This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Most years, 20 out of 24 would be a great score for Oscar predicting.
But with a year as predictable as this one — where so many of the winners were a foregone conclusion weeks ago — it's just so-so.
The four the Cricket got wrong:
• Picking "12 Years a Slave" for film editing, over the winner "Gravity," following the logic that film editing and Best Picture usually go hand-in-hand.
• Predicting "American Hustle" for original screenplay, not Spike Jonze for "Her" — a head-over-heart choice, since The Cricket reasoned that the Academy would give "American Hustle" something (it didn't). But Jonze's future-romance is, by far, the most original of the five nominees.
• Missing two of the short-film winners, the charming animated "Mr. Hublot" and the tear-jerking live-action Danish drama "Helium." Like anybody, even people who have seen them all (like The Cricket), really knows how those things will go.