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And the Oscar goes to...

As the tradition goes, I must write blog on afternoon of Oscar night. Given my love for movies (a good movie in any language would do - that's why I have been Netflix member for more than a decade) and penchant for predictions, how can I resist making predictions on who would win Oscars. So I have picked six categories for predictions. Here are these:

  1. Best Supporting Actress: Viola Davis (Fences)
  2. Best Supporting Actor: Mahershala Ali (Moonlight)
  3. Best Actress: Emma Stone (La La Land)
  4. Best Actor: Denzel Washington (Fences)
  5. Best Director: Damian Chazelle (La La Land)
  6. Best Movie: La La Land
We saw La La Land in a nostalgic theatre in Santa Barbara during Christmas vacation. We all moved the movie (and songs). It is one of the highest nominated movie with 14 nominations. However it's Oscar haul would not match that of Titanic and others which won 11 Oscars. Most likely La La Land would by high-single digits.
Next week there is another action happening in City of Angels (LA). It's high-profile tech company Snap Inc is going IPO next week. Given my limited survey (with Yash and Isha), this seems to be very popular with high-school and college kids. Over last couple of years, it has added interesting and cool ways of communicating with friends. While it's audience is still small (1/10th of that of Facebook and 1/2 of Twitter), it seems to be highly engaged audience. At $20 Billion valuation at IPO which most likely would become close to $30 Billion by end of week, is it worth investing? Answer lies in predicting if Snap would become mini-Facebook (success!) or Twitter (not-so-much). At $30 Billion valuation, it would be worth 1/12th of Facebook and almost 3 times of Twitter. On this, I most likely would take my kids advice who are users of Snap and may decide to do small investment!
Happy Oscar viewing and Snapping!
/Shyam

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