When Tom Hanks took the stage to introduce the first two awards of the night with a few nifty stats, it looked as if the Oscars were trying to steal the shtick of us Oscarwatching statisticians. Though really what kind of stat is a film winning Best Picture, Art Direction & Cinematography? An odd combo that means little to the numbers geeks and probably even less to the young viewers they were trying to court with their new hosts. The show pretty much dropped the stats game after Hanks' intro, but we thought we would dig a little to find a few more interesting tidbits, whether you like it or not.
1. 'The King's Speech' became the 11th film since 1975 to win Best Picture without benefit of a single victory in the technical department. The other ten are 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest', 'Annie Hall', 'Kramer vs. Kramer', 'Ordinary People', 'Terms of Endearment', 'Rain Man', 'The Silence of the Lambs', 'A Beautiful Mind', 'Million Dollar Baby', and 'No Country for Old Men.'
2. 'True Grit' joins 'The Turning Point' and 'The Color Purple' as films with double-digit nominations to leave without winning a single award. For the second straight year, four of the ten Best Picture nominees went home empty-handed. (NOTE: 'Turning' & 'Purple' received 11 nominations with 0 wins. Martin Scorsese's 'Gangs of New York' received 10 nods and went home empty.)
