Watch: The 2016 Oscar for Best Actress: One Critic’s Approach

How *do* you determine who should win an award as grandiose as "Best Actress"? Do you flip a coin? Do you murmur an incantation? Is there someone you’re supposed to call, or possibly a helpline? Because surely the process by which the Academy makes these choices is anything but rational. What’s the lay-viewer, or even the not-so-lay-viewer, to do? Kevin B. Lee, in this video essay for Fandor (one of an ongoing series), has taken a quasi-mathematical approach to the choice for Best Actress, looking at the amount of time Cate Blanchett, Saoirse Ronan, Jennifer Lawrence, Brie Larson, and Charlotte Rampling spend on screen, in minutes and hours, and then evaluating how effectively that time is spent. Sort of an equation, sort of… not. Which is about as practical an approach to the decision as I could imagine. Take a look.