Some of my handiwork at work at USA TODAY
Oscar predictions have hit critical mass this week — from both critics’ standpoints and mass opinions online.
Sealed envelopes? Puh-leaze. Such an archaic messenging device. And no one wants to wait four days for the reveal. These days social media is a prism that doubles as crystal ball.
Who says the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences secret ballots are impregnable?
On the heels of a USA TODAY/Fandango.com poll among 1,000 well-versed moviegoers predicting who’ll win, Hewlett Packard Enterprise analyzed thousands of online conversations surrounding the “top six” categories. It monitored top social media sites and thousands of news sites, using its enterprise search and analytics platform HPE IDOL, to come up with these crowdsourced best bets:
Best Picture: Spotlight
Best Director: Lenny Abrahamson
Best Actor: Matt Damon
Best Supporting Actor: Mark Rylance
Best Actress: Brie Larson
Best Supporting Actress: Rooney Mara
Interesting subplot: Although what HPE dubs “social sentiment” leaned one way, the volume of interest in particular nominees largely leaned another. Of split minds, just as so many other movie fans and pundits, like my Predictions & Picks system. Coin toss time.
Buzziest Picture: The Revenant
– 38% of mentions in posts related to that category
Buzziest Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio – 61%
Buzziest Actress: Brie Larson – 35% (we have a match!)
Buzziest Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu – 70%
Buzziest Supporting Actor: Sylvester Stallone – 95%
Buzziest Supporting Actress: Kate Winslet – 33%
If such analytics prove inaccurate Sunday — as in not mirroring the opinions of the 89% male, 84% white and roughly 50% 60-or-older voting members of the academy — at least we can be sure they reflect the public’s tastes in movies and performers.
Using the same mobile tools as the revolutionaries at Maidan or the activists behind the #OscarsSoWhite campaign, perhaps We the small-screen People can help direct future big-screen endeavors.
Meanwhile, my Oscar marathoning score, with just four days and three nights to go: 30/37+12/15 or 81% of all nominees in 23 of the top 24 categories (does not include the Original Song nominees, because I’m not so masochistic as to force myself to watch Fifty Shades of Grey).
Mommy Tongue 