Jeff Bayer is not just my friend, colleague, and podcast co-host. He is also my rival and sworn enemy. So on this week’s “Movie B.S. with Bayer and Snider,” we wagered on who could correctly predict the most winners at Sunday’s Academy Awards. The loser has to watch and live-tweet an episode of “Two and a Half Men,” while the winner gets to not do that.
But Jeff doesn’t just like to wager! He likes to wager in a complicated fashion, hence the “confidence rankings” of our Oscar predictions. Here’s how it works: First you make your predictions for each of the 24 categories. Then you arrange them in order of how confident you are that you’re right. The one you’re most certain of will be worth 24 points if it actually wins; the one you were totally taking a wild guess on gets 1 point if it happens to prove correct. Whoever has the most points at the end of the show is the winner.
Here are my predictions, ranked in order of confidence. Jeff’s are here. Many of our predictions are the same, but we vary quite a bit in our levels of confidence. For example, if I’m right about the Best Makeup category, I’ll get 19 points, whereas Jeff will only get 3 if he’s right. And again, the loser has to live-tweet an episode of “Two and a Half Men,” so there’s a lot at stake.
24 – Animated Feature: “Toy Story 3”
23 – Actor: Colin Firth, “The King’s Speech”
22 – Supporting Actor: Christian Bale, “The Fighter”
21 – Screenplay, Adapted: “The Social Network”
20 – Cinematography: “True Grit”
19 – Makeup: “The Wolfman”
18 – Picture: “The King’s Speech”
17 – Director: David Fincher, “The Social Network”
16 – Actress: Natalie Portman, “Black Swan”
15 – Supporting Actress: Hailee Steinfeld, “True Grit”
14 – Screenplay, Original: “The King’s Speech”
13 – Documentary Feature: “Inside Job”
12 – Sound Editing: “Inception”
11 – Sound Mixing: “Inception”
10 – Visual Effects: “Inception”
9 – Film Editing: “The Social Network”
8 – Original Score: “The King’s Speech”
7 – Art Direction: “The King’s Speech”
6 – Costume Design: “Alice in Wonderland”
5 – Foreign-Language Film: “In a Better World”
4 – Animated Short: “The Gruffalo”
3 – Documentary Short: “Killing in the Name”
2 – Original Song: “We Belong Together,” from “Toy Story 3”
1 – Live-Action Short: “The Confession”
