Results: Batch 10

Time for results. I haven't had the time to do any new previews for the past couple of weeks because i've been working on a new business. I will try and spend some more time getting new ones up.

Anyway:

1. Fast & Furious - Predicted 40-59%, actual turned out to be 36%. Don't feel too bad about this one, I was pretty close and it could have gone either way.

2. Dragonball: Evolution - Predicted 0-19%, actual turned out as 30%. I am surprised about this one, simply because the movie just looks so incredibly terrible it's hard to comprehend how any critic was able to give this a thumbs up. I suppose I may have underestimated the camp/ironic factor....but come on that can only carry a movie so far before it wears off and you realize that you're trapped in the same darkened room with this movie.

3. Hannah Montana: The Movie - Predicted 60-79%, result 46%. I overestimated the value of the wholesome appeal here, once again I should have stuck to my newly developed rules about children's movies.

4. Observe and Report - Predicted 40-59%, result 54%. Spot on, nothing interesting to comment on here.

Only 1 out of 4 this time, not a good set of results. Although I feel I should at least have 2 out of 4 because whoever Dragonball: Evolution as a thumbs up was clearly high. Until next previction.

Results - Batch 9

Results time! Apologies for the (basically) month long hiatus on predictions and results, things have been busy and watching trailers fell by the wayside.

1. Race to Witch Mountain - Predicted 40%-59%, ended up as an average 46%. Nothing too surprising here. The Rock does not disappoint.

2. Sunshine Cleaning - Predicted 60%-79%, average critic score of 66%.

3. The Great Buck Howard - Predicted 40%-59%, average critic score of 68%. I'm not too disappointed by this one, it was hard to call since it all depended on the quality of Malkovitch's performance which could have been hit or miss.

So there you go, only three results today. I have scores for "All About Steve" and "The Horsemen" waiting to be compared, but for some reason Tomatoes and MetaCritic don't have scores despite the release (wide in both cases too) date already passing.

Results: Batch 8

Results time! Another successful batch. 3 of 4 guessed correctly.

1. Fired Up - FU didn't fail to live up to the cookie cutter expectations

2. Madea Goes to Jail - My guess was close but didn't quite make it at 40% compared to the 39% that happened. At least I know a baseline for Tyler Perry movies now.

3. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li - It was as bad as it looked and then some.

4. Watchmen - Spot on. Unwilling to interpret means unable to cop any love from the critics.

Results: Batch 7

Results time! Another good batch with 3 of 4 guessed correctly.

1. Coraline - Turned out to be a critical favorite as predicted. Nothing much to comment on.

2. Fanboys - Turned out to be crap as predicted. Strangely (or maybe not so) this post gets the most hits, and flames, out of any other one. It seems that Star Wars fanboys love to argue on the internet... who would have thought.

3. HJNTIY - I missed by a 6% margin, apparently some critics were able to find the one good apple in this huge tub of sours.

4. Push - Just as bad as it looked.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

Here are my overall results and a nice picture of Uncle Sam for you.


I love Excel. Well except for the fact that there doesn't seem to be any good way of displaying an excel table in a blog. Unfortunately this means i'm going to have to PrintScreen and copy-paste everything. I didn't realize but I don't think anybody who has come actually was able to see the results i'm posting....I'll fix the old posts when I get a chance. Ok, the results.

Basically I accurately predicted the scores of 9 of 29 movies. Statistically I had a 10.84% chance of doing this by pure luck (specifically that is the chance of predicting 9 or more correctly, not just 9 which would be something like 5%); that means the result does not yet fall into that much coveted category of "statistically significant". Did you know that every time you say "statistically significant" a social scientist somewhere orgasms? It doesn't matter if the correlation is meaningless, it's statistically significant! I digress....

So Uncle Sam is giving you attitude up there because we want to be at least 95% sure that all this is not just a big, 5-sided die flipping fluke. We'll see if the score improves as the sample size gets larger.

Results: Batch 6 or the Winningest Week of All

Ahh a much improved week (or two) of Previction results for you. I did well, guessing 3 of 5 scores correctly. Let's do the rundown:

1. Inkheart - I was off by pretty much an entire score category, no cookies to be had there. Methinks I should not place so much stock in British accents. However, I think there is also something to be said about score deflation for Kids movies due to the "stuck-up reviewer" effect I mentioned in the previous results post. Anway, big miss.

2. Killshot - I don't really understand what this was about. This movie was supposedly going to be released two weeks ago but neither RottenTomats or Metacritic have a score, so I N/A'ed it.

3. Underworld: RotL - I continue to be able to accurately predict crap! Sure enough when it looks like a crap vampire movie, walks like a crap vampire movie, and sounds like a crap vampire movie IT IS!

4. New in Town - Score was as predictable as the movie. 'Nuff said.

5. Taken - Missed by 7%! So unfortunate. I haven't had the chance to see this movie and do want to go. Did anyone see it last weekend?

6. The Uninvited - Seems like it turned out poorly as predicted. That's too bad since it does have actors that I generally like in it.








Some people have expressed interest in seeing my overall results. I'm going to post those as soon as I can put them in a more readable format.

Results - Batch 5 - Week of 1/16/09

Faithful reader, this week was a complete FAIL in terms of previctions. Zero for four, that's almost as bad as the Detroit Lions (ooh burn.) although some were close. Let's do the rundown:

1. My Blood Valentine 3D (MBV3D) - My guess 0-19%, actually retail price 57%. I was completely dumbfounded by this result, it actually was pushing 60% on RottenTomatoes! From reading the full reviews it looks like this equation holds true: Crap + ExtraDimension = EnjoyableFun. Since this relationship is firmly established now perhaps some of the other directors should consider investing in 3D technology to add appeal to their movies. M.Knight Shyamalan's Happening Lady in the Village 3D coming soon!

2. Notorious - My guess 60-79%, actually retail price....57%! I was sooooo very close with this one that I have to say it's my big disappointment for the week since I thought it would surprise the naysayers. Everyone loved Woolard's performance, but the main gripe seems to be some sentiment that it's too commercial.

3. Paul Blart: Mall Cop - My guess 40-59%, comes out at 35%. Less of a surprise. I just need to be more pessimistic when it comes to predicting Happy Madison productions...

4. Hotel for Dogs - My guess 60-79%, actual result 47%. I'm having a difficult time reading children's movies reviews, when I make these previctions for them I try and do it from the perspective of someone going in expecting to see a kids movie. You would think that would be a common sense enough attitude for a critic. I mean you're not going to be holding up Hotel for Dogs and Citizen Kane side by side and going "hmmmm...I liked the sled in this one, but I also liked the dogs in this one".

Half the reviews, however, seem to be written by those who go in expecting Oscar worthy material and being disappointed when it's absent. Basically i'm saying in the future i'm going to give a large discount to children's movies which don't appeal to every fricking critic out there.

Full results below:

Results Batch 4! - Week of 1/5/09

A good week of previctions. 2 out of 3 guessed correctly. I missed Bride Wars but scored on Not Easily Broken and The Unborn. Apparently Kate Hudson's full scare-itude was not even fully conveyed by the trailer. More previctions coming at you soon, results below:

Results Batch 3!

The Holiday movies bombed (critically) worse than I could imagine. It seems I just need to be more pessimistic when I see an idea like putting Adam Sandler in a movie with a googly-eyed hamster. Lesson learned, here are the results for the Christmas season, unfortunately I didn't get to review as many as I would have liked to because of all holiday hubbub:

I missed on the upside with "Bedtime Stories", critics didn't find anything redeeming about it apparently. It was the opposite story with "Marley & Me" with the movie goers enamored of such a cute fuzzy puppy. "The Spirit" was on the nose and Valkyrie missed by only the slightest of margins. Overall not too bad.

More previctions coming at you soon.

Results, Batch 2!

Movies From Week of Dec. 15th:
Apparently I should have gone with my instinct and hated Seven Pounds. It certainly looks like the movie wasn't able to pull of its personal redemption gimmick. Yes Man and The Class were spot on, with the former being crappy and the latter being excellent.

I was surprised by The Brothers Bloom in two respects, one that Metacritic did not have a rating for it and, two, that people actually seemed to like it. Just full of surprises.

First Batch of Results! I can has previctions now?

Results for you today now that I actually have a bunch of predictions to go back and check! I took the scores for the movies from today's totals.

In the future i'll try and do this weekly so that any movies released the previous week/weekend will have score comparisons consistently after their release week. Here we go, presented to you in full color Excel:

Overall, not a terrible set of results. I'm giving myself a 5 point +/- margin of error; that only leaves me with a 1 out of 7 result so far. That 10 point band may be a little ambitious since I doubt that i'm ever going to be that accurate. On a Good/Bad scale (good = 50-100 bad = 0-49) i'm 6 out of 7 though! Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.

So for the sake of keeping it interesting i'll do a "Out of 5" scale from now on. 0-19, 20-39, 40-59, 60-79, 80-100.

'Punisher: WZ' was almost dead on for the RottenTomatoes-MetaCritic Average. I was surprised by my misreading of 'The Reader' as well as for 'The Day the Earth Stood Still'. Note to self: next time take off more points for Keanu Reeves factor. I was very surprised by the Delgo score, apparently it was even worse than I thought. Gran Torino was another interesting turn around with a lot of people loving Eastwood's geriatric, curmudgeoney-ness. Well that just teaches me never to bet against Dirty Harry because remember, it's never, ever your lucky day. Punk.