2014 Awards Season: Oscars - And the Winner is... Birdman for Best Picture

February 22, 2015

Birdman poster

The Oscar ceremony is tonight and we will be live-blogging the winners... assuming I don't get bored and wander away. On a serious note, while my job is all about movies and I love watching movies, I love paying attention to box office numbers, I even love Awards Season. I hate ceremonies. As per usual, here is the list of nominees marked according to predictions / wishes. Nominees in Bold are the ones predicted to win by our readers. If I predicted a different film, those are in Italics. Meanwhile, the nominees I want to win, but don't think will win, are Underlined. There are a few categories where the film I really think deserves the award were not even nominated, plus a few I don't have a real opinion on.

Notes and Reactions...

And the Oscar goes to...

  • With the awards over, our readers were able to get 18 or the 24 categories right, which is a solid number. I got 20 or 21 correct. (I'm not 100% sure who I picked for Best Editing anymore.) Also, two of the categories I got wrong, my personal favorite won.
  • Birdman wraps up the night winning Best Picture over the readers' favorite, Boyhood.
  • Julianne Moore finally ins her Oscar for Still Alice. This was not a surprise.
  • Eddie Redmayne won Best Actor for The Theory of Everything. This is not a surprise, but I am disappointed that Michael Keaton didn't win.
  • Birdman wins again, this time Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu picks up the Oscar for Best Director over our readers' pick, Richard Linklater for Boyhood.
  • Best Adapted Screenplay went to the favorite, Graham Moore for The Imitation Game.
  • Birdman won Best Original Screenplay. I was torn between this and The Grand Budapest Hotel, but I'm happy either way. This is a bit of an upset and suggests a Birdman wave coming up.
  • I thought Alexandre Desplat's two nominations would cost him the win, but he earned the Oscar for Best Original Score for The Grand Budapest Hotel.
  • "Glory" from Selma won for Best Original Song. If you go by the reactions on Twitter, the performance was also the highlight of the night.
  • Another unsurprising result, as CitizenFour wins for Best Feature-Length Documentary.
  • For the first time tonight, the readers and I disagreed on a winner... and I won. Well, to be more accurate, Whiplash won for Best Editing.
  • The Awards are speeding up, as Birdman wins for Best Cinematography. Not a surprise.
  • As much as I loved the writing and acting in The Grand Budapest Hotel, the Production Design was the lead character in that movie, so I'm not surprised it won the Oscar.
  • We have our first surprise of the night, as Big Hero 6 tops How to Train Your Dragon 2 for Best Animated Feature-Film. I wanted Big Hero 6 to win, but I wasn't expecting it to do so.
  • Feast wins for Best Animated Short Film, meaning our readers have gone three-for-three on the short films. These tend to be very hard to predict, so good job.
  • Interstellar won for Best Visual Effects. Guardians of the Galaxy had better effects, but Interstellar was more of an Oscar movie.
  • Patricia Arquette wins Best Supporting Actress for Boyhood. This is another win for our readers.
  • American Sniper won for Best Sound Editing, which our readers also predicted. I wanted Guardians of the Galaxy to win, but it was not even nominated.
  • Whiplash wins for Best Sound Mixing, which means our readers haven't missed a single Oscar prediction yet.
  • Our readers are two for two as Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1 wins for Best Documentary Short.
  • The Phone Call wins for Best Live-Action Short Film. This is a hard category to predict, but our readers nailed it. It did have feature-film like cast to it, so that probably helped.
    • Ida wins the Best Foreign-Language Film, which will likely be one of the less surprising results of the night. It is the first film from Poland to win this award.
  • The Grand Budapest Hotel won for Best Achievement in Hair and Makeup over Guardians of the Galaxy, which has much more intensive special effects makeup. However, Grand Budapest is a Oscar movie, while Guardians is not.
  • The Grand Budapest Hotel winning for Best Costume Design is not a surprise. I guess there are some that thought a showier film like Into the Woods and Maleficent should win. However, the look of The Grand Budapest Hotel was an important character in the film.
  • J.K. Simmons for Whiplash. This is not a surprise and I'm very happy with this win. J.K. Simmons is a fantastic actor who doesn't get a lot recognition for his work, because he's seen as a character actor.
The categories and nominations are...

BEST PICTURE

DIRECTING

BEST ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

BEST ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

BEST WRITING - ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

BEST WRITING - ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

BEST DOCUMENTARY - FEATURE LENGTH

BEST DOCUMENTARY - SHORT FILM

  • Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1
    •
SHORT FILM - LIVE ACTION

  • The Phone Call
    •
SHORT FILM - ANIMATED

  • Feast
    •
BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN CINEMATOGRAPHY

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN PRODUCTION DIRECTING

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN COSTUME DESIGN

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN MAKEUP

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN VISUAL EFFECTS

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN EDITING

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN SOUND EDITING

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN SOUND MIXING

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN MUSIC - ORIGINAL SCORE

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN MUSIC - ORIGINAL SONG

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Filed under: Awards Season, Maleficent, How to Train Your Dragon 2, Selma, Interstellar, Guardians of the Galaxy, Big Hero 6, Into the Woods, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Boyhood, Ida, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), The Theory of Everything, Whiplash, The Imitation Game, American Sniper, CitizenFour, Still Alice, Patricia Arquette, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Michael Keaton, Richard Linklater, Julianne Moore, Eddie Redmayne, J.K. Simmons, Alexandre Desplat, Armando Bo, Nicolas Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Jr., Graham Moore