Comically Out of Touch

Before you read the following transcript, remember this: George W. Bush received a bachelor's Degree from Yale University, got a Masters from Harvard University in business, and was the Chairman and CEO of the oil company, Arbusto Oil. Oh, and he's currently the President of the United States, a nation which is going through a severe economic downturn.

From the President's press conference on February 28, 2008:



Q: What's your advice to the average American who is hurting now, facing the prospect of $4 a gallon gasoline, a lot of people facing --

THE PRESIDENT: Wait, what did you just say? You're predicting $4 a gallon gasoline?

Q: A number of analysts are predicting --
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, yeah?

Q: -- $4 a gallon gasoline this spring when they reformulate.

THE PRESIDENT: That's interesting. I hadn't heard that.

Q: Yes, sir.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes. I know it's high now.

Q: And the other economic problems facing people. Beyond your concern that you stated here, and your expectations for these stimulus checks, what kind of hope can you offer to people who are in dire straits?

THE PRESIDENT: Permanent tax -- keep the tax cuts permanent, for starters. There's a lot of economic uncertainty. You just said that. You just said the price of gasoline may be up to $4 a gallon -- or some expert told you that -- and that creates a lot of uncertainty if you're out there wondering whether or not -- you know, what your life is going to be like and you're looking at $4 a gallon, that's uncertain.

moments later...

Q: Any restrictions on who can give [to your presidential library]? Will you take foreign money for this?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, I'll probably take some foreign money, but don't know yet, Ken. We just haven't -- we just announced the deal and I, frankly, have been focused elsewhere, like on gasoline prices and, you know, my trip to Africa, and haven't seen the fundraising strategy yet. So the answer to your question, really, I can't answer your question well.


Well, there you go. The Harvard and Yale-educated oil man who launched an unprovoked war in the oil-rich Middle East didn't know that gasoline was about to hit $4 a gallon in his own country.

In addition, this is a brilliant illustration of how a person who frequently and casually lies gets caught in a lie by the telling the truth only moments before. Examine these two statements:

"I hadn't heard that." This is, most likely, the truth. I believe it.

"I, frankly, have been focused elsewhere, like on gasoline prices." This is, of course, a lie.

Those two statements, uttered within moments of one another, illustrate the President's mindset. Exclusively, they do not inform us of his actual beliefs. The only reason we know why one statement is a lie and the other is the truth is because of their proximity and obvious paradoxical nature. Had he not told the truth ("I am woefully unaware of what is going on with gas prices.") he wouldn't have been exposed with his silly, pandering, unnecessary lie ("I'm working hard on things like gas prices.").

Photos taken in San Francisco, which has the highest gasoline prices in the country, on March 14, 2008, on my way home from work.

Predicting the Visual Effects Oscar, Part 5

This is a follow-up to our continuing series, "Predicting the VFX Oscar Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 and Part 4."

I updated the 2007 chart to indicate the winner of the visual effects Oscar, "The Golden Compass."

As you may remember from the previous articles in this series, we determined that critical acclaim (as indicated by the Tomatometer rating) was a fairly good predictor of the winner of the visual effects Academy Award.

"Compass's" win throws our theory for a loop. A huge loop. It garnered the least amount of critical acclaim amongst the three nominated films. In 23 years of charting (1984-2006, Part 2 of the series), in years where there were three nominees for Best Visual Effects, the film with the lowest critical acclaim never won the Oscar. In addition, the film with the least box office return never won the Oscar, as well. Thumbing its nose at the historical statistical data, the 80th Academy Awards gave the visual effects Oscar to "The Golden Compass," the film with both the lowest critical acclaim (by a slim margin) and the lowest box office tally, amongst its fellow nominees.


So what happened here? How did the Academy voters circumvent historical precedent? Usually, as our theory surmises, the film that garners the most critical acclaim can ride that momentum of energy into Oscar season, thus influencing the Oscar vote. The most obvious example of this is 2000's "Gladiator," which rode a wave of acclaim and popularity to win the Oscar for visual effects, even when the general consensus in the visual effects community was that other films deserved Oscar's highest honor for visual effects.

Our assumption is that vast majority of the over-6000 Academy voters, as we pointed out in Part 1, are not as industry-savvy as one might think. They are, as history suggests, quite susceptible to aggressive marketing campaigns (think Miramax in the '90s) and pop culture phenomenons ("Titanic," "Forrest Gump"), especially since, as we all know, they don't actually see all the films for which they are voting.

Industry watchers almost unanimously predicted that "Transformers," directed by Michael Bay, would win the visual effects Oscar for several reasons: its celebrated visual effects, its enormous popularity at the box office, and the fact that the movie was generally entertaining. So exactly how did "Compass" claim Oscar gold over the robots in disguise? Here are a few ideas that I've heard over the past few weeks.

Theory 1: The Academy is biased against ILM. This myth, still repeated among some visual effects fans and professionals alike, proclaims that old Hollywood is still fuming at George Lucas, founder of ILM, for his departure from Hollywood, and his hoarding of "Star Wars" riches. The theory also says that Hollywood is tired of ILM 'bullying' the effects community, and after years and years of success, needed to be brought down a notch (which is what caused a 12 year 'drought' of Academy Award wins for ILM). Therefore, Academy voters shunned the ILM productions, "Transformers" and "Pirates 3" and voted for the non-ILM production, "Compass."

This theory is bunk. The general membership of the Academy is not as savvy as one might think. Certainly, they may understand that ILM is an industry leader in visual effects, and that ILM is owned by George Lucas, but I find it highly unlikely that any one Academy voter could tell you which film ILM worked on. This is not the reason "Transformers" didn't win.

Theory 2: The vote was split between "Pirates 3" and "Transformers," giving "Compass" the win. This theory postulates that the majority of Academy voters actually wished that either "Pirates 3" or "Transformers" take home the Oscar, giving a plurality to "Compass."

How would this work? Let's say that 60% of the Academy voters marked either "Pirates 3" or "Transformers" as having the best visual effects of the year, which isn't entirely unreasonable. Well, if that 60% is split right down the middle, that leaves the 40% earning "Compass" with a plurality, and the Oscar win.

Personally, I think this theory is hard to swallow. Both ILM pictures would have to had to earn no greater than 66% of the total vote, with neither film earning more than 32% of the vote, for this theory to hold water. Those are some slim margins, people, and although ILM loyalists would really like to believe it, I just don't think this is true.

Theory 3: "Compass" is the best family-friendly choice. "Compass," on paper, is the most family friendly of the three nominees, starring cute child actors, the handsome Daniel Craig, the beautiful Nicole Kidman, and-- gasp! -- cute, cuddly, talking animals. In fact, one cannot forget a similar upset from 1995, when "Babe," the G-rated family-friendly film defeated the overwhelming odds-on favorite, "Apollo 13." What did "Babe" have that "Apollo 13" didn't have? Cute, cuddly, talking animals.

Although all three films carried the PG-13 rating, "Transformers" and "Pirates 3" were hard PG-13's, in my opinion, with some serious mean streaks of violence and intensity, while "Compass'" action sequences were less intense.

When presented with a choice of these three films-- three films that the majority of voters probably did not see-- the elder Academy members may have thought to themselves, "Which of these three films could I safely take my kids to?" or even "Which of these three films could I safely take my grandchildren to?"

Their answers probably went something like this: "Well, I don't really want to take them to another long 'Pirates' movie, and that 'Transformers' has a lot of gunplay and violence... I think I'll choose the Nicole Kidman picture." A checkmark goes besides "The Golden Compass" for visual effects.

Theory 4: The Academy doesn't want to reward Michael Bay. The poster child for 'all that is wrong in today's cinema' is Mr. Bay, according to the Hollywood establishment, and the theory states that the Hollywood establishment would go out of its way to avoid rewarding Bay by not voting for the film that bears his name.

Bay's crimes include: legitimizing quick MTV-style editing; making films that celebrate explosions, cars, car chases, and boobs; creating the world's shoutiest movies, where a quiet moment is an anomaly; creating dizzying shaky-cam action sequences with so much frenetic camera movement whose ultimate outcome is confusing and disorienting, leaving the audience wondering 'what the heck is going on?'; creating one-dimensional characters; essentially filming misogynistic, racist, jingoistic, product-placement-dripping, military recruitment movies with only as much integrity and honesty that 13 year old boys can handle... and all along the way, driving home with giant dumptrucks full of cash. Bay's cinematic transgressions have been well-documented; here are a few articles from AVClub that succinctly state cinephiles' attitudes towards Bay: their review of his DVD commentary of "The Island," their review of "Bad Boys II," one, or their review of "Transformers."

Personally, I think it's a combination of Theories 3 and 4.

What do you think? Or, is it insulting to the crew and talent behind "The Golden Compass" to even theorize why its fellow nominees didn't win the Oscar?

And, just to re-restate the previously stated, this entire discussion about "Predicting the Oscar" is framed by our statistical and quantifyable analysis of the Academy Awards nominees and winners over the past three decades. I am not making any kind of subjective statements about which film actually deserved the award for innovation and quality of visual effects.

VFX HQ Updated... No, I'm Not Joking

Okay, so I really only updated one page, the Academy Awards section of Visual Effects Headquarters that lists every visual effects Oscar winner and nominee since 1939. I've added "The Golden Compass," "Transformers," and "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" to the list of Academy honors.

The Awards section is the only section that gets regular updates, since these pages scream out to be up-to-date... even though no new reviews appear on the site. But whenever a reader (and there are still thousands of readers of VFX HQ each week) points out an error on the site, I'm fast to correct it. Feel free to continue sending in typos, errors in credits, and overwhelmingly egregious grammatical errors.

I still stand by my opinions and reviews that are featured on VFX HQ, and am particularly fond of revisiting some of my old articles (even though my sometimes amateurish writing style makes me cringe). Here's one of my favorite codas that I wrote for the site, where after reviewing the effects for a particular film, I comment on the film itself.

Here's a snippet from my coda from James Cameron's "Titanic":

There are probably dozens of shots of the film's 600+ effects shots that will never be noticed--interior CG water, CG props, countless wire removals, rig, light, prop and character erasures, miniature interior sets, even body part erasures--all of which add to the rich visual tapestry created by director Cameron. The visual effects of TITANIC are like no other film's; not only are they some of the finest, most original shots ever made, but they work with the story instead of being straightforward eye candy.

The style of TITANIC's visual effects will inexorably and rightfully be credited to Cameron, who has crafted his film with effects to propel his characters and to drive the narrative. He is one of a select few Hollywood directors who can not only write for visual effects, but who has the faith in the industry to create never-before seen imagery previously limited to his imagination... Cameron is a grand storyteller whose palette always includes a healthy batch of innovative effects, and for that, moviegoers (and the industry, itself) should be thankful.

And here's another coda, this time from my visual effects review of Michael Bay's "Armageddon":

ARMAGEDDON contains some of the most brilliant visual effects of the year. Unfortunately, it is surrounded by one of the most annoying films of recent memory. The film is a loud, obnoxious experience that runs far too long. Combined with this year's other turkey, GODZILLA, one thing becomes quite clear: effects artists are doing their jobs... why can't writers and directors?

update: In that "Titanic" snippet, there existed one of those famous typos on the site. I spelled "Titanic" "Titainic." Yeah, it's been like that on the website for 11 years. Good stuff.

So Much For My Theory

Oh, well. So much for this theory.

I'll have a wrap-up on "Predicting The Visual Effects Oscar" sometime next week, when I'm done wiping away the tears.

Remember the chocolate sundae graphic, Todd. Remember the graphic!

Congratulations to "The Golden Compass" team: Michael Fink, Bill Westenhofer, Ben Morris and Trevor Wood for their Academy Award win.

Read Part 5 of "Predicting the Visual Effects Oscar."

More from the VES Awards

Here's a whole boatload of photos from last week's 6th Annual VES Awards. (Make sure you read the first article, "VES Awards: ILM Sweeps.") Teams from Industrial Light & Magic won six awards; four for "Transformers" and two for "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End."

It was an honor to represent the entire team at ILM that worked so tirelessly on "Transfomers." And here's the full ILM credit list for the film - every single of of them (and many that did not make the final list) worked their tails off to make the film look "awe-inspiring, eye-popping, way-cool, astonishing, flawless, and out of this world."

The Kodak Theater Ballroom, on February 10, 2008.

The VES Award statuette.

The party starts.

Accepting the award for Outstanding Compositing in a Feature film is the "Transformers" team, represented by Pat Tubach, Todd Vaziri, Mike Conte, and Beth D'Amato.

"Transformers" compositing supervisor Pat Tubach.

"Transformers" sequence supervisor Todd Vaziri.

"Transformers" sequence supervisor Mike Conte.

"Transformers" roto/paint supervisor Beth D'Amato, Pat Tubach, Todd Vaziri and Mike Conte.

The statuette is strong enough to support my giant head.

Presenter John Knoll starts off the show with a fabricated story about working with Steven Spielberg. He left the stage with his pants on fire.

Accepting the award for Outstanding Animated Character in a Feature Film is the Davy Jones team from "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End": Hal Hickel, Maia Kayser, Marc Chu and Jakup Pistecky. The award was presented by "Transformers" director Michael Bay.

The ILM/Kerner team from "Transformers" accepting the award for Outstanding Models and Miniatures in a Feature Film: Dave Fogler, Brian Gernand, Alex Jaeger and Ron Woodall.

This shot from the desert highway sequence from "Transformers" won the award for Best Single Visual Effect of the year.

Shawn Kelly, animator extraordinaire, accepting the award.

Accepting the Best Single Visual Effect of the Year award, the brilliant Mike Jamieson (who lit and composited the shot), Scott Farrar, Shari Hanson, and Shawn Kelly.

Now they're being silly.

Our visual effects supervisor, Scott Farrar, accepting the award for Best Visual Effects for "Transformers."

Our visual effects producer, Shari Hanson, accepting the award for Best Visual Effects for "Transformers."


Our animation supervisor, Scott Benza, accepting the award for Best Visual Effects for "Transformers."

Associate visual effects supervisor Russell Earl joins Shari, Scott, and Scott.

Benza looks like he's all-too-familiar with that pose.

"Transformers" director Michael Bay. Insert your own caption.

Visual effects wizard Dennis Muren attempts to conjure up some movie magic, right there on the podium.

And there's Megan Fox.

Even more photos and information can be found at the following links.

• Visual Effects Society Coverage
• IESB Coverage
  
• For a complete list of winners, click here.
• Variety article: "Transformers," ILM Light Up VES
• The Hollywood Reporter article: "Transformers" Tops VES Nods

Oscar Pool Ballot

Having an Oscar party this weekend?

Want to liven things up with a pool?

If so, use this ballot I created for my Oscar party. It allows you to predict the winner of every single category, and is based on the oscar.com printable ballot -- but on my ballot, each category has a different point value. The highest valued category is "Best Picture," while the mainstream films' categories are valued at two points. The non-mainstream categories (like the documentary and short film categories) are valued at one point.

This way, in a tight race for the winner, the winner most likely would not be determined by the non-mainstream films (i.e., blind guesses).

To download the ballot, click here.

Oh, and don't forget to root for "Transformers" on Sunday night!


And if you're wondering why Tom Cruise is on my ballot... it's because he's so cool.

VES Awards: ILM Sweeps

That's me, hangin' onto the VES Award for Outstanding Compositing in a Motion Picture.

This weekend, ILM cleaned up at the 6th Annual VES Awards, which took place in the Kodak Theater Ballroom in Hollywood. "Transformers" took home four awards, and "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" garnered two awards.

It was a terrific night for visual effects fans. Steven Spielberg was honored with a lifetime achievement award, presented by Dennis Muren, and award presenters included Brad Bird, John Knoll, Michael Bay, "Transformers" star Megan Fox, Douglas Trumbull, Harrison Ellenshaw, and many more. There that night were other legends of visual effects having fun, like Ken Ralston, Richard Edlund, Jim Morris. Best of all, I had the opportunity to catch up with a lot of old friends that I worked with in Los Angeles, like my mentor and friend Van Ling, my Pixel Magic cohorts George Macri and Ray Scalice, Reid Paul, Bonnie Kanner, Johnathan Banta, and all the ILM'ers and... boy, it was a dizzying night! And it was over too soon.

Here we are accepting our award for Outstanding Compositing in a Motion Picture for "Transformers": compositing supervisor Pat Tubach, sequence supervisors Todd Vaziri and Mike Conte, and roto/paint supervisor Beth D'Amato.


Working on "Transformers" was an amazing opportunity for me, and a genuine honor to have been working side by side with such a great team at ILM. Big kudos go out to visual effects supervisor Scott Farrar and the brilliant visual effects producer Shari Hanson for putting together a magnificent team and for setting just the right tone for this immense project.

The complete list of the "Transformers" wins:

Outstanding Visual Effects in a Visual Effects Driven Motion Picture
TRANSFORMERS
Scott Farrar, Shari Hanson, Russel Earl, Scott Benza

Best Single Visual Effect of the Year
TRANSFORMERS - Desert Highway Sequence
Scott Farrar, Shari Hanson, Shawn Kelly, Michael Jamieson

Outstanding Models or Miniatures in a Motion Picture
TRANSFORMERS
Dave Fogler , Ron Woodall , Alex Jaeger, Brian Gernand

Outstanding Compositing in a Motion Picture
TRANSFORMERS
Pat Tubach , Beth D’Amato , Todd Vaziri , Mike Conte

For a complete list of winners, click here.
Variety article: "Transformers," ILM Light Up VES
The Hollywood Reporter article: "Transformers" Tops VES Nods

I'll be posting a lot of photos and stories from that night in the near future. And here it is! Click here for more photos.

Movie Marketing is Hard! "Wedding Daze"

Another in our Movie Marketing Is Hard! series.
Hey, look! The folks behind the "American Pie" movies have created another chapter of the "American Pie" saga! But hold on... something's amiss. "Wedding Daze" is not actually a sequel to the "American Pie" movies.

The "Wedding Daze" DVD cover certainly, ahem, borrows a few visual elements from the branding of the "American Pie" series, don't you think? And the ad campaign (including its television commercials) seems especially intent on ripping off the visual style, tone, and title-osity of "Pie's" third film, "American Wedding." The only thing missing from the cover is a tagline like, "If you liked 'American Pie,' you'll love "Wedding Daze!'" And that would be a tad awkward, because the films were created by different studios.

Jason Biggs prominently featured on the cover? Check. Actors, in tuxedos, isolated from their backgrounds and placed against a white backdrop? Check. Big, boldy, red title, with white specks to dirty it up, and a freakin' rectangle around the title? Check. Slight counter-clockwise tilt of the title graphic? Check. A redhead actress on the cover? Check. "Wedding" in the title? Check.

"Wedding Daze," an MGM film directed by Michael Ian Black, is actually a complete rebranding of the film originally titled "The Pleasure of Your Company," which apparently was completed in 2006. MGM, it seems, sent the project directly to DVD and retitled the movie. I'm sure the marketing folks at Universal are thrilled about "Daze's" marketing campaign.

Predicting the Visual Effects Oscar, Part 4

Now that we know the Academy Award nominees for Best Visual Effects, I suppose we should run the numbers and see if we can predict who will win the Oscar, based on critical acclaim and box office earnings. (Don't know what I'm talking about? Oh, boy. You should probably read Predicting the VFX Oscar Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.)

So let's run the numbers for 2007, where the nominees are "The Golden Compass," "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," and "Transformers."

Our conclusion in Part 3 was "although it can be wrong, critical acclaim is generally a better predictor of the winner of the Academy Award for visual effects than box office popularity." According to our hypothesis, "Transformers" should win the Oscar, because it has the highest Tomatometer rating (our standard of judging critical acclaim), at 57%.

In addition, Michael Bay's film edged out "Pirates 3" at the box office, too. And on that note, here's an interesting tidbit. "Transformers" had the highest acclaim, and the largest box office among the nominees. Over the last 23 years prior to 2007, 11 years we saw a single film dominate both acclaim and box office, among the nominees. The visual effects Oscar went to that dominating film 10 out of those 11 years.

The films that earned both the highest critical acclaim among other nominees, and the highest box office among the other nominees, since 1984:

• 2004, "Spider-Man 2" (won the Academy Award)
• 2003, "The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King" (won)
• 2001, "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" (won)
• 2000, "Gladiator" (won)
• 1997, "Titanic" (won)
• 1996, "Independence Day" (won)
• 1992, "Batman Returns" (did not win)
• 1991, "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" (won)
• 1988, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" (won)
• 1986, "Aliens" (won)
• 1985, "Cocoon" (won)

So, you could say, that according to history and our little theory, "Transfomers" has more than a good chance of winning the Academy Award. We'll find out on February 24! Now, let's just hope there will be an actual awards ceremony.

Read on - here is Part 5.

Academy Award Nominations Announced

The 80th Annual Academy Awards nominations were announced this morning:

Academy Award Nominees for Visual Effects

THE GOLDEN COMPASS
Michael Fink, Bill Westenhofer, Ben Morris and Trevor Wood

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END
John Knoll, Hal Hickel, Charles Gibson and John Frazier

TRANSFORMERS
Scott Farrar, Scott Benza, Russell Earl and John Frazier

Click here for the complete list of nominees.

BAFTA Nominations Announced

The nominees for the 2008 Orange British Academy Film Awards were announced today:

SPECIAL VISUAL EFFECTS

• THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM – Peter Chiang, Charlie Noble, Mattias Lindahl, Joss Williams
• THE GOLDEN COMPASS – Michael Fink, Bill Westenhofer, Ben Morris, Trevor Woods
• HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX – Tim Burke, John Richardson, Emma Norton, Chris Shaw
• PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END – John Knoll, Charles Gibson, Hal Hickel, John Frazier
• SPIDER-MAN 3 – Scott Stokdyk, Peter Nofz, Kee-Suk Ken Hahn, Spencer Cook

Predicting the Visual Effects Oscar, Part 3

If you don't read the previous parts of this article, you'll be in a world of hurt.

• In Part 1, we talked about winning the visual effects Academy Award, and trying to determine if critical acclaim or box office popularity informed Academy voters' choices.
• In Part 2 we barfed out 23 years of data, comparing each years' nominees' critical acclaim and box office earnings.
• Here, in Part 3 we'll try and make sense of all that data.

Basically, we're trying to determine which is the best predictor of the winner of the Academy Award for visual effects - the most critically acclaimed nominee, or the nominee with the highest box office earnings?

How can we possibly compare all of this data that appeared in Part 2? Well, for starters, and simply enough, let's ask two questions:

• For each year, how many visual effects Oscar winners earned the highest critical acclaim?
• For each year, how many visual effects Oscar winners earned the biggest box office take?

click on the chart to get a larger view

Right off the bat, it looks like critical acclaim has been a better predictor than box office, with 15 matches, relative to 13, out of 23 years of data (including a 10-year winning streak). Interesting, but I think this is a far too simplistic way to look at the data, since it doesn't take into account the relative differences between acclaim and box office between the nominees. Plus, acclaim's 2 year accuracy advantage isn't very much, considering our data set is 23 years.

What do I mean by relative differences? Look at the data from 2000. "Gladiator" was the clear victor in critical acclaim, by a wide margin. It was also the box office champ; however, it's victory at the box office was quite slim. And, over time, does a large victory margin in one area dictate the Academy Award?

After I tabulated all of this data, I let it sink into my melon for a while and ultimately came up with two methods of charting. In each category, how much of a margin exists between the Oscar winner's value, and the next highest rated film's value?

Take a look at the next chart. This chart compares the Tomatometer rating of the Oscar winner (in blue), and the film with the next highest Tomatometer rating (in green).

click on the chart to get a larger view

One fascinating curiosity of this chart is that it indicates that critical acclaim for the top two nominees seemed to go together, from year to year. For example, in 1995, both "Babe" and "Apollo 13" were extremely well-reviewed, and the very next year, both "Independence Day" and "Twister" were both relatively panned.

We obviously notice how acclaim accurately predicted the award in 15 our of 23 years, but, interestingly, when it was wrong, it wasn't wrong by much. The margin is quite small for those years it proved incorrect - look at 1993, 1994 and 1995, how the blue line (the winner) follows quite closely to the green line (the next highest nominee), which means it was wrong, but not by much. The exceptions are 1992 (when "Death Becomes Her" won the award over the better-reviewed "Batman Returns") and 2006 (when "Pirates 2" won the award over the better-reviewed "Superman Returns"), where the relative amount of wrongitude was significantly high.

What happens when we look at box office the same way we just looked at critical acclaim? Well, acclaim was judged on a Tomatometer percentage, which gives us a good apples-to-apples comparison. The same simply isn't true with box office. The only fair way I could surmise to compare box office returns between years was to add up all three nominee's box office totals and determine what percentage of all three films did the Oscar winner earn. You can see this data in the pie chart next to the box office returns on each year's charts.

click on the chart to get a larger view

This time, we see a wide disparity between years it was correct, and years where it was wrong. It's all over the map, with deviations of more than 50% from year to year.

The next chart summarizes the previous two charts, comparing the percentage accuracy of the two different predictors, with Critical Acclaim in purple, and Box Office in red.

click on the chart to get a larger view

Check out the purple line, representing Critical Acclaim Accuracy, and notice how its deviation is minor, relative to Box Office Accuracy, and also how often it is in positive territory.

For me, this clinches it. Although it can be wrong, critical acclaim is generally a better predictor of the winner of the Academy Award for visual effects than box office popularity. In the past 23 years, acclaim has been wrong by a significant amount only twice, while box office has been wrong far more, and with less consistency than acclaim.

And, to state the obvious, this theory surmises that critical acclaim, which initially drives the wave of publicity, such as "For Your Consideration" advertisements, Oscar "buzz," and the self-fulfilling prophecy of "If people are saying it's Oscar-worthy, then it must be Oscar-worthy"... all of which ultimately informs Academy voters.

Whew... that was quite a journey. Was it worth it? Probably not. And there are probably a few cracks in the data, too.

Sneak peek: Oh, you know where this was going. On January 22, the nominations for the 80th Annual Academy Awards will be announced. And we'll be here, with statistics in hand, to test our theory and try to predict the winner of the visual effects statuette. And here's the link to Part 4.

Another Recap Montage

A follow-up to our "ABC Mimics Sopranos Fan Film" post. HBO, after having a fan create "The Sopranos" recap, took it upon themselves to make a recap montage for "The Wire."


So I guess the "recap montage" is truly for real, now.