Another Academy Awards predictor joins the fray, 'Social Oscars'

The second site to try to "Nate Silver"
the Oscars is Social
Oscars. Back in mid-January, Screener reported on Farsite Forecast, which doles out each
nominee's percentage chance at winning the Oscars. Social Oscars, which social
media monitoring company Brandwatch created, takes a different route. The
company's interactive infographic compares which movies the critics think will
win to the ones that the public thinks will win. Surprisingly, the critics and
public are pretty much in agreement for most of the categories. There's rarely
more than a couple percentage points in

differences between the two, which may
not be even statistically significant since they don't mention the sample size.
However, some of their findings do back up the anecdotal feelings about races
in various categories.

In the Best Picture race, for example, more
critics (12%) are excited about Zero Dark Thirty than members of the
public (7%). Life of Pi's sentimentality played better with the public
(12%) than critics (9%). Argo has recently become the frontrunner for
Best Picture, unseating the early momentum of Zero Dark Thirty and the
solid, blue-chip choice of Steven Spielberg's Lincoln. If Argo
wins, the Social Oscars will have correctly picked the winner, since 23% of the
public and 19% of critics have voted this as their favorite.

The Social Oscars is a fun tool, but it overlooks
one big fact. Who wins the Oscars usually has only a loose correlation with the
popular and critical choices. For every winner like The King's Speech,
which was the 2010 victor and supported by both critics and audiences,
there's a movie that critics were rooting for but the public did not see in
theatres in big numbers (that describes 2011 winner The Artist or 2009
winner The Hurt Locker), or a popular favorite that's just good enough
or has some kind of special hook that convinces the Academy that it deserves
recognition (Gladiator, Titanic, Forrest Gump). The Oscars can
sometimes be an exercise in game theory (see 2001 Best Picture winner A
Beautiful Mind for a brush-up on that). Many critics distinguish between
the movies they like best and the movie that they think they will win,
sometimes developing subcategories like a movie they campaign for and want to
win, even while acknowledging another movie probably has a better shot. A
regular Joe may count nominee Django Unchained as the most enjoyable
picture of the year but feel that Argo is the better choice for a Best
Picture winner. The Social Oscars' infographic is an interesting tool to gauge
the relative popularity of the Best Picture choices, for example, but critical
and popular reaction are just one piece of the pie when it comes to the Oscars.

Forbes list of 'Most bang for your buck' actors doesn't really mean anything

By Sarah Sluis

I'm all about cute statistics, but Forbes' list of actors that deliver that most bang for their buck doesn't really say much. It uses the ratio (actor's salary: total gross of movie) to determine what stars deliver the most money for their performance. If only it were that simple. First, the low-hanging fruit: correlation does not imply causation.

Take the topper on that list, Shia LaBeouf. He was in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. A movie directed by Steven Spielberg starring Harrison Ford and one of the most famous franchises out there. Of course his salary was low compared to the movie's total gross! He wasn't the main draw in the movie. He wasn't paid that much because he didn't matter that much.

LaBeouf also starred in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Another news flash: no one cared about LaBeouf, they cared about seeing those toys turned into giant heroes and villains in the most confusing, terrible movie to make over $800 million (I'm still bitter about the two hours I lost because of that movie).

What would show the star power of an actor would be a performance in a star-driven vehicle, like a generic action movie or romantic comedy. You would have to exclude performances in huge franchises, control for the effect of having co-stars that were bigger than them, or a huge director. But it's kind of hard to find such movies.

Anne Hathaway, who placed second on the list, comes close to a "star power" movie with Bride Wars, a so-so flick that she starred in with Kate Hudson. The real reason that Hathway placed second, though, was because of a supporting role in Alice in Wonderland, where she played the White Queen. Actor Johnny Depp was a bigger draw, and her influence is somewhat lost in the 3D-driven spectacle adaptation directed by Tim Burton. She contributed to the movie's success, she didn't cause it.

The third-place finisher, Daniel Radcliffe, is also third mainly because he's cast in the behemoth franchise Harry Potter.

It's only when you go lower down the list that actor performances actually start to come into play. Although Iron Man 2 is a comic book franchise, Robert Downey Jr. helped sell tickets, as did his performance in Sherlock Holmes (another adaptation of a well-known property).

Whether an actor is a "value" depends on a lot more than salary and total gross of the movie. If anything, this list confirms that being part of a franchise or known property gives a greater probability for success than an original film. Yet another reason there are so few Inceptions out there and so many Transformer 2s. Also, a note to actors: if you want to game the system, land some supporting roles in really big films, and your fractional salary will boost your ratio and lead everyone to believe you're a great value.

Top Ten Summer Movies by the numbers

By Sarah Sluis

Sure, it's not Labor Day yet, but all the movie moneymakers of the summer have already been released. So far, the top ten grossing movies of the summer (from May 1st on) are as follows:

1. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
2. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
3. Up
4. The Hangover
5. Star Trek
6. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
7. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
8. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
9. The Proposal
10. Angels & Demons

By the numbers:

• 7 of the 10 are sequels or franchise relaunches



• 2 are animated



• 1 comedy and 1 romantic comedy made the list



• 9 have a rating of PG-13 or lower



• the #1 movie made 3 times as much as the #10 movie ($400 million vs. $133 million)



• 4 of the 10 have colons in the title



• 7 of the 10 involve creatures with human properties (talking animals, machines, aliens...)



• The average score on Rotten Tomatoes was 57.6%; 4 of the 10 had approval ratings above this number

I love this information. From one perspective, you could look at the statistics and decide that if you want to make the next blockbuster, you need to find a franchise with human-like creatures, include a lot of action but not enough that it reads as a comedy, make it PG-13 or under, and use a colon in the title if necessary. And don't really worry too much about the critics. Just your audience.

The other way involves looking at all the ways these titles don't fit into the mold. The Hangover is the biggest outcast of the bunch, an R-rated comedy that came out of nowhere, with no franchise, pre-sold title, or even A-list stars.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was the #1 movie, but an absolute bomb (19% on Rotten Tomatoes) among critics. I know I still haven't fully figured that one out. Pixar's Up is an incredibly original movie, but it actually fits into the mold of a "top ten" film: it's rated PG, involves (ingeniously) talking creatures, and is an animated kid-to-adult movie. It's also part of a franchise, not one defined by repeating characters or plotlines, but by its studio, Pixar, which has cultivated a must-see reputation among its films.

There's still a chance for movies to rise into the ranks of the summer top ten, but right now the mix seems about right: a few CGI/animated movies that appeal to kids, action and action franchises, and at least one dark horse (in 2008, it was Mamma Mia!). The past few years, six of the movies in the top ten were released in the summer, three or so in the November-December holiday season, and a fourth in March, during the Spring Break holidays. At least six of these movies are going to hang around with Monsters vs. Aliens in the 2009 top ten. With summer movie season coming to a close, my eyes are on the three or so movies that will make their way into the top ten: New Moon? Avatar?