10 fun stats to help you win your Oscar Picks Pool

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Inspired by Best Picture nominee Moneyball, Oscarologist Alan Eskew has assembled some numbers and statistics to help you score on Oscar Night. Rather, 10 reasons Moneyball won’t win at The Academy Awards.

1. The Best Director winner has almost always walked with the Directors Guild of America prize a few weeks before. There are only 6 exceptions.

2. The Oscar for Best Director has matched Best Picture 74% of the time over the past 83 years.

3. Meryl Streep has now been nominated for 17 Oscars. She gets on base but she hasn’t been a good pick for game players - this iron lady has won just 2. It’s been 29 years, and 5 sitting U.S. Presidents since she actually won.

4. The foreign film that was playing at the Angelika Dallas during the week of the Oscars has won Best Foreign Language Film for 6 of the past 7 years.

5. In the past 30 years, all but 6 Best Picture winners were released after October.

6. Period movies have won Best Costume for 17 of the past 20 years.  Exceptions were Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Dracula, and last year’s Alice in Wonderland.

7. Only 1 silent film has won Best Picture, so far. Wings in 1927.

8. The loudest movie takes Best Sound Editing, period. Speed, Pearl Harbor, Bourne Ultimatum and even the recent King Kong have actually won Oscars. Otherwise, war films do well. In the past 20 years, there have been 7 war films that won. Or 8 if you think Lord of the Rings: Twin Towers is a war film.

9. It’s a fun show, but don’t use The Golden Globes as a guide for your Oscar Night picks. In the past 7 years, only 1 of the Golden Globe winners for Best Picture (they have 2 chances each year) matched the Academy’s Best Picture winner (Slumdog Millionaire, 2008).

10. Your odds on picking Best Original Song are 50/50. There are just 2 songs. 

Good luck!