sTory of
Selma brought a stellar performance from British actor David Oyelowo.
oscAr T
he 2014 movie year will officially be put to bed when a bunch of well dressed sorts head home with their naked golden men. Who will be graced with the golden dude doorstops? How the hell should I know? Since I write about movies, and since Oscar night is some sort of big deal, I have been asked to make some guesses. So, I acquiesced and prepared the following list. My editor swore if I failed, he’d leave me off his annual Pig Roast Party, one of those things where somebody puts a pole through some poor pig and then shoves an apple in its mouth, while everybody converges like cannibals and shaves the meat off its bones. Curiously, my editor says this to me every year and, the strange thing is, I’ve never been to any of his Pig parties even though I always write this thing. (I think he’s lying.) Also, I don’t eat pork, so I don’t know why this particular trickery always works. OK, here are my best guesses as to who will win the Oscars and all that crap.
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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 While I would’ve left American Sniper off this list—it’s just not a great movie—the rest of the films are solid. It looks like this is coming down to Boyhood or Birdman. Birdman is the better film, but Boyhood is pretty fantastic as well. Ultimately, I think Birdman is great enough for it to garner some major awards, but too polarizing—a lot of folks outright hate it—to take the ultimate prize. Richard Linklater’s Boyhood will win this by a hair. SNUBS: There was room for two more nominees on this list. I think 2014 was a well-above-average year, and 10 nominees would’ve made sense. The Academy did pretty well here, but I would’ve dropped Sniper and added Gone Girl, Interstellar and Foxcatcher. ShoUld wiN: Birdman will wiN: Boyhood
BesT AcTor Steve Carell (Foxcatcher) Bradley Cooper (American Sniper) Benedict Cumberbatch (The Imitation Game) Michael Keaton (Birdman) Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything) This is another tough call, this one being between Keaton and Redmayne. As with Best Picture, I want this to go to Birdman and a well deserving Keaton. I just think Redmayne as Stephen Hawking has always had Oscar written all over it. It could go either way, but I’m betting Redmayne. SNUBS: I’m pretty unhappy with this list. If this were the Grimmy’s, I would drop Carell, Cooper, Cumberbatch and Redmayne, replacing them with Miles Teller (Whiplash), Ralph Fiennes (The Grand Budapest Hotel), Jake Gyllenhaal (Nightcrawler) and the criminally snubbed David Oyelowo (Selma) for his brilliant performance as Martin Luther King. I think Oscar voters snubbed Oyelowo because they were worried they’d get the gig of trying to say his name at the ceremony when announcing the nominees. They don’t want to be this year’s John Travolta. I would’ve also nominated Nicolas Cage, creating a sixth slot, for Left Behind. I would do this not because he deserves it, for he
Our resident movie guy predicts what will happen at the Academy Awards by BoB grimm bgrimm@newsreview.com
surely doesn’t, but because such a nomination would cause a cataclysmic cinema vortex over Southern California, where the entire entertainment industry would collapse upon itself and get sucked down into the bowels of the Earth below all of the corpses and magma and shit. The industry would then be reborn with the help of pixies, magic foxes and a resurrected and svelte Orson Welles. Hey, one can dream. ShoUld wiN: Keaton will wiN: Redmayne 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 is one of the night’s sure things. All of the nominated performances are good, and while I’m an especially big fan of Pike in Gone Girl, Moore is just too damned good as a 50-year-old woman suffering from Alzheimer’s to be ignored. A long deserving actress finally gets her due. SNUBS: I would drop Jones and Cotillard from this list, replacing them with Tessa Thompson (Dear White People) and the remarkable work of Essie Davis (The Babadook). ShoUld aNd will wiN: Moore
BesT suPPorTing AcTor Robert Duvall (The Judge) Ethan Hawke (Boyhood) Edward Norton (Birdman) Mark Ruffalo (Foxcatcher) J.K. Simmons (Whiplash) This is another sure thing. While Norton, Hawke and Ruffalo were all spectacular; Simmons is going to get this one. Robert Duvall is a great actor, but his nod here qualifies as this year’s worst nomination. Simmons has been the frontrunner from the beginning, and he will get the gold. I’m thinking that’s on his tempo. SNUBS: This list almost matched my year-end picks, with the exception of one. I would dump Duvall and replace him with Shia LaBeouf for his performance in the Sia video—I mean Fury. ShoUld aNd will wiN:
Simmons BesT suPPorTing AcTress Patricia Arquette (Boyhood) Laura Dern (Wild) Keira Knightley (The Imitation Game) Emma Stone (Birdman) Meryl Streep (Into the Woods) Say, this predicting stuff is getting pretty easy. Arquette gets the award in yet another easy-to-guess contest. I suppose Stone could creep in and cause an upset, but there’s no way in
