Oscar Odds: Making Predictions On The Top Categories

the oscars

The Oscars are this Sunday and I must say, there seems to be less buzz surrounding this year’s telecast than in years past.

Not just because the hosting situation went from Eddie Murphy, who would have enchanted viewers by getting back on stage in a stand up like capacity, if even for a few minutes, to Billy Crystal, who has been the star of the Academy Awards more often than an actual movie over the past twenty years…

Not just because they are sure to be overshadowed by the Grammy’s and the four hour sentimental tribute to Whitney Houston that turned into…

whitney houston grammys

But mainly because unfortunately this year, in what was a very weak year for cinema, there aren’t too many legitimate RACES to look forward to on Sunday, however they’re ARE a COUPLE. For the betting individuals out there, there are a bunch of LOCKS at this year’s Academy Awards. For those with pockets deep enough to shell out the type of cash necessary to actually make a dollar on any of these humungous lines, that’s good news. But for the millions of us watching the show to have a good time, possibly get to root for that film or performance we really dug this year, and to maybe, just maybe get surprised once or twice…it is the opposite of what stoner college kids refer to as “the tits”.

Quick rundown of how odds work, which I am getting off of Sportsbook.com
-5000, in other words 1-50, means for every $5,000 you bet you win a whopping $100! Those are BAD odds given to LOCKS. +5000, or 50-1 would mean you WIN $5,000 for every $100 and the only way you’re cashing out something like that is if a massive underdog like Extremely Close and Loud as Fuck or whatever wins Best Picture. I’ll be including the odds which each category to give you an idea of just how elementary some of these races seem to be.

Best Supporting Actress

Octavia Spencer (The Help): -2000 (1-20)
Berenice Bejo (The Artist): +800 (8-1)
Jessica Chastain (The Help): +2000 (20-1)
Melissa McCarthy (Bridesmaids): +3000 (30-1)
Janet McTeer (Albert Nobbs): +4000 (40-1)

This is an example our first example of a LOCK situation. Everyone knows Spencer will take this award home for a variety of reasons, the most prominent being that she swept at almost every awards show leading up to the Oscars. The one woman that deserved to beat her did not even get nominated and that was Shailene Woodley from Descendants, my biggest Oscar snub of the year, who single handedly carried you through that two hour long therapy session filled with tears. That is the supporting performance that I will remember from this year, the second being Keira Knightly in A Dangerous Method where she played a sex-starved crazy person better than anyone I have ever seen. These two lovely actresses are forced to eat stuff however as the woman who had the honor of serving Ron Howard’s daughter a pie filled with her own stuff (allegedly) takes home the gold. Spencer certainly deserves to be nominated but why she is such a shoe in is beyond me. Not to overdo the puns and analogies but this category made me so mad that I want to DESCEND upon The Academy and make them eat MY stuff cause they really do need some serious HELP!

Who WILL Win: Octavia Spencer (The Help)
Who SHOULD Win: Shailene Woodley (Descendants)

Best Supporting Actor

Christopher Plummer (Beginners): -4000 (1-40)
Kenneth Branagh (My Week w/ Marilyn): +1000 (10-1)
Max Von Sydow (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close): +2000 (20-1)
Nick Nolte (Warrior): +3000 (30-1)
Jonah Hill (Moneyball): +4000 (40-1)

Oh look what we have here, ANOTHER LOCK! Christopher Plummer, who is in his 80’s and has never won an Academy Award is going to take this bad boy down simply because people want to honor this man and great performer while they can. Was he good as an elderly man coming to terms with his homosexuality as he realizes he is dying in Beginners? Sure, he was as good as he needed to be to steal this category. What’s annoying is that he is such a shoe in that Academy members probably didn’t even feel the need to pick up their screener of Warrior to see if Nick Nolte could put up a fight on Sunday. Warrior, which was otherwise ignored by the Oscars, was not only one of the best movies of the year, filled with great performances, but it is a career resurgance for Nick Nolte where he does what he does best, AT HIS BEST. Max Van Sydow got nominated for E.L.I.C. simply for looking and sounding like Christopher Plummer. THAT’S how badly they want to honor the man this year. Once the Academy is set on something its hard to talk them out of it. None of the other performances are BLOW AWAY, including the very amusing Jonah Hill and Kenneth Branagh, both of whom really added to their films and served as their high points respectively. However, without a Heath Ledger in Dark Knight type foe at the other side of the squared circle, this seems primed for Plummer to take it down.

Who WILL Win: Christopher Plummer (Beginners)
Who SHOULD Win: Nick Nolte (Warrior)

Best Actress

Viola Davis (The Help): -180 (1.8-1)
Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady): +125 (1-1.25)
Michelle Williams (My Week w/ Marilyn): +2000 (20-1)
Glenn Close (Albert Nobbs): +5000 (50-1)
Rooney Mara (Girl w/ The Dragon Tattoo): +5000 (50-1)

rooney mara

FINALLY we have a RACE! For the gamblers out there, THIS is the category that should be wetting your appetite. Streep and Davis are the two favorites and as you can see you can get decent odds, close to even money, on both of them. If you have an opinion either way, go for it, because it is one of the only ways to make decent money this year. That being said, this is also the only category where it seems possible for a long shot to win as well. Even though Davis and Streep have moved ahead of the back recently, 20-1 still seems a little long for Michelle Williams who seemed like the probably winner when that movie was first promoted. Maybe throw a $10 spot on her and hope you get lucky and cash out $200?

To be honest, when these films were announced and I heard Glenn Close was playing a woman who poses as a man for the entire film, I was SURE she would take home the statue in what seemed like an Oscar cakewalk. Rooney Mara, who I think was the most memorable out of all these women but will likely be ignored because she comes off as very unlikeable during any public appearance, is 50-1. If you bet $10 and somehow she pulls off the upset you win $500. I’m just saying. If you’re going to have fun with $10 in a category it is this one an it is on either Close, Mara or Williams.

Who WILL Win: Viola Davis (The Help)
Who SHOULD Win: Rooney Mara (The Girl w/ The Dragon Tattoo)

Best Actor

Jean Dujardin (The Artist): -130 (1-1.3)
George Clooney (Descendants): EVEN (1-1)
Gary Oldman (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy): +2000 (20-1)
Brad Pitt (Moneyball): +2000 (20-1)
Demian Bichir (A Better Life): +5000 (50-1)

george clooney descendants

This is a similar situation to Best Actress in the sense that up top we have a two man race, however unlike that category where its POSSIBLE that one of the underdogs takes it, here in the Best Actor race that seems HIGHLY unlikely, so much so that the 50-1 you are getting on Bichir (the Mexican politican that Nancy dated on Weeds for a while that got her pregnant, remember?!) doesn’t even seem like enough.

Its between Clooney and Dujardin and just based on how hard that name is to say lets hope for all of our sakes that it’s Clooney. It’s a tough one to call because both guys were really good. It’s likely that The Artist takes home close to every other award. However, this seems to be the only acting award it can win and so Dujardin becomes the slight favorite, as he is directly responsible for all the accolades the silent picture has received thus far. Either way though, the ability to take Clooney at even money is an opportunity too good to pass up and those who loved his performance can add the fact that he might be the last true movie star out there to the many reasons this just might be his year. Whether you believe in George or think Jean gets to grace the stage with that award-winning smile of his, this is certainly a RACE we won’t know the winner of until about 10pm on Sunday. Get those wagers in!

Who WILL Win: Jean Dujardin (The Artist)
Who SHOULD Win: Jean Dujardin

Best Director

Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist): -600 (1-6)
Martin Scorsese (Hugo): +400 (4-1)
Alexander Payne (The Descendants): +1500 (15-1)
Terrance Malick (The Tree of Life): +2500 (25-1)
Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris): +3000 (30-1)

woody allen

The odds make it seem like this might be a two man race between…Michel Haz…will just call him The Artist…The Artist and Scorsese. The ONLY reason this is even an illusion is because Marty took home the Golden Globe for Best Director a month back. If there is one thing we should know by now it is that the Globes are meaningless when it comes to predicting the Oscars and even though they might be a slight hiccup in what seems like the likely narrative for the year’s awards season, The Artist and the man behind the brilliant film is THE BIGGEST LOCK of almost every category we have named. Give the GG to The Artist for Best Director and this is -2000 and Scorcese is +1200. The fact that this film has been so well received and they actually managed to pull off making an enjoyable silent film in 2012 means that the man at the helm, the man responsible for every creative choice made during the making of that film, should be honored as the best director of the year. It’s that simple. I’ll tell you who isn’t rooting for this guy however, anyone who is going to need to write or say that name over and over again after Sunday.

Who WILL Win: Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist)
Who SHOULD Win: Michel Hazanavicius

Best Picture

The Artist: -900 (1-9)
The Descendants: +900 (9-1)
The Help: +1000 (10-1)
Hugo: +1500 (15-1)
War Horse: +4000 (40-1)
Midnight in Paris: +6000 (60-1)
Moneyball: +6000 (60-1)
The Tree of Life: +7000 (70-1)
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: +8000 (80-1)

the artist

And here lies the reason why we DON’T need all these nominees. If a movie has so small of a chance to win Best Picture that you would allow bettors to get EIGHTY TO ONE odds…don’t you think that movie might not be the best movie of the year. I somehow find it hard to believe that if DRIVE had been nominated that it wouldn’t have had lower odds than that, probably somewhere in the +6000 range with Moneyball. Oh well. Regardless…THIS IS ANOTHER LOCK. It’s the Artist. In fact, for as much of a lock as The Artist is…1-9 ain’t half bad. If you’ve got $900 to spend, throw it on The Artist, you’ll win that $100 back. I however am not responsible for any huge upsets and any losses that come from the reading of this column. I will say though that if another movie DOES somehow win this category it is THE HELP and not Descendants. So if you are stubborn and need to bet this category and not take the favorite, go with The Help and nothing else, please, for your own good.

Look, in a down year, The Artist is the best film of the year (that was nominated). Personally I think Drive, Warrior, Hanna, Girl w/ The Dragon Tattoo and maybe even Ides of March were better, but among the nine films nominated, The Artist deserves to win. The simple fact is, when you have a movie, particularly a SILENT movie that both twenty-six year olds like myself think should win AND which almost every person over the age of fifty thinks should win as well, that’s when you know a movie really succeeded. Do I hope The Artist spawns a bunch of copycat silent films over the next ten years and we see a trend in modern cinema come out of this whole thing…absolutely not. In fact, I hope this nostalgia filled year did enough to honor the glory days of cinema to where we don’t have to hear about it for a while. We had our Hugo, our War Horse, our The Artist…great, now let’s go back to killing people, making people laugh, plot twists and climaxes cause THAT is what movies are supposed to be about!

Who WILL Win: The Artist
Who SHOULD Win: The Artist

Have fun on Sunday everyone! Make sure you drink AND bet responsibly and let’s all hope that next year can cause us to want to actually celebrate the year that was in the world of cinema, and not the past. As good as some of the films were this year, its more the warm cozy feeling that people get inside when thinking of Hollywood’s early attempts at making magic that has led to 2011’s Oscar frontrunners. Hopefully after this brief look back and what got us here today we can eventually return to the here and the now because for some of us, that’s all we’ve got!

Follow me on twitter @SHOTOFYAGER where I will likely be live tweeting the Oscars on Sunday! Check out my site ShotofYager.com to hear all my interviews with actors, musicians, comedians and athletes!

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