Comments on: The Oscars: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Mystify Film Culture http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2010/03/07/the-oscars-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-mystify-film-culture/ Responses to Media and Culture Fri, 12 Feb 2016 19:35:04 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.7.5 By: Jonathan Gray http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2010/03/07/the-oscars-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-mystify-film-culture/comment-page-1/#comment-1193 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:54:15 +0000 http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/?p=2379#comment-1193 spot on, Evan — whenever I’ve entered into bets with people, the winners are those who haven’t seen the films and thus must follow the coverage alone. Thinking about quality clouds the ability to predict

]]> By: Evan Davis http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2010/03/07/the-oscars-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-mystify-film-culture/comment-page-1/#comment-1188 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 04:25:13 +0000 http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/?p=2379#comment-1188 I think that THE HURT LOCKER will indeed have a longer shelf life, primarily because it’s being taken seriously by people beyond AMPAS. In fact, before December, I would have never in my wildest dreams thought it would’ve dominated awards season the way it did.

Most pundits thought that it would be–and then was–a pretty predictable ceremony. You gotta follow the narratives and the press coverage. Those will predict ’em every time. The only big surprises (for me, at least) were the screenwriting awards.

]]> By: Megan Biddinger http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2010/03/07/the-oscars-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-mystify-film-culture/comment-page-1/#comment-1181 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 02:22:05 +0000 http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/?p=2379#comment-1181 Thanks for getting the Oscar discussion started, Evan. I know I was thinking about your point about how quickly Oscar winners drift off into the realm of trivia as I folded up my ballot at the end of the telecast last night (don’t ask me how I fared in predicting the results–the Inglorious Basterds straight ticket seemed like a good idea at the time). So much was said about Hurt Locker finally managing to do the war in Iraq some kind of justice, but will it remain relevant or salient? Will an Oscar bring it a new audience? (Full disclosure: I still haven’t seen it.)

On revisiting your post today, I was struck by your closing paragraph and how your predictions/the hype pretty much played out in the results. What do you make of how accurate the picks were? Does it matter if there are no surprises?

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