> > > That many? Man, you'll beat me for sure.
> >
> > The great myth about this game -- and why some people don't even play -- is that you have to have seen the movies to have a chance. It helps, of course, but really all it takes is an eye on the industry buzz. Catch a few of the skillion online articles anticipating the Oscars, and you're in the game.
>
> Hey, I watch a lot of movies, follow the buzz, etc. and I still don't play in the nominations game because it's such a crapshoot. I definitely think having seen the movies is helpful for the second half of the game when you guess the winners, but the nominations are based solely on buzz, it seems.

I agree with the last statement, but I'm not sure that this implies that the nominations are a "crapshoot." Buzz for a movie or a performance or whatnot exists for one or both of two reasons: (1) the movie/performance/whatnot is truly of remarkable note; (2) the studio's publicity machine is doing a good job of promoting it. In other words, it's the same game predicting the nominations as predicting the winners.

The difference is that predicting the winners involves selecting one of three or five nominees, whereas predicting the nominations requires much broader vision, as the pool of possibilities is vast and often not all that clearly defined.

Still, despite the possibility of some wild things happening (like Pedro Almodovar's Best Director nomination last year -- which, I might add, was seemingly based much more on merit than buzz), the nominations are usually going to be selections from a closed pool. Sometimes this pool is absolute: AMPAS has released short lists for the documentary, animation, and visual effects categories. Other times, it's still usually 90%+ closed. Can you honestly imagine the five Best Picture nominees coming from a list other than the AFI Top Ten of the Year, minus The Human Stain, and plus Cold Mountain and Big Fish? Statistically, picking five out of eleven is a lot less of a crapshoot than picking one out of five, especially since three of the eleven are more or less assured. The acting categories seem to be even more closed; I can't come up with 11 reasonable possibilities for either Best Actor or Best Actress.