BEST DIRECTOR
NOMINEES: Wes Anderson (The Grand Budapest Hotel), Alejandro González Iñárritu (Birdman), Richard Linklater (Boyhood), Bennett Miller (Foxcatcher), Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game)
Who will win: Most years there tends to be a match where whoever wins Best Director, his/her film later wins Best Picture as well. However, both of the last two years we've seen that not happen. In 2013, Argo won Best Picture yet Ang Lee won Best Director for Life of Pi (Ben Affleck, who directed Argo, wasn't even nominated). Last year, the same happened when 12 Years a Slave won top honors, yet director Steve McQueen (who WAS nominated at least) lost in his category to Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity). Incredibly, I think there is a great possibility it will happen for a third straight year. There's also a slight surprise here as for the first time since the Academy expanded the Best Picture list from 5 to up-to-10 in 2009, we have a nominated director who's film was not also nominated for Best Picture. So that probably means Miller won't win here. Tyldum's nomination was a nice surprise, and Anderson's win will come elsewhere. So it's down to Iñárritu and Linklater. Both deserve to win, truthfully, as both of their finished films were unique and noteworthy, but I think the Academy will bestow its top honor to Linklater if for no other reason than he labored on this for over 12 years and still managed to make it all look so streamlined.
My vote: I'm in agreement. Richard Linklater deserves the win.
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
NOMINEES: Citizenfour, Finding Vivian Maier, Last Days in Vietnam, The Salt of the Earth, Virunga
Who will win: This really comes down to however many members of the Academy have actually watched Virunga, because from all the noise of those who have seen it versus the others listed here (and I'm talking about critics and online bloggers and documentarians themselves), they say it's absolutely the most captivating of the bunch. I'm betting, though, most haven't seen it, or just read that it's about rangers caring for giant gorillas in the Congo and dismiss it mentally. The Academy still loves Vietnam stuff, but they also like topical stuff, and Edward Snowden is about as topical as it gets in current events. That combined with the earlier-than-some-other-nominees exposure that Citizenfour happened to receive in theaters makes this the likely winner. (It will also premiere on HBO this Monday night, the night after the Oscars.)
My vote: Unfortunately, I've only seen two of the nominees, and neither really impressed me. Vivian was quite interesting but then it turned into a bit of a character assassination in the final third of it, which turned me off. Vietnam was fine, but nothing I haven't seen before. And I have never really had any particular fixation with Snowden, so Citizenfour isn't making me salivate to watch it. I'm voting for Virunga because having seen at least trailers for it, it is the one I want to see the most.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
NOMINEES: Robert Duvall (The Judge), Ethan Hawke (Boyhood), Edward Norton (Birdman), Mark Ruffalo (Foxcatcher), J.K. Simmons (Whiplash)
Who will win: He's literally won every supporting actor prize from every group thus far, so there's a better chance of me growing a sixth toe on each of my feet than there is for anyone else besides Simmons to win this award.
My vote: Duvall and Norton were fine but nothing special. Hawke did a hell of a job playing a role for over a decade and never changing a thing about the performance. This guy really deserves to win one day. Ruffalo is another one who makes it look so easy and is underrated. But Simmons, a versatile character actor we've seen and loved for decades, was the only man on the planet who could have played this abusive bastard of a music teacher this well. The only man. He gets my vote without question.
BEST SOUND MIXING
NOMINEES: American Sniper, Birdman, Interstellar, Unbroken, Whiplash
Who will win: This one's interesting. As opposed to the category of Sound Editing, which is focused on sound effects and postproduction, Sound Mixing is basically the entire package of how the dialogue and musical soundtrack and everything else all blend together on-screen. This award used to be called "Best Sound" and the other "Best Sound Effects Editing", which really were much more clear terms than the current ones. This is often a favorite award of mine to predict, and this year is no exception. I think it will be a tight race, but I think that the Academy will go with something that contains percussion. That means either Birdman--which has a drumming soundtrack to go with all the streamlined dialogue of which every word is crystal clear to the viewer no matter where the cameras are or are going, or Whiplash--which has a drumming soundtrack that is actually itself a major part of the dialogue, and oftentimes is going on with other speaking or activity in the film simultaneously. Potential spoiler is Sniper. Probable winner is Whiplash.
My vote: Whiplash leaves you and your ears totally exhausted at the end. That's why this gets my vote.
BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM
NOMINEES: The Bigger Picture, The Dam Keeper, Feast, Me and My Moulton, A Single Life
Who will win: Feast is Disney, so you know it looks great, but the story's just "eh". Moulton seemed like it belonged on Sesame Street or something like it, but its writer and director Torill Kove has won in this category before. Single is quite funny and maudlin at the same time, and very enjoyable. It's creative enough to sneak in and win this award despite its VERY brief running time (under 3 minutes). Picture has creative animation and tells a nice story in just 8 minutes, and the fact that the animation was combined with actual live set decorating deserves a note of recognition. Ultimately, I think the win will go to The Dam Keeper. It's the longest of the nominees (18 minutes), tells a very nice and realistic story (well, more realistic if you replace the human-acting animal characters with actual humans) with a minimum of dialogue, and has the animation style that the Academy has trended towards honoring in recent years.
My vote: This is the same problem I had a few years ago with Fresh Guacamole, a nominee for Best Animated Short that I absolutely loved the most of the five nominees, but it barely ran 2 minutes long so I couldn't justify giving it an Oscar. Here I am again in that same quandary with A Single Life, which was brilliant, but I can't wrap my head around something barely 150 seconds long winning an Oscar. Yes, I understand the award is called "Animated Short Film", but that's TOO short, and is it even technically a "film" in that case? I give my vote to The Bigger Picture, just barely over The Dam Keeper because I thought the giggling-girl sounds in the latter sounded too recycled too often.
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
NOMINEES: Birdman (Alejandro González Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris and Armando Bo), Boyhood (Richard Linklater), Foxcatcher (E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman), The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson), Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy)
Who will win: This was the only nomination for the movie Nightcrawler, and it actually could wind up winning that sole nomination because Gilroy's script was fantastic. Notwithstanding, I think the Academy is ready to finally reward Wes Anderson (3 nominations this year, 6 in his career) and give him the gold.
My vote: To me, there's no other rightful winner than Grand. Quirky, creative, funny and unique.
BEST COSTUME DESIGN
NOMINEES: The Grand Budapest Hotel, Inherent Vice, Into the Woods, Maleficent, Mr. Turner
Who will win: Tough call. The Vice nomination was a surprise, but I don't think the 1970's outfits of Mark Bridges (who scored an upset win for 2011's The Artist) can compare with the rest of the list. Woods has a better shot in the Production Design category, despite Colleen Atwood's great Oscars success over the years (11 nominations with 3 wins). Veteran Milena Canonero, who's in her late 60's and nominated for Grand, has won 3 times previously dating all the way back to 1976 for Barry Lyndon. Anna B. Sheppard, nominated for Maleficent, has now been nominated once each decade for three straight decades. Jacqueline Durran, nominated for Mr. Turner, is a master of the classical costume design style that the Academy loves, now having received four nominations and one win (2012's Anna Karenina) for her work in 10 years. REALLY tough call here, but I need to make one, so when it comes to the Costume Design Oscar, when in doubt, go classical. Durran wins for Mr. Turner.
My vote: I really expected to go with Grand here but I'm going to vote for Into the Woods. Colleen Atwood brought every fairy-tale character to vivid life in the film with her outfits.
BEST PICTURE
NOMINEES: American Sniper, Birdman, Boyhood, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Imitation Game, Selma, The Theory of Everything, Whiplash
Who will win: It excites the hell out of me to say this, but there is no frontrunner this year. Most years we all seem to be pretty sure what's taking top honors. We didn't last year, and we don't again this year, and I think it's even MORE of a mystery this year, which is outstanding. It CAN be said, though, that it will very likely be one of two titles, and those titles are Birdman and Boyhood. They've both won a lot of honors up to now from the other guilds. The Grand Budapest Hotel did, however, win the Golden Globes Best Picture--Comedy/Musical over Birdman, so there's that to take into consideration. The problem there is, since then Grand has been mostly passed over for other top prizes. What does make me happy though is that I think the Academy is going to bestow at least one Oscar to every film on this list, Grand included. What will win the top prize, however? I believe the Academy will crown Boyhood as Best Picture.
My vote: Yes, I believe the Academy will crown Boyhood as Best Picture. But my vote goes to Birdman.
Yes, I think Boyhood is a triumph that deserves to be rewarded and commended and seen and talked about. But I just wasn't terribly emotionally invested with the film as I watched it. What I found myself watching for the better part of 3 hours was more or less what I thought I would be watching going in, 3 hours of home movies spanning a period of 12+ years. It was interesting to watch, and well-acted and realistic, but my wife and I were at times just expecting something...ANYTHING...to happen to shake things up movie-style, and it never did. The film never bored me, but it never wowed me either.
Birdman, on the other hand, kept me glued to my seat the whole time. It was thrilling watching it all unfold and play out, done so in a style that made it all look streamlined into several long stretches of time over several days. Add in excellent performances by Michael Keaton and Emma Stone, a riveting percussion-driven musical score and some fantastical elements of what's real versus what's imagined, and you have what was, to me, the best film of 2014. I'm hardly necessarily within the majority here as far as how I feel about this film. I know several people that flat-out hated it, and that includes my wife. She doesn't think Boyhood was the best film of the year either but she'd vote for that one seventeen times before she'd watch Birdman again.
Here are my votes for Best Picture in order from favorite to least favorite.
- Birdman
- The Grand Budapest Hotel
- Whiplash
- The Imitation Game
- American Sniper
- Boyhood
- Selma
- The Theory of Everything
So there are my predictions for Sunday night. I have the Academy giving 4 awards to Boyhood, 2 each to The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Imitation Game and Whiplash, and no more than 1 to anything else, including Birdman and the other films nominated for Best Picture that I haven't mentioned yet in this sentence. The Oscar race is almost complete for another year. Let's see how it all plays out on Sunday night with host Neil Patrick Harris on ABC.
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