2014 OSCARS: Reviewing The Winners

This year's Oscar ceremony had very few surprises except at the very end, when for the very first time, a film directed by a Black man about black people was named Best Picture of the year, when 12 Years A Slave beat out Gravity for the night's top honor. Interestingly, even though Gravity and American Hustle went in to the night with 10 nominations each (and 12 Years A Slave with 9), Gravity romped home with 7 Oscars (Director, Editing, Sound Effects, Sound Mixing, Score, Cinematography and Visual Effects) while American Hustle was shut out! That being said, 12 Years A Slave only won two other Oscars besides Best Picture, Lupita Nyong'o won Best Supporting Actress and John Ridley won for Best Adapted Screenplay. Both became examples of that rare phenomenon, a Black Oscar winner. The first Latino man won for Best Director when Alfonso Cuarón won the Best Director Oscar, as expected, for Gravity.

So, how did I do in my predictions this year? In the Top 8 categories, I got 6 of 8 correct, only missing Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor, and really in both those characters the person that I wanted to win, did so, but they were not who I thought was going to win. This is better than last year, when  I only correctly predicted 5 of 8 correctly, but no where near my high of 2008 (8/8) or 2012 (7/8).

In the Top 24 categories last year I had a dismal 15 of 24, this year I was at 18 of 24 of the winners list. Here's looking to next year!