Oscars 2021

Scott Hardie | March 16, 2021
This year's contest has begun.

Any thoughts on the nominations?

Erik Bates | March 16, 2021
[hidden by request]

Matthew Preston | March 17, 2021
Same here, Erik. Thanks to my kids (and Disney+), I've seen Soul, Onward, The One and Only Ivan, and Burrow. I did also catch The Midnight Sky one night randomly on Netflix. Time to do some research!

Scott Hardie | April 25, 2021
If you'll forgive me, I need to vent for a moment.

Every year on Oscars night, I have to do a lot of data cleanup. And this year has been the worst yet. It just took me a solid hour of editing the database, from 7:01 when the contest closed to 8:01 when the show started, just barely finishing in time.

There are two reasons for this mess every year.

The first reason is understandable if mildly annoying: When an old player returns to play again, they create an identical new account instead of logging into their old account. I want their old scores from earlier contests to line up with their new score, so I merge their data together into one account. This seems to happen with about 10-12 people every year. I plan to fix this permanently before 2022, by programming the registration process to recognize this when it happens and to handle it automatically.

The second reason is more aggravating because of what I assume is maliciousness: People create duplicate accounts to enter the contest multiple times, which is forbidden per the contest's stated rules. This year, I deleted 12 contest entries that appeared to be duplicates from the same person. I won't give away my methods for determining what's a fake account, but let's just say it's not rocket science; in fact, someone who's really clever has probably sneaked past my notice at some point because there's only so much that I'm capable of figuring out. Anyway, it's possible that some folks just aren't paying close attention and don't realize that entering multiple times is against the rules (which is why I leave the original entry after deleting the duplicates, just in case), but I assume that many of them are trying to cheat and that really grinds my gears. I don't know of a good way to prevent this automatically, since any attempt to ban them electronically could just result in them creating new accounts under other names (and getting better at covering their tracks in the future). I will just go on grumbling as I clean up the mess every year, like a municipal worker cleaning up the same damn graffiti over and over.

On with the contest! There are some interesting categories that I can't wait to see play out. Good luck!

Evie Totty | April 25, 2021
Oh man! I'm so sorry to hear this happens :(

I came over to go 'wow! within 3 points and I only saw... (goes to check) four of the movies total out of all the nominees. Onward, Soul, Tenet, and Midnight Sky.

EDIT: OH MY GOD I WROTE LIKE. A LOT AFER THAT. A LOT. Most of it was rambling though.

Well. Suffice it to say that it was a weird year. I'm kind of disappointed in myself for not making more of an effort to at least see the Best Film noms (since I went to a great effort last year to make sure I'd seen all nine - finishing the last one just before the show came on).

I get my 2nd vaccine shot the 5th and a new Ritchie movie comes out that weekend (WITH STATHAM) - not that it will be up for anything during awards season lol.

Still can't believe I missed it by three lol. Thanks so much for doing this each year, I really appreciate it being here. Especially this year. A bit a 'normal' was awesome, and I'm grateful. Hope to see you guys soon.

Scott Hardie | April 25, 2021
That was... something. From my point of view, for most of the ceremony there weren't any upsets (I picked Mank for cinematography after the ASC win), but then BAM, two huge upsets right at the end of the night. Was the show counting on a tribute to Chadwick Boseman in its final minutes or what?

And in the contest, what havoc this wreaked on the scores! Nearly every player would have been in a different position on the scoreboard.

Here's wishing a big congratulations to Matt Dy for winning, seventeen years after his first try! That's amazing.

In spite of the data cleanup that I groused about, I still had a blast running this, just like every year. Thank you all for being a part of this. :-)

Scott Hardie | April 25, 2021
Evie: Yeah, it's been such a weird year that I don't think we could have counted on doing anything normal. The fact that so many of the nominated films are on streaming platforms that I pay for did not encourage me to see many of them either. :-\ And yes, very much looking forward to seeing you soon! Kelly and I will get our second shots this week and we're counting down the days until the waiting period ends after that. SOOOON!

Evie Totty | April 27, 2021
Sweet! And yeah, between Alana, me, and my free Apple TV sub from the new phone - I have to agree about the 'did not encourage' thing.