Team Experience Oscar Prediction: Final Scores

by Cláudio Alves

No one predicted I'M STILL HERE in Best Picture. | © Sony Pictures Classics

We're still reeling from this morning's Oscar nominations announcement but it's time to check predictions and assess the numbers. Like last year, various members of the Team Experience put forward their best guesses. While the point of this exercise is to see how different folks see the race, it's also a little competition of sorts, with a pundit ranking at the end. Overall, our collection of writers did better than last year, averaging a 75% success rate when excluding those tricky short film categories. These predictions also help us grasp what the day's big surprises truly were, both in terms of shocking selections or notorious snubs. Without further ado, here's the final score…

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Team Experience: Final Oscar Nominations Predictions!

by Cláudio Alves

We predict EMILIA PÉREZ is about to make Oscar history.

With the Oscar nominations mere hours away, it's time to present the Team Experience's final predictions. Like last time, you get each writer's individual guesses, followed by an aggregate collective prediction. Tallying everything up, the Team Experience believes Emilia Pérez will be the nomination leader with eleven mentions, which would make it the most nominated non-English-language film of all time. The musical is closely followed by The Brutalist and Conclave, which have nine each. We also see Wicked scoring eight categories, while Dune: Part Two settles for seven. In the 2023/4 season, we averaged 70% correct predictions, with Nathaniel and I leading the pack with 73% accuracy. Time will tell what pundit claims victory this year…

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Team Experience Oscar Predictions: Pre-Globe Jitters

by Cláudio Alves

Wake up, Ani. The Team Experience sees lots of gold in your near future!Mere hours before the Golden Globes kickstart the televised part of the season and crown the first big precursor winners, let's unveil the Team Experience Oscar predictions. As in years past, various members of The Film Experience's writing team were asked to deliver their Academy Award predictions, contributing to some collective punditry. This season, you can count on my best guesses and those of Eric Blume, baby Clyde, Eurocheese, Abe Friedtanzer, Christopher James, Ben Miller, Nick Taylor, plus the one and only Nathaniel Rogers. For this first set of team predictions, we've focused on the so-called "above the line" categories, plus Animated and International Film for good measure. In other words, the races that tonight's ceremony might shake up…

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Happy New Year from the Team Experience!

by Cláudio Alves

As the year draws to a close, here’s a final thank you for reading The Film Experience and engaging in this cinema-loving community. Have a wonderful time tonight and let’s all hope for a good 2025, even if the odds may feel against us.

Also, remember, you are one. Don’t make the same mistake as Miss Sparkle in The Substance. Then again, we should all enter the New Year with a Monstro Elisasue type of smile – broad, bloody, mad and maddening, bursting in ecstasy beyond reason and full of star power. Cheers!

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Goodbye, Maggie Smith (1934-2024)

by Cláudio Alves

DOWNTON ABBEY: A NEW ERA (2022) was one of Maggie Smith's last screen appearances.

We always knew the day would come, but it's still difficult to imagine life without the great Maggie Smith among us. Born to a secretary and a pathologist in the interim years between the Great World Wars, she became a respected star of the stage before a jump to cinema in the 1960s expanded her horizons. From temptress to bitter old lady, from romantic heroin to comic relief, dipsomaniac tragedienne, whodunit queen and deranged diva – she could do it all, despite what some might have said about her late-career range or lack thereof. To me, Dame Maggie Smith was a titan, one of my favorite screen presences, and a reliable workhorse who could elevate every project she was involved in, even those that didn't deserve her talents. The British star will be sorely missed and the arts are poorer without her. Nay, the world.

Over the years, multiple writers at The Film Experience have explored the career of the late great two-time Oscar winner. So, let's revisit those pieces and bask in the love for an actress of incomparable wit and unimpeachable craft…

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