How many of the Oscar foreign film nominees were reviewed by the NY Times as ‘Critic’s Picks’ (2010-2015)

github: https://github.com/rweberc/Data607_Assignment9

Get Critic’s Picks reviews for the past 5 years

reviewDf <- NULL

getReviews <- function(offset){
  # Create URL
  url <- str_c("https://api.nytimes.com/svc/movies/v2/reviews/search.json?critics-pick=Y&api-key=", 
               api_key, "&offset=", offset)
  
  # Get content
  reviewList <- content(GET(url), "parse")
  
  # Parse relevant fields to df
  reviewList$results %>% map_df(extract, c('display_title', 'publication_date'))
}

# Retrieve Critics Picks for the past 5 years #940
titlesList <- map(seq(340,1400, 20), getReviews)

#jsonedit(titlesList)

titleDf <- map_df(titlesList, extract)

# Filter publication date from 2013 to 
titleDf$publication_date <- ymd(titleDf$publication_date)
summary(titleDf$publication_date)
##         Min.      1st Qu.       Median         Mean      3rd Qu. 
## "2010-06-16" "2011-04-07" "2013-10-24" "2013-07-16" "2015-11-05" 
##         Max. 
## "2016-06-09"
titleDf <- titleDf %>% filter(year(publication_date) >= 2010 & year(publication_date) <= 2015)

head(titleDf)
## # A tibble: 6 x 2
##   display_title                        publication_date
##   <chr>                                <date>          
## 1 Anomalisa                            2015-12-29      
## 2 The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums 2015-12-24      
## 3 Where to Invade Next                 2015-12-22      
## 4 45 Years                             2015-12-22      
## 5 He Never Died                        2015-12-17      
## 6 Winding Stream                       2015-12-15

Read in database of Oscar nominees and winners

oscarDf <- read.csv("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rweberc/Data607_Assignment9/master/database.csv", 
                    stringsAsFactors = FALSE)

# Parse year and select columns of interest
oscarDf$Year <- str_replace(oscarDf$Year, "/.*", "")

oscarDf$Year <- as.numeric(oscarDf$Year)

oscarDf <- oscarDf %>% 
  filter(Year >= 2010 & Year <= 2015) %>%
  select(Film, Name, Year, Award, Winner)

foreignDf <- oscarDf %>%
  filter(Award == "Foreign Language Film")
  

head(foreignDf)
##      Film                           Name Year                 Award Winner
## 1  Mexico                      Biutiful  2010 Foreign Language Film     NA
## 2  Greece                      Dogtooth  2010 Foreign Language Film     NA
## 3 Denmark             In a Better World  2010 Foreign Language Film      1
## 4  Canada                     Incendies  2010 Foreign Language Film     NA
## 5 Algeria Outside the Law (Hors-la-loi)  2010 Foreign Language Film     NA
## 6 Belgium                      Bullhead  2011 Foreign Language Film     NA

Compare results

foreignCriticPickDf <- inner_join(foreignDf, titleDf, by=c("Name"="display_title"))

foreignCriticPickDf
##     Film    Name Year                 Award Winner publication_date
## 1 France Mustang 2015 Foreign Language Film     NA       2015-11-19
## 2 Jordan   Theeb 2015 Foreign Language Film     NA       2015-11-05

Only 2 out of 30 Foreign Language Film nominees look to have been Critic’s Picks.

How about Oscar winners overall?

winnerDf <- oscarDf %>%
  filter(Winner == 1)

# Film name in database is sometimes in different
winnerCriticPickDf1 <- inner_join(winnerDf, titleDf, by=c("Film"="display_title")) 
winnerCriticPickDf2 <- inner_join(winnerDf, titleDf, by=c("Name"="display_title"))

winnerCriticPickDf <- bind_rows(winnerCriticPickDf1, winnerCriticPickDf2)

head(winnerCriticPickDf)
##                                                                         Film
## 1                                                                The Fighter
## 2                                                                 Black Swan
## 3                                                                The Fighter
## 4                                                           12 Years a Slave
## 5 Michael Sugar, Steve Golin, Nicole Rocklin and Blye Pagon Faust, Producers
## 6                              Screenplay by Charles Randolph and Adam McKay
##              Name Year                        Award Winner
## 1  Christian Bale 2010   Actor in a Supporting Role      1
## 2 Natalie Portman 2010    Actress in a Leading Role      1
## 3     Melissa Leo 2010 Actress in a Supporting Role      1
## 4  Lupita Nyong'o 2013 Actress in a Supporting Role      1
## 5       Spotlight 2015                 Best Picture      1
## 6   The Big Short 2015 Writing (Adapted Screenplay)      1
##   publication_date
## 1       2010-12-09
## 2       2010-12-02
## 3       2010-12-09
## 4       2013-10-17
## 5       2015-11-05
## 6       2015-12-10

Only 6 out of 74 Oscar winners overall were Critic’s Picks.

The low numbers make me wonder if there is some assumption I missed. Could possibly lose some cases due to special character differences between the two datasets.

Not sure if this is really an indication that the Oscars are missing important movies or if the Critics Picks are.

Could compare these against a more reputable international film award source to try to get a sense of that.