2015 Academy Awards Preview (or The Opinion of One Guy Who Has Seen Most of the Movies Nominated) Part Five

After a write up consisting of four different parts, it is time to talk about the one category that is always fun to debate about: Best Picture! 

So who do I think is going to win the big prize? Let's not start with a long paragraph this time. Let's just get right to it! 

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 

The thing that jumps out for me on this list is that frankly, this really is a really great list of films this year. There is no one film that is in here that makes everyone groan. I could make an argument for Foxcatcher being included on this list but other than that. I have no problems with the nominees listed here. 

So to start, who has no chance of winning? I think that honor has to go to The Theory of Everything. It's a fine movie no doubt. Well acted with a great subject matter. But it's the kind of biographic film you see at the Oscars every year and the film just doesn't really scream "BEST PICTURE!" Maybe Best Actor, but not Best Picture. The same I think goes for the other British film on this list, The Imitation Game. It is really odd with this movie because on paper, you think this would be an easy win for Best Picture. It's a prestige British Film. It is on the subject of World War II. You have two big name actors in Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley. It is also about a gay man being persecuted which is a big hot topic issue going on right now. But it seems that many people think that it is one of those movies that is really good, just not best of the year good.

The Grand Budapest Hotel is a movie that a lot of people really do love though. It's hard to find someone that hated it. However it has been put in what I call "the Moulin Rouge spot." It is going to win a good number of technical awards and be a film that many people admire for years, it is just not going to win Best Picture. The same thing can be said for Selma. This film will be remembered for years to come. It is an important historical film. Many people are upset that it will not win Best Picture and they have every right to be that way. But it is also going to join a list of amazing films that have also not won Best Picture. Seriously, go to Google and look up the list of nomintated movies that have lost Best Picture. It's not a bad list to be on. 

Now if I had my pick, Whiplash would win Best Picture no questions asked. It is the first movie that I can think of in years that I had a visceral reaction to. The movie moves you with the story, the acting, and especially the music. But the fact that the movie is such a gut punch at times I think is what's going to scare off the voters. It happens a lot. Why else could you explain why similar gut punch films like Raging Bull and Brokeback Mountain lost out on Best Picture to the more accessible to watch films like Ordinary People and Crash? 

Oddly enough, I think this also will apply to American Sniper. True it is a dark horse pick. It is the most popular film nominated. As of this writing, the film has made $308 Million Dollars at the U.S. box office. That is not a number to sneeze at. Also, it is directed by past Academy Award winner Clint Eastwood. But I have a feeling that even though it is raking in piles of money, the Academy is not going to give it Best Picture. You have a lot of liberal members in the voting branch and they really will not respond to the right leaning ways of the main character of the film. Also, you know they have to worry about a Crash-like backlash happening again if they let the movie win Best picture. 

So that leaves two films. The first one being Boyhood. For awhile, it was the presumed front runner. It has popped up on a slew of best of the year lists. Richard Linklater is a very popular director. It was filmed over a 12 year period, which definitely an interesting story to voters watching the film. It's also well acted which had to be a hard thing to continue to do over the years of filming. But the one thing that I think it is a determent to the movie is that it came out in the summer. Thus, people have had a long time to watch in theaters, watch it on DVD or on their computers. That is enough time for one movie to be picked apart and talked about by many people. So much so, that complaints about the film being gimmicky have started to surface. 

Because of that, I believe that Birdman is going to be the film that wins Best Picture. That is not a bad thing in the least. I love the movie. It's well acted with a career defining performance by Michael Keaton. It is well directed. It also has great camera work by Emmanuel Lubezki, who is hot at the moment coming off of a win for the similar one-take film, Gravity. Also if there is one type of film that the Academy in recent years have loved to honor, it is films that celebrate the world of cinema and the theater and the power they have over people. The Artist and Argo are two recent examples that come to mind. Expect Birdman to soar up into the air and join the list of Best Picture winners. 

Should Win: 

Whiplash 

Will Win: 

 

Enjoy the show this Sunday!

- Hash

2015 Academy Awards Preview (or The Opinion of One Guy Who Has Seen Most of the Movies Nominated) Part Four

Best Director. A controversial category due to who is not nominated.


The fact that Ava Duvernay is not nominated for Best Director is criminal. Selma is an amazing film that was snubbed in many categories but this is where the snubbing of the film hurt the most. The Academy had a chance to make history by giving a directing nomination to a black woman for the first time. Instead, it played it safe with a couple of the choices here.

At least there are other people in this category who deserved to be here for films that are great. Also there is some curve balls being thrown in over who is going to win.

So with that, let's look at the category:

BEST DIRECTOR

Wes Anderson - The Grand Budapest Hotel

 Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu - Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) 

Richard Linklater - Boyhood

Bennett Miller - Foxcatcher 

Morten Tyldum - The Imitation Game 

Odd thing about this category is that you get the feeling of deja vu creeping up this year. In 2010, it was assumed that David Fincher was going to win Best Director for The Social Network. He won all the early critics awards. The movie was popular with critics and audiences. But slowly but surely, The King's Speech started winning major awards. Come Oscar night, it beat Social Network for best picture and director. In 2015, that same thing is going to happen again. This time, it is Richard Linklater who is going to end up losing. For most of the year, he has been the frontrunner to win best director. Boyhood and the way the film was shot over a 12 year period has been discussed at length since the film came out this summer. It is impressive for sure, especially since Linklater was able to keep the performances that good for that length of time. But lately, complaints about the story have popped up. Is it involving enough? Is the movie too slow? Is the movie too gimmicky? The film has been out for so long that people have begun to look for a better, sexier option and that option appears to be Birdman and it's director. Inarritu has been a favorite of the Academy for years. 21 Grams, Babel, and Biutiful have all gotten acclaim over the years but he has yet to win any awards for his work. That ends this Sunday. The competition otherwise doesn't look like it could knock either one of these two gentlemen out. Wes Anderson is finally getting some long overdue acclaim from the Academy for Grand Budapest, but the film seems to be more likely to win the technical awards than any of the major awards. Morten Tyldum is the newcomer in this group but his work on Imitation Game was good but nothing outstanding. (I would have switched his spot out with DuVernay and let her get the nomination over him.) And Bennett Miller continues to impress with his third directing nomination in a row for Foxcatcher but the coldness of the story seems to have turned people off. When it comes down to it, Academy members will give Innarritu the Oscar for the way he guided Birdman and got the great performances out of the film. It doesn't speak bad to Linklater, he is just losing to the sexier option at the moment. As it showed before in 2010, it happens sometimes. 

Should Win and Will Win: 

2015 Academy Awards Preview (or The Opinion of One Guy Who Has Seen Most of the Movies Nominated) Part Two

For part two of my Academy Award predictions, I am going to be looking at the Supporting Actor and Actress categories. Two categories that have the reputation for being the weakest fields in the Oscar race, Albeit for different reasons.

I think this is a misconception in some ways. True it is not a super strong year for supporting performances. But that doesn't mean that we didn't get any great performances. I can think of about three actors nominated throughout both of these categories that truly deserve to be remembered long after the awards season is over. Also most of these performances came from actors who the audience has always relied on to give us great performances over the years, no matter the quality of the film.

So without further ado, here is a look at the nominees for Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress:

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 

Of any category of the night, this one is a shoo-in for J.K. Simmons. Simmons is just that good in Whiplash. Simmons is very much unlikeable in the film, but he makes you feel the passion for music that his music teacher character Terrence Fletcher has. The character is very much an asshole, no doubt. But you see a beating heart behind it all and that is no easy feat to pull off for Simmons at all. As for the other nominees, each one of them can enjoy the night and the nomination. If anyone has any hope to upset Simmons it might be Mark Ruffalo in Foxcatcher. As Dave Schultz, the famed former Olympic wrestler who meets a very tragic end, Ruffalo brought a level head and heart to the film that helped balance out the mental issues in the story between Steve Carell and Channing Tatum. Edward Norton is great in Birdman and it was great to see him back in a good film like that since he has not done much in the last few years. But you get the sense that he really is kinda playing a version of his reputation in the movie and not much more. Same for Ethan Hawke in Boyhood. Hawke has had a great couple of years of success but the movie is more memorable for other aspects than his performance. And Robert Duvall is an American Treasure of acting and gives an impressive performance in The Judge. Unfortunate for Duvall though, reviews on the film were really mixed and he is film's only nomination. So if Simmons loses this category, expect a huge gasp in the audience as well as some Fletcher like cursing from a few people as well. 

Should Win and Will Win: 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Patricia Arquette - Boyhood

Lauren Dern - Wild

Keira Knightley - The Imitation Game

Emma Stone - Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

Meryl Streep - Into The Woods

First off, Meryl Streep has no business being nominated. She is fine in Into The Woods, but if anyone from that movie was going to be nominated, it should have been Emily Blunt. So with Streep thankfully not winning, this race becomes more interesting. It was a great surprise seeing Lauren Dern nominated for her heartfelt work in Wild. But she has not really been nominated or won any other acting race so a win here is unlikely.  Keira Knightley is great as usual in The Imitation Game but it is the kind of performance we have seen from her before. Emma Stone I think gives the best performance in this category for Birdman. She never really overacted too much and I thought she stood toe to toe quite well with Michael Keaton in that film. But in the end, I think Patricia Arquette takes home the trophy for her work in Boyhood. She gives maybe the most heartfelt performance in the film and the scene at the end where her character's son gets ready to go to college is a heart breaker for any mother who has watched their kid go to school. A lot of older women voting in this category might relate to that. So while it would be good to see Stone win here, Arquette winning would be just as deserved.

Should Win: Emma Stone

Will Win: 

That is it for this post. Next time we will look at the Best Actor and Best Actress races. Best Actress is up in the air for any number of the women in that category. Best Actor seems to be going for Michael Keaton but is an upset inevitable in that race? 

- Hash