Last year, we spent a solid five months arguing which was better between Gravity and 12 Years a Slave, and ultimately the top two Oscars split between them, with Gravity’s Mexican director, Alfonso Cuaron, winning his own Oscar, while 12 Years a Slave took home Best Picture. This year, having spent the last five months arguing between the merits of Boyhood and Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), we may end up with the exact same result: An Oscar for Alejandro G. Iñárritu, the Mexican director of Birdman, and Best Picture going to 12 Years a Boy(hood). Let’s break it down.
Best Picture
American Sniper
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Boyhood
The Grand Budapest Hotel
The Imitation Game
Selma
The Theory of Everything
Whiplash
There are ways to believe in
the chances of any one of the eight nominated films. Selma could get the sympathy vote because of its virtual shut-out
in the other categories; The Grand
Budapest Hotel won the Golden Globe for Best Musical or Comedy (beating Birdman) and might be the most purely
enjoyable film on the list; American
Sniper surprised everyone with how much overall support it has, and the
Academy has demonstrated its love for Clint Eastwood and Bradley Cooper several
times over; Whiplash is the most
exciting nominee; The Theory of
Everything is the only nominee to also be nominated in both lead acting
races, as well as being the only love story on the list and the only film with
a female protagonist; And The Imitation
Game is the most classic Best Picture-ish film in the bunch, a perfectly
executed biopic with an important message at its core and the indomitable
Harvey Weinstein running its campaign.
All of that logic is centered
on good, sound ideas. It’s also all logic that people will heavily regret
buying into by the end of Sunday night. No matter how much anyone may want to
believe otherwise, this is a two-way race between the two best films of the
year—and most years.
Boyhood and
Birdman are the two best films of
2014, and one of them is going to win Best Picture. Which one that is has been
a toss-up amongst awards season so far. Boyhood
swept the major critics’ prizes, as well as winning the Golden Globe. Birdman has completed a virtual sweep of
the Guild awards, which tends to be the most reliable data set for predicting
the Best Picture winner. But placing too much faith in the precedents of
previous years is always dangerous for Oscar predicting, and the Oscars break
past precedents (while setting new ones) every year.
It’s true that none of the
groups who have already awarded Boyhood Best
Picture contain any Oscar voters. It’s also true that all of the Guilds that
have given Birdman the year’s top honor boast a lot of Oscar
voter overlap. But the Guilds represent virtually every living person to have
worked in their given field, while the Academy represents only those who work
at the highest level. That slight difference may
explain why the Guilds favored Birdman
but the Academy still might favor Boyhood.
Birdman is a tremendously exciting
viewing experience about working—and struggling to work—in the industry, which
is something that virtually every guild member (most of whom struggle to work
themselves) can relate to. For members of the Academy, that struggle to get
work and make it meaningful will be less overly familiar, but what might be
especially familiar is the amazing achievement to get funding and a green light
for a passion project that would film over the course of 12 years, and would
see no financial return on the investment during the course of that time. If
there’s one group that would most appreciate the fact that Boyhood exists at all, it’s the Academy, and
that’s why I expect it to win Best Picture.
Best Director
Wes Anderson – The Grand Budapest Hotel
Alejandro G. Iñárritu – Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Richard Linklater – Boyhood
Bennett Miller – Foxcatcher
Morten Tyldum – The Imitation Game
This is without a doubt the
most difficult race to call on the entire board, but that’s not because it’s
anyone’s game. It’s been 85 years since the Oscar for Best Director went to
someone whose film wasn’t nominated for Best Picture, so Miller is out. And
Tyldum is, let’s face it, probably lucky to be here. The Imitation Game is a very good film, but the story and
performances carry it more than the direction.
Some prognosticators believe
Wes Anderson has a decent chance as a spoiler, but I just don’t see it. It’s
not that The Grand Budapest Hotel is
bad by any means—far from it. But Anderson has been making films for almost
twenty years, and they’re almost all of similar quality. There’s just no
particular reason to award him now. If this were a lesser year without
front-runners, I could maybe understand how Anderson might break through, but
this is not a lesser year.
Like Best Picture, this race
firmly boils down to Boyhood versus Birdman, Linklater versus Iñárritu. And
like Best Picture, both are so good that it feels unfathomable for either to
lose. Both directors weave a sort of magic that is so special it seems no one
else could have done it. For Linklater, it’s helming a passion project over the
course of 12 years, filming a little bit every year, and trusting that it would
all come together through the power of his vision. Not only has that never been
done before, but also it’s never been attempted. Hell, it might never have even
been thought of. It represents everything about the kind of creative audacity
and daring-do that the truly great filmmakers are supposed to have.
For Iñárritu, the achievement
is less about the planning and vision that occurred off set, and more about the
planning and vision that fed directly into the camera. What Birdman achieves visually and
stylistically is stunning. While it’s not the first film to appear as though it
were all one shot (Hitchcock’s Rope did
the same thing over 60 years ago), it is probably the first film to use the
single-take tracking shots in such an athletic, dexterous, magical way.
Appearing to be a single shot while functionally capturing the chaos of
someone’s psyche, weaving around the backstage of a theater as though
travelling through their brain, is a level of filmmaking agility that we just
haven’t seen before.
So which is the more
impressive achievement? It’s not just an impossible question, but also an
unfair one. And even more frustratingly, it’s a question that voters will have
to figure out a way to answer. The key might be in exactly what any given voter
thinks directing predominantly entails. If the majority of the Academy thinks
Best Director means achievement in shepherding a film from the first day of
pre-production to the final day of post-production, then Linklater’s
twelve-year odyssey would be the likely winner. If the majority of the Academy
thinks Best Director means achievement in helming the actual on-set production
of a film, then Iñárritu would probably come out on top. My inclination is to
believe that voters will give slightly more credence to the work Iñárritu did
on set than the work Linklater did off it, but who really knows?
There is, however, one more
factor that could help sway the race. This is the kind of year where the top
two films are both so strong and so beloved that voters might actively look for
ways to award both. Because of the widespread assumption (accurate or not) that
Boyhood has the slight edge in the
Best Picture race, that might provoke voters to pick Alejandro G. Iñárritu for Best Director simply to spread the love
among two astonishing filmmaking achievements.
Best Actor
Steve Carell – Foxcatcher
Bradley Cooper - American Sniper
Benedict Cumberbatch – The Imitation Game
Michael Keaton – Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Eddie Redmayne – The Theory of Everything
Here’s the one acting
category where we don’t already know who will win, and in a race that could
have just as easily had ten nominees, these five gentlemen boast a lot of
support. Carell and Cumberbatch seem to have the lowest chance of winning,
though I personally think people are taking Carell’s performance as the crazy,
ultra-rich wrestling fan John du Pont for granted. The unsettling fear he
creates via silent, unmoving stares is the best we’ve seen since Anthony
Hopkins first spoke about pairing human livers with fava beans and a nice
Chianti.
Bradley Cooper is the great
unknown here. It seems he’s in third place in the winning likeliness rankings,
but considering few people even thought he’d be nominated (which was also the
case last year, and the year before),
it’s probably time we stopped making assumptions on how low his chances are.
The Academy clearly loves him.
But even still, Keaton and
Redmayne are the front-runners, and they’ve evenly split the precursor awards.
There are several factors to consider for both actors. Redmayne gives what is
certainly the more physically challenging performance, while Keaton gives what
might be considered the riskier one. Redmayne fits the Academy’s tradition of
honoring performances that limit what tools an actor can use, while Keaton fits
the Academy’s tradition of honoring performances that don’t simply culminate a
career, but seem to comment on it as well. Both are also fighting the backlash
of what a vote for their performance might symbolize; with Redmayne, it’s the
Oscar-baitiness of playing someone who can’t move, while with Keaton, it’s the idea
of fairness in factoring someone’s career into a vote for what’s supposed to be
just about a single performance.
Either man losing would
surprise no one except his agent. Redmayne won the Screen Actors Guild award,
which has gone to the eventual Oscar winner every year since 2004. But a streak
like that just calls attention to how inevitable it is to be broken, and the
SAG award and Oscar went to different actors every year from 2000-2003, which
just proves that the two voting bodies aren’t always in line. The Academy
hasn’t had this good of an opportunity to reward an actor for dramatizing the
struggle of acting since Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie
32 years ago, and that’s just one of several reasons that I think Michael Keaton will ultimately be the
one that takes the podium on Sunday.
Best Actress
Marion Cotillard – Two Days, One Night
Felicity Jones – The Theory of Everything
Julianne Moore – Still Alice
Rosamund Pike – Gone Girl
Reese Witherspoon – Wild
This year’s Best Actress race
pits two former winners (Witherspoon and Cotillard) and two first-time nominees
(Jones and Pike) against a beloved five-time nominee that’s never won. Yet. Julianne Moore is the very definition
of due, having been one of the best actresses of her generation for going on
twenty years, and the Academy has been patiently waiting for the right opportunity
to reward her. And what’s great about her performance as an early-onset
Alzheimer’s patient in Still Alice is
that it truly is the right opportunity.
No matter how due Moore may
be, this is no career achievement Oscar. She’s devastating in Still Alice, but it’s a calm, quiet kind
of devastating that never goes for the big moment. There’s no cliché Oscar clip
in this movie, no scene that just feels like an acting showcase. Every year, we
label certain films and roles as “Oscar bait,” and the problem with that
mentality is that it makes us under-appreciate films about characters with real
struggles, because we only see them as having an ulterior motive for existence.
Anytime a central character has a disease or handicap, there’s a tendency to
discredit the acting performance as merely gunning for a statue, but Still Alice truly feels like a case
where Moore simply loved the role and wanted to bring the character to life.
She nailed it.
(Oh, and the other four
actresses are really good too. Go see their movies.)
Best Supporting Actress
Patricia Arquette – Boyhood
Laura Dern – Wild
Keira Knightley – The Imitation Game
Emma Stone – Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Meryl Streep – Into the Woods
Patricia Arquette has won every single precursor award that it’s
possible to win, and her competition likely doesn’t have anyone with the
potential to syphon away enough votes to make this a real race. She’s not just
the safe bet; she’s really the only bet.
But for the record, and just
for the sake of playing devil’s advocate, my imaginary vote would have gone to
Emma Stone. The way Stone lays her entire emotional self on the line in one of Birdman’s climactic scenes really
floored me, and the fact that she did it all in one take (as she does
everything in the film) without it seeming unnecessarily showcase-y is really a
testament to how good she’s become. It’s disappointing how long ago this race
became a foregone conclusion, but that’s what it seems to be. Let’s hope
Arquette is prepared to give us a better speech than she delivered at the
Globes.
Best Supporting Actor
Robert Duvall – The Judge
Ethan Hawke – Boyhood
Edward Norton – Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Mark Ruffalo – Foxcatcher
J.K. Simmons – Whiplash
All evidence points to this
race being just as much of a foregone conclusion as Supporting Actress. Like
Patricia Arquette, J.K. Simmons has won every single precursor award that it’s
possible to win. But when you look at his competition, it’s difficult to
believe the narrative that no one else has a chance.
I don’t take Duvall’s
presence seriously. He was good in The
Judge, but the biggest reason he’s here is because the category needed a
fifth nominee. But the other three names aren’t to be taken lightly. Here’s
what Ethan Hawke, Edward Norton, and Mark Ruffalo have in common: they’ve all
been nominated before, but have never won; they’re all nominated here for films
which received a lot of overall support across several categories; they’re all
widely respected veterans of the industry that are (to varying degrees) seen as
“due”; and they all turn in what is quite possibly the best work of their
career for their nominated films. Given all of that, the idea that none of
these three can win seems ludicrous.
My imaginary vote would go to
Norton, who is so perfect in Birdman that
it’s almost unfathomable his role could have gone to anyone else. That can’t be
said of Simmons. While he’s incredible in the film, it’s easy to imagine
several other people in the role. Hollywood has no shortage of old male actors
that are great at being angry. But I also don’t want to undersell how good Simmons
he is; you’re on the edge of your seat every moment he’s in the frame, like
he’s the proverbial bomb under the table that Hitchcock was always going on
about, ready to explode at any moment.
J.K. Simmons
is the front-runner for a reason, and I’m not quite crazy enough to pick
against him. It would be a huge shock if he lost. But having said that, if
there’s any category that could have a shocking winner, this is the one I think
it would happen in.
Best Adapted Screenplay
American Sniper, by Jason Hall
The Imitation Game, by Graham Moore
Inherent Vice,
by Paul Thomas Anderson
The Theory of Everything, by Anthony McCarten
Whiplash,
by Damien Chazelle
Let’s start here: it is my
opinion that the screenplays to American
Sniper and Inherent Vice are
legitimately terrible. American Sniper juggles
every message that a war movie has ever had to the extent that all of them are
undermined, and it ultimately has no idea what it wants to say. Inherent Vice, while quite funny in
parts, is mostly incoherent and explains its plot so poorly that it feels like
more of a lesson in how not to write
a screenplay than the reverse. Neither screenplay is expected to have a chance
at winning, and that’s a good thing.
Next, let’s eliminate The Theory of Everything. It’s a great
story, but that greatness comes across much more in the film’s performances
than it does in the screenplay itself.
And then there were two. The Imitation Game is the prototypical
Oscar winning Adapted Screenplay. It tells a great story in a competent,
effective way. It fuses witty dialogue with human tragedy. It’s paced extremely
well, telling its story briskly without ever feeling rushed or plodding. And
just for good measure, it topped the Hollywood Black List a few years ago,
which is an annual rundown of the best unproduced screenplays floating around
the industry. A vote for it can be seen as an affirmation that Hollywood is
still the dream factory, and that the system still works.
Whiplash,
on the other hand, isn’t really any of those things. It doesn’t use wit or
humor. It doesn’t tell a beautiful story of human tragedy. It didn’t spend
years floating around the industry. It’s just a visceral two-hour slap to the
face, a cymbal flying at your head. It might be the best story ever written
about the real stakes of aspiring for greatness, and the dark underbelly of the
competitive fire that can drive us.
There’s no doubt that Whiplash has a dedicated following.
After all, you can’t get a Best Picture nomination without at least 5% of the
Academy picking you as the best film of the year. But the people who aren’t in Whiplash’s corner might be very far away
from it. It’s a polarizing movie for some people, one that goes way too far
towards condoning cruelty. The Imitation Game, on the other
hand, likely has a much broader range of support across the Academy, and that’s
why I expect it to win here.
Best Original Screenplay
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), by Alejandro
G. Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Jr. & Armando Bo
Boyhood,
by Richard Linklater
Foxcatcher,
by E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman
The Grand Budapest Hotel, by Wes Anderson & Hugo Guinness
Nightcrawler,
by Dan Gilroy
Nightcrawler and
Foxcatcher, well written though they
are, have no chance here. But the other three all have a very good chance, so
much so that it’s very difficult to choose between them. Anderson and Linklater
are both nominated in this category for the third time, and this year certainly
represents their best chance at a first win. No one associated with the Birdman screenplay has been previously
nominated, and the fact that it was written by four people would seem to be a
disadvantage, as Screenplay Oscars don’t typically go to films with so many
names attached. But despite that knock in its corner, Birdman really is the most worthy winner.
What Boyhood and The Grand
Budapest Hotel have in common is that they’re good stories which turned
into wonderfully executed films, but Original Screenplay winners typically go
to films which have not only good stories, but also great dialogue and daring,
original plot contrivances that might seem unwieldy if not for such great
writing. That’s Birdman.
If there were an Oscar for
best story pitch to get green lit, that would go to Boyhood. But Birdman is so much more than just a great pitch—its dialogue manages to be
funny, tragic, daring, original, and informative on the human condition. Its
structure manages to constantly surprise without ever going off the rails. It
checks off every box that a Best Original Screenplay should hit. The fact that
four people wrote it together somehow only makes it seem more impressive.
Best Animated Feature
Big Hero 6
(Directed by Don Hall & Chris Williams)
The Boxtrolls (Directed by Graham Annable & Anthony Stacchi)
How to Train Your Dragon 2 (Directed by Dean DeBlois)
Song of the Sea (Directed by Tomm Moore)
The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (Directed by Isao Takahata)
While it’s always tempting to
believe that Studio Ghibli movies have a chance in this category, it’s doubtful
that enough voters saw The Tale of the
Princess Kaguya to really give it a shot at competing against the big boys
of the race, which are Big Hero 6 and
How to Train Your Dragon 2. It’s sad The Lego Movie isn’t here, because it
could have really made this race interesting, but as it is it’s still a
two-movie showdown that could go either way.
The case for Big Hero 6 is that it’s funny,
innovative, heart-warming, tells a great story, and isn’t a sequel. The case
for How to Train Your Dragon 2 is
that it’s funny, innovative, heart-warming, tells a great story, and won the
Golden Globe. The fact that the Venn Diagram of those cases has an 80% overlap
goes a long towards explaining why no one knows who will win this race, and
predictions seem pretty split. The Oscars and Globes have differed on their
Best Animated Film pick 25% of the time, and those times that it’s happened are
the years when there isn’t a Pixar shoo-in, which is also the case here. In
what’s basically a toss-up, I’ll go with Big Hero 6, because I liked it ever
so slightly better, and that seems like as a good a reason as any for a race
this close.
Best Documentary Feature
Citizenfour
(Directed by Laura Poitras)
Finding Vivian Maier (Directed by John Maloof & Charlie Siskel)
Last Days in Vietnam (Directed by Rory Kennedy)
The Salt of the Earth (Directed by Juliano Ribeiro Salgado &
Wim Wenders)
Virunga
(Directed by Orlando von Einsiedel)
There are two kinds of
documentaries: those that capture their subject as it occurs, and those that
tell the story of their subject years after the fact. The documentaries which
capture their story as it’s occurring almost never cover the hugely important
topics of history, because the odds of the cameras rolling at the right
moments—particularly as the story is beginning—are incredibly low. And that’s
what makes Citizenfour so amazing—it does tell one of the most important
stories of our time, and it does so by capturing the entirety of that story as
it happened, in real time, via a first hand account, with the cameras rolling
from minute one.
Citizenfour tells
the story of Edward Snowden blowing the whistle on how much information was
being collected by the NSA, and what’s so fascinating about the film is not
just that it captures the entire story as it occurred, but that the film
actually is the story. When Snowden
had decided to leak the information he had on the NSA, he specifically did so
by leaking the information to a documentary filmmaker, Laura Poitras, and then
having her help control and document how that information was disseminated to
the world. As a result, Citizenfour feels
like the origin story of a Breaking News Alert, and an indispensible document
of America in the 21st century.
For these reasons, Citizenfour will almost definitely win the Oscar for Best Documentary
Feature, but I wouldn’t quite call it an absolute. I haven’t yet seen The Salt of the Earth, but that’s
precisely why I don’t think it has a chance—it’s the only nominee that hasn’t
really been available to viewers. On the other hand, Virunga has been streaming on Netflix for a few months now, Last Days in Vietnam streamed on PBS’s
website, Finding Vivian Maier was
released on DVD quite a while ago, and Citizenfour
had a major theatrical release last fall.
I don’t really think Finding Vivian Maier has a chance
either, because it’s too small a story in comparison to the topics covered by
the other nominees. Virunga, the
powerful story of preserving a wildlife refuge in the heart of the Congo
against all of the warring groups trying to strip-mine the land, is a moving
and wonderfully made film, but really doesn’t fit the Academy’s voting trends.
When they go for a heavy documentary (as opposed to a more light-hearted,
uplifting one like the last few winners have been), they typically go for a
very American-centric one, and Virunga is
definitely not that.
But Last Days in Vietnam absolutely is that. Expertly directed by Rory
Kennedy (youngest daughter to Bobby, niece to JFK), Last Days tells the widely unknown story of everything that
happened with the American involvement in Vietnam after the war had
“officially” ended. It’s the exact kind of film that would win this award in
other years, when there isn’t a once-in-a-generation type of film like Citizenfour. I fully expect Citizenfour to win, but I wouldn’t be shocked if Last Days in Vietnam pulled off the
upset. The Academy has a long history of awarding great Vietnam films, and the
Kennedy name at the top of the credits might go a long way with liberal
Hollywood voters.
Best Foreign Language Film
Ida (Poland,
Directed by Pawel Pawlikowski)
Leviathan (Russia,
Directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev))
Tangerines (Estonia,
Directed by Zaza Urushadze)
Timbuktu (Mauritania,
Directed by Abderrahmane Sissako)
Wild Tales (Argentina,
Directed by Damián Szifron)
There are exactly two
categories this year where the incredible passion I feel for one nominee is
effectively preventing me from accessing any semblance of objectivity on the
race. This is one of them. Wild Tales represents
the first time I’ve ever shouted out “Oh Jesus Christ!” while in an actual
(packed) theater. It’s such a bonkers, hilarious, daring work of
no-rules-fantasy that I’m compelled to believe anyone who sees it will feel the
same way.
The key part of that iffy
rationale is the “anyone who sees it” gambit. How many voters will actually see
it? It wasn’t released in any theaters before voting ended, so to think it has
a decent chance to win requires the belief that a wide enough swath of voters
actually watched all five of their foreign language film screeners. I’ll be
unreasonably optimistic and believe that (even though I really don’t).
Leviathan won
the Golden Globe, but that’s only voted on by a small number of people, and
it’s likely too long, too slow, and too Russian for a large enough Academy
contingent to pick it. Timbuktu doesn’t
have any of those problems, but it’s also the most poetic and least narratively
driven of the nominees, which isn’t likely to galvanize a lot of voters. I
haven’t seen Tangerines, which is the one film in the field that no
one had heard of before the nominations. That might make some voters especially
curious to watch their screener, but not enough to make it a contender.
Ida is the
heavy front-runner here, and anyone actually betting money on this category
would be wise to pick it. First off, it’s a beautiful film, and it’s the rare
foreign language Oscar contender to also be nominated in other categories (it’s
a cinematography nominee), which proves how much support it has. And perhaps
most importantly, it’s been available to stream on Netflix for a few months
now, which means it’s the only film in the field not dependent on Academy
members watching their screeners to acquire votes. But I’m not betting money on
this race, I’m only betting my bragging rights, and I’ve been boasting about
how infectious and unforgettable Wild Tales is since I saw it in Toronto five months ago. I just have to hope
enough voters watch it and see for themselves.
Best Cinematography
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
– Emmanuel Lubezki
The Grand Budapest Hotel – Robert Yeoman
Ida – Lukasz
Zal and Ryszard Lenczewski
Mr. Turner –
Dick Pope
Poor Roger Deakins. Arguably
the greatest American cinematographer of the last twenty years, Deakins
perpetually shoots the second best looking film of the year, every year. This
is his twelfth nomination, and it will be his twelfth loss. No amount of “he’s
due” voter sentimentality will give him enough of a chance to beat Emanuel
Lubezki, who is a sure thing to win for the second year in a row, after his
trophy for another of his Mexican compadre’s films last year, Gravity.
Best Cinematography is always
a frustrating category, because the five nominees usually look so good that you can effectively talk
yourselves into any of them. Mr. Turner
creates a handful of scenes where the mid-day light soaking in through the
windows is so utterly perfect that it almost feels like CGI. Ida uses negative space and still shots
so beautifully that every image in the film could have been a framed photograph
hanging in a museum. And yet, they’re both going home empty-handed on Sunday.
Lubezki’s acrobatically choreographed tracking shots are the unforgettable
visual signature of the year’s most exciting visual film (Birdman), and they’ll be
studied in film school for decades to come.
Best Costume Design
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Inherent Vice
Into the Woods
Maleficent
Mr. Turner
Costume Design is one of a
handful of categories—along with Makeup, Visual Effects, and both Sound
categories—that the average Academy member probably votes on very quickly,
without expending too much thought. Given that, the best way to predict the winner
is usually to try and figure out what the easiest and most tempting “fast
logic” would be. Which of the five nominees is easiest to recall what the
costumes looked like? That’s likely the key question for voters, and it
probably knocks Mr. Turner and Inherent Vice out of the race
immediately. Into the Woods is
trickier, until you realize that remembering what a film looked like and
remembering what the characters were wearing are actually two different things.
It probably comes down to Maleficent versus The Grand Budapest Hotel, and within the Academy, Budapest is the far more highly seen
film. Three-time winner Milena Canonero is working with Wes Anderson for the
third time here, and her incredibly distinct work has also been recognized for
films like Dick Tracy and Marie Antoinette. She tends to design
costumes that are highly memorable without overwhelming the film, and her work
on Grand
Budapest Hotel is no
different.
Best Film Editing
American Sniper
Boyhood
The Grand Budapest Hotel
The Imitation Game
Whiplash
Along with Best Foreign
Language Film, here’s the other category this year where I have a horse I’m so
passionate about that I simply can’t pick against it. Boyhood is the smart pick, for sure. It edits together 12 years in
the lives of its characters so seamlessly that the transitions never call too
much attention to themselves, allowing the viewer to focus less on the gimmick
(if you want to call it that) and linger more on the powerful themes of growing
up and discovering who you are. But I’m picking Whiplash.
Here’s a surprising tidbit:
the Best Film Editing Oscar has actually only gone to the eventual Best Picture
winner in ten of the last twenty years, which is less often than most people
might think. In fact, in a lot of years the eventual Best Picture winner almost
seems like the fallback pick when there isn’t anything else that voters feel
especially passionate for. I don’t see this as being one of those years.
For one, there’s American Sniper, which could also easily
win here. For all the film’s flaws (and they are legion), the level of suspense
it builds is well done, and war films have a history of doing well in this
category. But with a little stretching, Whiplash
could almost be seen as a war film as well. The way the editing handles the
competitive playing of instruments feels like machine gun fire, and creates a
life or death intensity among the actors that goes just as far towards making
the movie work so well as J.K. Simmons does as the merciless antagonist.
The biggest mitigating factor
might be how long voters take in deliberating this category. The faster they
make their pick, the more likely it favors Boyhood.
But the longer they think about it, the more they could be seduced by the
is-it-rushing-or-is-it-dragging tempo of Whiplash.
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Foxcatcher
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Guardians of the Galaxy
As with Best Costume Design,
the big question to ask yourself here is not which film had the best makeup (which none of us are
probably qualified to figure out anyway), but which film had the most memorable
makeup. Guardians of the Galaxy had
some memorable looking characters, for sure, but they could just as easily be
the result of copious amounts of body paint than actual Oscar-worthy makeup
work. And The Grand Budapest Hotel probably
had the most makeup work, but that’s not the same as most memorable. When you
think of what Foxcatcher looked
like, the odds of you immediately recalling Steve Carell’s prosthetic nose and
creepy face are pretty high, which is why it should win.
Best Original Score
The Grand Budapest Hotel – Alexandre Desplat
The Imitation Game – Alexandre Desplat
Interstellar –
Hans Zimmer
Mr. Turner –
Gary Yershon
The Theory of Everything – Jóhann Jóhannsson
(Click HERE to listen to the themes of each nominated score)
(Click HERE to listen to the themes of each nominated score)
Only once this century has
the Best Original Score Oscar gone to a film that wasn’t also a Best Picture
nominee, and that was in 2002, when somehow only one Best Picture nominee—the
minimalist Philip Glass score for The
Hours—even showed up in the race (Frida
was the winner that year). So that precedent would seem to eliminate Interstellar and Mr. Turner pretty quickly. Of the remaining three, The Grand Budapest Hotel score is
probably far too playful and even Vaudevillian for a wide enough swath of
Academy voters to push it over the top.
It’s unfortunate the
all-percussion score for Birdman didn’t
make the final cut, because something like that has absolutely no precedent,
and it’d be interesting to see how it might fair. But we still have a final
race between two wonderful contenders.
Jóhann Jóhannsson is a
first-time nominee for his very classic, romantic score to The Theory of Everything, and Alexandre Desplat (an 8-time nominee
who’s never won) is in this race for the seventh time in nine years for his
dramatic and important-things-are-afoot score to The Imitation Game. By reading that sentence, you might assume
Desplat has a huge edge, but the average Academy member has no idea Desplat is
even nominated, because the actual Oscar ballot only lists the film titles, not
the names of the nominees. That might seem unfair, but it’s probably for the
sake of preventing that exact type of “Oh, he’s due” vote. So the sentimental
advantage Desplat might seem to have isn’t likely big enough to matter, and
anyone who does vote for Desplat because he’s due might just as well pick the
other film he’s nominated for, The Grand
Budapest Hotel. That risk of vote splitting for Desplat, and the fact that
Jóhannsson’s score for The Theory of Everything is used so prominently in the film,
should be enough to give it the win.
Best Original Song
“Everything is Awesome” from The Lego Movie, by Shawn Patterson
“Glory” from Selma, by John Stephens and Lonnie Lynn
“Grateful” from Beyond the Lights, by Dianne Warren
“I’m Not Gonna Miss You” from
Glen Campbell… I’ll Be Me, by Glen Campbell and Julian Raymond
“Lost Stars” from Begin Again, by Gregg Alexander and Danielle Brisebois
(Click on each title to hear the song)
(Click on each title to hear the song)
Best Original Song already
feels like an anti-climactic category compared to last year, when two of the
nominees—“Happy” and winner “Let It Go”—became actual classics that were
completely ubiquitous on the radio all year. There’s nothing here with that
sort of potential, but there’s still some good stuff.
“I’m Not Gonna Miss You”
could get some sentimental votes, but probably can’t conjure enough total
support to win, and “Grateful” is just the overall least compelling of the
bunch, so it’s out. “Lost Stars,” from the John Carney film Begin Again, does have some nice precedent
behind it, as the last music film by John Carney was Once, which won this very Oscar for the lovely “Falling Slowly.”
But despite its charms, “Lost Stars” just isn’t quite that good, and the film
it’s from hasn’t inspired anywhere near as much passion as Once did.
So that leaves us with two
songs that are not only very good, but also come from beloved films that are
perceived as having been screwed by the nominations and can’t really get
honored anywhere else (unless you think Selma’s
winning Best Picture). They’ll both be the beneficiaries of sympathy votes for
their films as a whole, but one of those films just provokes a lot more
sympathy than the other. The heavy money is on “Glory,” and it’s a powerful, triumphant anthem of hope and
perseverance that perfectly communicates its film’s themes. Of course,
“Everything is Awesome” also perfectly
communicates its film’s themes, and you’d be wise not to underestimate its
chances here. It legitimately could win. But it won’t.
Best Production Design
The Grand Budapest Hotel
The Imitation Game
Interstellar
Into the Woods
Mr. Turner
Every year I do a deep dive
into Oscar history, precedent, and voting trends to prepare for picking the
winners, and every year, that dive teaches me something new and unbelievable.
Two years ago, it was learning that a James Bond song had never won the Best
Original Song Oscar, which felt impossible. This year, it was learning that a
Wes Anderson film has never (never!) even been nominated for Best Production
Design. When people think of Wes Anderson films, production design is usually
the first thing that comes to mind. No other films look like Wes Anderson
films. When people discuss his visual style, they really aren’t talking about
the way he edits, or the angles he shoots from, or the lighting he uses…
they’re talking about the production design.
The fact that an Anderson
film has never been nominated in this category is likely a result of how
resistant this Academy branch is to non-period/non-fantasy work. Prior to Moonrise Kingdom in 2012, all of
Anderson’s films had taken place in the present, in the real(ish) world. But
now that his work has finally broken through to be nominated in this category,
it’s subject to being voted on by the Academy as a whole. Given how much
support Anderson has across other branches—particularly actors and writers—and
how much support The Grand Budapest Hotel has
this year, the other four nominees shouldn’t even have a chance.
Best Sound Editing
American Sniper
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
Interstellar
Unbroken
Of every category on the
board, the two that voters almost certainly spend the least amount of time with
are the two sound categories. Most voters probably glance at the list of
nominees and just hope to see a war movie. Because the list is alphabetical, American
Sniper will be the first
thing they see. Done.
Best Sound Mixing
American Sniper
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Interstellar
Unbroken
Whiplash
This one is actually hard to
call. While all of the logic for Best Sound Editing also applies here
(signaling a likely win for American
Sniper), that gun-fire-music in Whiplash
is probably just as impressive to anyone that takes a minute to think about
it. Whether any voters actually will take that minute to think about Best Sound
Mixing isn’t something I’d bet on, but here’s what I will bet on: that enough
voters didn’t love—or even like—American
Sniper to tip the scales towards Whiplash.
Best Visual Effects
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Guardians of the Galaxy
Interstellar
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Comic book movies rarely win
this award, and with three of them on the ballot (possibly leading to votes
cancelling each other out), none of them feel like a smart pick. It’s easy to
assume that Interstellar would win
here because it’s the more prestigious option (and because the last Christopher
Nolan sci-fi epic, Inception, also
won this Oscar), but it’s just not a film where any of the specific special
effects feel particularly dazzling. Nothing stands out quite like the city
folding in on itself in Inception did.
That’s not the case with Dawn of the
Planet of the Apes, where the effects team mastered the technique of
applying human facial emotion to CGI characters. Rise of the Planet of the Apes lost this Oscar to Hugo in 2012, but that could just be
because Hugo was a Best Picture
nominee, and every time there’s a Best Picture nominee in this category, it
wins. With no Best Picture nominee in the field this year, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes should be able to pull through.
Best Short Film – Animated
The Bigger Picture
The Dam Keeper
Feast
Me and My Moulton
A Single Life
Best Animated Short Film is a
weaker field than usual this year. The
Dam Keeper has the most artistic animation, but is also the longest and
bleakest of the five, so it’s hard to imagine voters falling in love with it. Me and My Moulton is charming, but the
animation style—while effective for the film—is far less visually impressive
than the others and doesn’t really have any degree of difficulty or originality.
A Single Life, at just two minutes,
is probably too brief to win people over. I think it’ll come down to The Bigger Picture and Feast. Everyone that sees Feast, the Disney short which played
before Big Hero 6, instantly falls in
love with it, but Disney also has a bizarre history of losing in this category,
perhaps because voters perpetually see it as the Goliath against four Davids.
But Feast is just too utterly adorable to succumb
to that trend, and none of the other nominees is in its league.
Best Short Film – Live Action
Aya
Boogaloo and Graham
Butter Lamp (La Lampe au Beurre de Yak)
Parvaneh
The Phone Call
Best Live Action Short Film
is always one of my favorite categories to try and predict, because it’s the
only Oscar race in which no precedent, “due-ness,” momentum, campaigning, Oscar
narrative, or pre-conceived worthiness of any kind exists. People are pretty
much voting strictly on taste. Imagine that!
Of course, with The
Phone Call boasting two actual name actors in its cast (Sally Hawkins
and Jim Broadbent), it may get some “Oh I love him/her!” votes, but it could
just as easily win because it’s the one voters liked best. Parvaneh is a little too meh, Butter
Lamp is a fascinating idea but the least viewer-friendly of the bunch, and Boogaloo and Graham is the funniest but
also slightest and most gimmicky. I thought Aya
was the strongest, and it displayed the emotional subtlety of really strong
filmmaking. But as the longest and arguably least eventful of the films, it
probably doesn’t stand a chance.
Best Short Film – Documentary
Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1
Joanna
Our Curse
The Reaper (La Parka)
White Earth
Best Documentary Short, on
the other hand, is always my least favorite race to try and predict, because
it’s the only race where I don’t see the films. Crisis Hotline is the one that every other Oscar prognosticator
seems to be picking, and because it’s on HBO, it’s also probably the most widely
watched. So because I have no reasoning of my own to provide, I’ll just agree
with others’. Crisis Hotline for the win!
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