Oscars office pool hits and misses

by cynthia yoo | February 24, 2008 at 09:46 pm

353 views | 0 Recommendations | 0 comments

How did you fare in your office pool? Won some bragging rights at the water-cooler come Monday?
If your money was on the Coen brothers, you bet well.

But aside from the big winners, what about the "lesser contests" for the Oscars? Did anyone see The Golden Compass winning for visual effects? Did anyone care?

A quick glance through the blogosphere shows that plenty of people do:

ilda Swinton put it very well backstage when the news broke. "Why are you glad she won?" one reporter asked. Swinton replied, "She's great, she's new, she's new blood in the gene pool." Here are the winners.

Supporting actress was a total mystery, but I should have gone with the Tilda Swinton Michael Clayton allocation theory. The voters wanted a popular movie to win something.

Many people told me that Elizabeth would win costume. I refused to listen because I didn't think the Academy would vote for such a bad movie. Of course the costumes were wonderful. Lesson learned.

Also, I thought that having voted for Blanchett twice for two nominations in one year, they'd give her the supporting win. In that case the fact that it was a film that nobody liked was the issue, as well as her prior win for The Aviator.

The biggest surprise of the night was the win for The Golden Compass for visual effects. My colleague David Cohen says that no one liked any of these films. Well, okay.