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 notthat fun, unless you've got cash on the line.

Ooh, actually, that sounds like a fun angle. Let's do it that way.