I was casually completing the week 11 challenge this week and playing Sporcle, when I came across the perfect quiz to play in light of the Academy Awards. The “Longest Best Picture” quiz asked me to name the 11 Best Picture winners that are over three hours in length. I immediately got “Titanic” and was impressed with my answer of “Ben-Hur”. Then I thought back to last week’s challenge of watching the Best Picture winner from the year you were born. Half hoping that it wouldn’t be correct, I guessed “Schindler’s List”. And to my surprise it was correct.

From the moment I found out that the movie I would have to watch was longer than 3 hours (195 minutes to be exact) during a week that included a full week of school and the ACT, I decided that I could not possibly complete the challenge. However, I did succeed in that I watched another Best Picture Nominee for this year, “Black Swan”. I was tense and on the edge of my seat the whole time, so much so that I was actually sore after the movie. The movie was great, but I cannot decide whether or not I want it to win Best Picture over “Winter’s Bone”. One thing I do know for sure though is that I now think Natalie Portman deserves Best Actress over Jennifer Lawrence.

This week’s challenge will take us away from the actual viewing of the Best Picture nominees. Instead, we are going to focus on the awards show itself. Therefore, this week’s challenge is to create a winner prediction ballot for the Oscars.

This ballot can be as extensive as you want it to be. I think it will be most effective and fun if you chose 5 or 6 categories that you really care about. For me, this is going to be Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Original Score. While the ballot can be organized however you want, I would suggest this format:

• first, put who you want to win in your selected categories. This based purely on you watching the movies or liking the actors and actresses in them.
• second, put who the critics think will win in your selected categories. For my ballot, I am using film critic Roger Ebert’s prediction on his website.
• third, put who actually does win. You obviously cannot fill this in yet, but it will be fun to use your ballot on the night of the Oscars (Feb. 27), which will also be when I reveal my ballot.

Like always, even though you are doing this week’s challenge, try to watch more Best Picture nominees. I’m down to four. So let’s go out this week, make our Oscar predictions, watch some more movies and conquer this challenge!