemala's Underground Cities or The Killing Fields: A Trip To The Killing Fields. I have never heard of any of these, am not convinced any of them exist, and have not the slightest clue which will win. Let's do a quick Wikipedia check!
Body Team 12:people collecting dead bodies from the Ebola outbreak. This one seems real.
Chau, beyond the lines: was previously known as War Within The Walls! Another great fake title. It's about a 16-year-old boy disabled by Agent Orange who has become a clothing designer and it took 8 years to film. Too good an idea to fake.
Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah: it's a documentary about someone who spent 12 years making a nine-and-a-half hour Holocaust documentary, and apparently it was very hard on him. I'm not convinced that this one is real.
A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness: an 18-year-old girl who survived an honor killing in Pakistan. This sounds like it must be excruciating to watch. I'm probably picking this one.
Last Day of Freedom: a black-and-white animated documentary about racism, mental health, and the death penalty. This is just a big jambalaya of Oscar-winning ideas. It never hurts to be the documentary that's different. This one is probably not a real thing, but I'm picking it anyway.
Bet: Last Day of Freedom. $1,000 at 5-to-1 to win $5,000
Category Thirteen: Best Live Action Short
Ave Maria (5/1)
Day One (5/1)
Everything Will Be Okay (5/1)
Shok (5/1)
Stutterer (5/1)
I have heard nothing about any of these. Let's check the Wikipedia:
Ave Maria: A family of religious Israeli settlers has their car break down in a rural area of the West Bank and they must seek the help of five nuns to get back home. This is the worst movie pitch I have ever heard.
Day One: A woman who is on her first day of working as an interpreter for the United States Army is forced to deliver a baby for the wife of an enemy bomb maker. Okay, I stand corrected.
Everything Will Be Okay: It has no description on Wikipedia. This seems like a bad sign.
Shok: Two boys riding bikes in 1990's Kosovo! It has a nice long description in Wikipedia and is only 21 minutes long. I have a good feeling about this one.
Stutterer: A lonely typographer (are there any other kinds?) struggles to overcome his speech impediment in order to form a romantic relationship. So, exactly what you'd expect from the title.
Bet: Shok. $3,000 at 5-to-1 to win $15,000.
Category Fourteen: Best Animated Short
Bear Story (5/1)
Prologue (5/1)
Sanjay's Super Team (5/1)
We Can't Live Without Cosmos (5/1)
World of Tomorrow (5/1)
I have only seen one of these, Sanjay's Super Team, which played before The Good Dinosaur. I was not wild about it at all.
World of Tomorrow is on Netflix, and I keep hearing good things. I'll bet on it, and if it wins tomorrow, I'll probably watch it.
Bet: World of Tomorrow. $3,000 at 5-to-1 to win $15,000.
Okay, we got through all the tough categories. Let's catch up.
I've now bet $57,000 of the $100,000 pot, leaving me with $43,000 to spend on the last ten categories. I'll probably go small on some categories and big on others, since a few of these should be gimmes, and so the odds that I invent for them will not be great.
Category Fifteen: Best Original Score
Thomas Newman, Bridge of Spies (3/1)
Carter Burwell, Carol (8/1)
Ennio Morricone, The Hateful Eight (3/2)
Jóhann Jóhannsson, Sicario (12/1)
John Williams, Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2/1)
I'm not predicting a large Academy push to honor Star Wars as a sign of returning childhood affection – I think they figure the box office has already done that – so I'll be steering away from any “well, we have to honor Star Wars somewhere” storylines in the voting. Instead, I'll stick with the “returning elder statesman” vote, which I think will be strong in this year's Oscars, and select the 87-year-old Morricone. He's been nominated six times and never won, not even in 1986 for The Mission, which is a travesty I cannot forgive. What was even nominated that year? *checking* Wait, that score lost to Herbie Hancock's score for Round Midnight? That's unforgivable.
He has won an Honorary Oscar, but I think that even helps his case. “You wrote him off as done, and look, here he is, back again, winning the whole thing!”
Bet: Ennio Morricone, The Hateful Eight. $4,000 at 3-to-2 odds to win $6,000.
Category Sixteen: Best Original Song
The Weeknd, “Earned It,” from Fifty Shades of Grey (3/1)
J. Ralph, “Manta Ray,” from Racing Extinction (20/1)
David Lang, “Simple Song #3,” from Youth (10/1)
Lady Gaga and Diane Warren, “Til It Happens To You,” from The Hunting Ground (2/1)
Sam Smith, “Writing's on the Wall,” from Spectre (4/1)
Let's get this out of the way first: it's a federal crime that Wiz Khalifa and his cool pants are not nominated for an Oscar for “See You Again.” I know there may not be a huge Academy desire to honor the Fast and Furious franchise, but that a) that song has become inexorably connected with honoring the late Paul Walker, so not nominating it has felt like a slap in the face in that regard, b) it ended up becoming one of the most played songs of the entire year, finishing at #3 on the Billboard charts and with 1.5 billion views on YouTube, and c) the competition here is not great. “Manta Ray” is some sort of garbage Randy Newman knock-off and David Lang's piece from Youth is utterly unremarkable. Even the competitors would probably be knocked out by Wiz – Adele is the only person to win an Oscar for a James Bond theme, and Sam Smith is no Adele (don't feel bad, Sam, none of us are). That leaves the battle between a song that's mostly a PSA for college rape awareness, and a song from a movie that comes awfully close to equating domestic violence with romance. Seems kinda obvious where the voters will lean.
I don't have a lot of patience for Lady Gaga's schtick, but while “Til It Happens To You,” is an overwrought bit of fake Lana Del Rey-ing, it's also an efffective overwrought bit of fake Lana Del Rey-ing.
Bet: Lady Gaga, “Til It Happens To You.” $6,000 at 2-to-1 to win $12,000.
Categories Seventeen and Eighteen: Best Sound Editing/Mixing
Editing:
Mad Max: Fury Road (2/1)
The Martian (8/1)
The Revenant (10/1)
Sicario (15/1)
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2/1)
Mixing:
Bridge of Spies (20/1)
Mad Max: Fury Road (2/1)
The Martian (8/1)
The Revenant (10/1)
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (3/1)
These categories almost always go together, as editing generally refers to sound creation while mixing focuses on the overall sound mix. That's why, unless there was a big musical (which would end up in the “Mixing” category but not the “Editing” category), you can ignore anyone nominated for just one and not the other.
I'm predicting a broad sweep of these categories by Mad Max, so I'm going to go ahead and parlay these two together. I pop their odds into a parlay machine and, bang, 8-to-1 odds!
Bet: Mad Max for both. $10,000 at 8-to-1 to win $80,000.
Category Nineteen: Best Production Design
Bridge of Spies (3/1)
The Danish Girl (2/1)
Mad Max: Fury Road (3/2)
The Martian (2/1)
The Revenant (4/1)
I'll stick with Mad Max here, but I don't feel great about it. This is one where it's hard to read what people's proclivities for “good” design are.
Bet: Mad Max. $1,000 at 3-to-2 to win $1,500.
Category Twenty: Best Cinematography
Carol (30/1)
The Hateful Eight (5/1)
Mad Max: Fury Road (3/1)
The Revenant (5/4)
Sicario (3/1)
I hate to ever go against Roger Deakins, who I adore and shot the blazes out of Sicario, but you don't go against Emmanuel Lubezki. He's been nominated for eight Oscars, he won last year for Birdman, he won the year before that for Gravity, and he shot The Revenant using all natural light in the about six minutes of daylight per day that they had. No way he loses this.
Bet: The Revenant. $4,000 at 5-to-4 to win $5,000.
Category Twenty-One: Best Makeup and Hairstyling
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (5/1)
Mad Max: Fury Road (3/2)
The Revenant (2/1)
I love these three-entry categories. It makes guessing so much easier.
I'm throwing out the random one, which is a 2013 Swedish film of some kind. It's apparently very successful, though I can't tell, offhand, if it's a comedy or a drama. I'm assuming it's nominated because the titular 100-year-old man is not actually a hundred years old.
So really, it's between crazy eye makeup and buzzed heads, and Tom Hardy's weird Revenant scabs. In all Oscar betting, always go for the most rather than the best, so let's say Mad Max.
Bet: Mad Max. $5,000 at 3-to-2 to win $7500.
Category Twenty-Two: Best Costume Design
Carol (3/1)
Cinderella (5/1)
The Danish Girl (3/1)
Mad Max: Fury Road (3/1)
The Revenant (5/1)
Boy, I'd like to give it to Carol here – that whole movie is really about costume design, in a lot of ways – but I have to figure the “lovely clothes!” vote will be split between the first three nominees, leaving Mad Max to sneak in and grab the trophy.
I'm throwing down most of the rest of my cash on this one, because the odds are good and I don't feel great about these last two categories.
Bet: Mad Max. $10,000 at 3-to-1 to win $30,000.
Category Twenty-Three: Best Film Editing
The Big Short (3/1)
Mad Max: Fury Road (3/1)
The Revenant (3/1)
Spotlight (4/1)
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (10/1)
There used to be a direct tie-in between the Editing Oscar and the Best Picture Oscar. The connection between the two is more tenuous now, and The Revenant doesn't have a lot of editing to it, but I'm going to take a stab at it and use this as a backdoor bet for The Revenant for Best Picture.
Bet: The Revenant. $2,000 at 3-to-1 to win $6,000.
Category Twenty-Four: Best Visual Effects
Ex Machina (10/1)
Mad Max: Fury Road (2/1)
The Martian (3/1)
The Revenant (5/1)
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (5/1)
I don't feel good about any of these, but I feel like the battle is between Mad Max's real-life effects versus The Martian's impressive green screen work. I think Hollywood is leaning much more towards the former over the latter.
Bet: Mad Max. $1,000 on 2-to-1 odds to win $2,000.
Okay, that's all $100,000 invested! I'll update this with a rundown of what I made and what I missed sometime after the Oscars.
Enjoy the interminable 4-hour broadcast, everyone! I'll be tweeting from @MoviesWithBen, if you want to join me.