Devon: I will win!
Marygrace: I can hardly wait to come in 80th this year!
Jessica: I am ashamed to say I have only seen one of these films. OK – I just watched Oktapodi. Now I’ve seen two! At any rate, if I do well at all, it will be because I am able to assess a film’s chance of winning based entirely on how angsty the actors look in a 40 pixel screenshot, how “serious” the color palette looks, and how pretentious the title of the film sounds. That’s MY winning algorithm – utter ignorance making snap judgments, all the way!
Beth: I only saw the Dark Knight, Ironman and Wall-e…how sad is that?
Karl: I will finish dead last in this since I know virtually nothing about any of these films. GO CARDINALS SUPER BOWL CHAMPS
Maral: Write-in candidates next time, dood.
Marina: Thanks for the opportunity to play!
Bardia: GO WALL-E
Patrick: Like last year, this is a shot in the dark since I’ve seen exactly none of these movies…
Ellie: Brangelina mania is already too out of control, so I truly hope neither member of the pretty pair gets picked.
Joan: John, I’m afraid I’m going to have a nightmare tonight after seeing your head on top of Oscar’s body! It’s kinda freaky! Go Sean Penn!
Geoff: Half these movies I haven’t seen. Guess I’m relying on a little luck here…Alyson: Let’s DO this!!!
Mike: I have no idea what some of these movies are…so i guessed.
Gita: Thanks John
Dane: Film V.S. DIGI.
Oggie: I’m hoping I have at least one correct answer.
Grandmar Barbieri: Hi, Dr. John, I plan to win this time!
Gene: Going for broke yet again. Hopefully, I can hit the big zero this year. Failure is the only option! And no – I WILL NOT WATCH THE OSCARS NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU PAY ME!
Carla: It’s a crapshoot!
Lisa: Victory will be mine by the Power of Grayskull!
Theo: Somehow, somewhere, I smell an upset. I don’t know how; I don’t know where. But it’s in the air.
Tim: Nice work, Jono!
Grammy: I am a sure winner!
Kathy: I feel REALLY good about 7 of my choices.
Frank: I never win anything, maybe I will get the golden Oscar this year.
Anna: I’m pretty sure this is the crappiest ballot EVER!
Mark: I admit it’ll be hard to repeat this year – I’ve included way too many sentimental choices…
Brian/Josh: I can foresee no possible situation where I do not win.
Dave: Movies may be the entertainment king of today, but tomorrow will be the paddleball’s day in the sun.
Mary: Hope to be enjoying Oscar night with your mom!
Roger: I guarantee that I win. If not I will double your money. Please send me all of it.
Karen: I hope you’re doing well. Thanks for keeping the OscarFest alive!
Michael : I’m sure I failed big time! 2005 was my year!!!
Jen: One of these days, I will reign again.
The Pejman: Cardinals!
Songlin: Have fun!
Pedrom: This is my year!
Tim: Why am I not nominated on any of these lists?
Jerry: Greetings to all you movie lovers out there. For the 2nd consecutive year I am attempting to be voted Miss Congeniality of the Oscars. Could this be my year?
Ashwini: Thanks John!
Mark: Saw VI wasn’t nominated?
Steve: Just hand me the winning papers.
Jemal: I voted everything Slumdog…. but I’m really mad still that Wall-E wasn’t in Best Picture… HONK!
Jamie: these are the best GUESSES I could come up with
Sarah: Emily made me do it…
Drew: He’s towering over everybody!
Sarah: But we’re all winners just for being nominated…and why yes, I am wearing Chanel, but my swag bag goes to your charity Ohab!
Megan: I haven’t seen most of these movies, so if I do well it’s purely a stroke of luck…
Jag: Good job!
Tim: Hopefully, I beat random test picks this year!
Matt: Betting big on Benjamin. Could be a good bet, could be horribly wrong.
Eric: I haven’t seen any of these movies!
Archive for the ‘movies’ Category
OscarFest 2009 Comments
Monday, February 23rd, 2009OscarFest 2009 Champions!
Monday, February 23rd, 2009
Hollywood couldn’t script a more dramatic ending if they tried! With the Best Actor category next, and only three Oscars left, there was an 8-way tie for the Championship. Jen, Bobby, and Eric seperated themselves from the pack by correctly selecting Sean Penn. You had to see it to believe it!
As a result of four generous contributions, $125 will be donated in the Champions’ names to Salvaide, an organization dedicated to fostering social and economic development in El Salvador. Truly a gift that keeps on giving.
Thank you to all 170 of you who participated in this year’s competition. You have made OscarFest 2009 the greatest and best yet. I leave you with some some interesting tidbits about this year’s competition. What have you discovered?
FACT: 170 people voted in OscarFest 2009, eclipsing last year’s total by 55.FACT: $125 will be donated to Salvaide in the Champion’s names. That’s $41.67/Champion.
FACT: The average participant got 11.4 categories correct (out of 24).
FACT: Males averaged 11.4 correct picks.
FACT: Females averaged 11.7 correct picks.
FACT: People related to me averaged 12.7 correct picks.
FACT: My former roommates averaged 11.75 correct picks.
FACT: 87% of participants correctly picked Wall-E for Best Animated Feature, the highest for any category.
FACT: 17% of participants correctly picked La Maison en Petits Cubes for Best Animated Short, the lowest of any category. None of the three Champions got this category right either.
FACT: Last year’s Champion, Mark Tong, got 2 more correct picks this year than he did during his championship run of 2008, but he still still placed a dissapointing 17th place overall.
FACT: The oldest participant in this year’s competition was Grandmar Barbieri at 85 years.
FACT: The youngest participant in this year’s competition were my cousins, Gianna and Adilene, at 1.5 years old.
FACT: 134 participants scored worse than my 1.5 year old cousins, Gianna and Adilene, who, by the way, cannot read or write and have the intelligence of a 1.5 year old child. They have likely never seen a movie in their entire life.
FACT: 12 individuals scored worse than the random pick generator, that is, worse than if they had closed their eyes and randomly banged the keyboard with a meat tenderizer to make their picks (Janis, Lisa, Shara, Ellie, Jenifer, Chris, Bardia, Drew, Karl, Sharon, Dane, and Gene).
FACT: This year’s co-champ, Eric, submitted his picks minutes before the Oscars ceremony began and left the message, “I haven’t seen any of these movies!”. He got was right on 83% of his selections.
FACT: Dr. Gene Gurkoff has now scored 2, 1, 5, and 2 in his four OscarFests for an impressively horrendous average of 2.5 correct picks/year. Only once (2008) has he scored better than the random pick generator.
Friday the 13th Fest Begins
Saturday, February 21st, 2009
Friday the 13th: Part I
The original Friday the 13th was an obvious response to John Carpenter’s Halloween, which two years earlier became one of the most profitable independent films of all time. Halloween is credited by many as giving rise to the modern slasher flick through its use of the 1st-person camera angle, ridiculous scenarios, and female heroines. All of these components are present in Friday the 13th, except at amateur level and always involving graphic death scenes, a contrast to the minimal amount of blood and gore in the original Halloween.
The violent death scenes were actually a central point of what was, for about 90% of the film, a pretty boring plot. The deaths weren’t scary or mildly realistic, but at the very least, it was clear that the director didn’t want them to be humorous. This provided some reprieve from trying not to laugh at a younger but eerily similar-looking Kevin Bacon, the abundance of half-naked women, and a horrible array of misfitting, mismatched 1980s clothing.
Friday the 13th really has two different endings, neither of which I will spoil here. One of them is derived entirely from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho but with just enough of a twist to make it acceptable. The other ending comes about 1 minute before the movie ends, and despite it being used an obvious tool to prompt a sequel, it is actually the only genuinely scary part of the entire movie.
More than anything, I kept watching because I have never understood why Jason wore a hockey mask or how one could logically fit a hockey mask into one film, let alone all 11 sequels. Where does he keeping these hockey masks, I wondered. Very surprisingly, there are absolutely no hockey masks or references to masks or the sport of hockey in the entire movie. Only after looking at the one-sheet (above) did I realize that the hockey mask wasn’t used to market the series until much later. Interesting, no?
Ultimately, I really enjoyed the original Friday the 13th. It was cheesy, corny, and campy–it also took place at a camp–but its final act offered enough weirdness to keep me interested. Tell me what you think. Or don’t. But I’ll be back with some thoughts on Friday the 13th: Part II.
The Curious Case of OscarFest 2009
Wednesday, January 28th, 2009
Nearly a year has passed since Mark Tong stole the OscarFest 2008 crown in most dramatic fashion. This year, the stakes are higher than ever, and it will take all of your movie wits to become Champion.
Are you up to the challenge?
OscarFest 2009 marks a departure from prevoius years, in which the winner recieved nothing more than the right to mock and laugh at his or her peers for all of eternity. This year, I will donate $25 in the Champion’s name to Salvaide, an organization dedicated to fostering social and economic development in El Salvador by empowering those in need.
This is your chance to make a difference. This is your chance to become a legend.
Click here, enter www.oscarfest.com in your webbed browser, or ask a friend to help you navigate to the appropriate Internet location to participate in Oscarfest 2009. Don’t miss out!
OscarFest 2009 Official One Sheet
Saturday, January 24th, 2009
Favorite lopped off hands
Thursday, October 9th, 20081. Evil Dead 2 hand
2. The Adams Family hand
3. The Empire Strikes Back hand
4. Woody Harrelson’s hand in Kingpin (hand not pictured)
5. The hand from Oliver Stone’s The Hand
6. The hand from the Saw poster
Of course, this list is not exhaustive, and it completely disregards all sorts of severed arms and their associated hands, including but not limited to the three greatest movie arms of all time:
1. Carl Weathers’ arm from Predator
2. Richter’s arms from Total Recall (”See you at the party, Richter!”)
The 2007-2008 Oscar Pick’em: Reflections
Monday, February 25th, 2008
2007-2008 Academy Awards Pick’Em : Last Day to Vote!
Saturday, February 23rd, 2008Movies are good. Voting in the Oscar Pick’em indicates that you like movies. If you do not vote, then you do not like movies; you do not like things that are good; and you probably do not like fluffy bunny tails, puppies, or kittens. This is not something to be proud of.
1. Directly: HERE
2. Indirectly: visit the homepage and click on the Oscar Pick’em link.
I wish you all good luck. (not really)
2007-2008 Oscar Pick’em Comments
Saturday, February 23rd, 2008Though your Oscar votes will be manipulated to reflect my desired outcome, the comments that were left during the voting process are unadulterated:
Marygrace Ohab: Lookin’ good!Jerry Coffey: There are those that try to pick correctly… and then there’s me! My quest is to miss every single one. Wish me luck.
Emily Ghan: Hey John! I’ve been thinking how this year is going to be really interesting. With best actor/supporting actor/original screenplay etc. looking like a lock, it seems like heroes will be made in the more obscure categories… Anyways, good luck!
Lindsay Ohab: This year was particularly hard. I would also like to note that I am disappointed that Norbit was nominated in only one category. Blasphemy!
Patrick Clemins (aka Beast): Seeing as how I’ve seen NONE of these films, my chance of winning is exactly zero
Melissa Antman: I have not seen a single one of these movies. Maybe that will help me win the fabulous grand prize.
Oggie Coffey: I have not seen any of the movies, but I am hoping to win.
Kelli Campbell: That was fun! wish I had seen more of those movies!
Jessica Palmer: I totally guessed on these. I have only seen one of all these films. But I am psychic so it should all balance out.
Devon Ohab: That was hard!
Gene Gurkoff: Another attempt at complete and utter failure… last year I got one or two right… a total disappointment. Just like American politics, a race to the bottom baby!!
Drew Fowler: I want to take his face…off. What was that all about?
Bardia Nikpourian: Oh boy oh boy oh boy
Emily Sandvig: Yea! Woo!
Allison Bigbee: I didn’t see any of these – but I HAD to play
Pete Henry: DOC JOHN, I guarantee this is a “WINNER”!
Brian/Josh Jackson: I foresee no scenario in which I lose.
Julie Gold: Let’s see how I do with never having heard of any of these movies? (OK, I’ve heard of a couple, but I haven’t seen a single one!)
Karl Reichardt: I’ve only seen Atonement so this was pure guesswork.
Roger Mears: This site is much better than Boge’s Best Bets.
Pejman Kalkhoran: How could I lose? The only movie I have seen is No Country For Old Men, so I picked that in every case. In short, I have no chance.
Sarah Evans: Funny I was just humming “Raise it up” to myself this a.m. Methinks the “Original Song” part of the ceremony will also be known as “refreshment break time” in the Evans household.
Deborah Bouvier: I think that I should probably get to the movies more often….
Andrew Son: Sup John! How’ve you been?
Libby O’Hare: This might be my worst performance…where there any other movies this past year besides “Blood” and “No Country”?
Yassiin Nasser: I guarantee my guarantee…that I will not be last!
Grammy Ohab: LUV U Doc!
Ashwini Sagar: Hi John
Jemal Zenuni: Go Norbit!
Megan Pickering: I like movies, puppies and fuzzy bunnies…
Greg Davey: FOLSOM SUCKS!
Songlin Li: My guess does not mean anything. I much prefer to watch the games of the Rockets and Suns.
Megan Pickering: I like movies, puppies and fuzzy bunnies…
Jen Coffey: You’re goin’ down, my friend.
Pouya Bozorgchami: If it’s on…then it’s on. If I win it just goes to show…absolutely nothing. Ballah!
Joan Barbieri: That is one freaky Oscar statute – no offense, John!
Anuj Gupta: Vote For Change We Can Believe In!
Tristan Winneker: Yo bebo su sacudida de leche! Lo bebo para arriba!
Katie Schaefer: Yo bebo su sacudida de leche! Lo bebo para arriba!
Gianna and Adilene Barbieri: That Matt Damon and Johnny Depp sure are cute — as is that Oscar guy!
2007-2008 Oscar Pick’em: One Week Reminder
Sunday, February 17th, 2008All:
The Oscars are fast approaching. Do you have what it takes to be the winner? Seize this opportunity to etch your name in the annals of history. You may never get this chance again (until next year).
A final reminder will be released the day before the ceremony. Good luck!