Wow. After all that build up, including months of analysis, the Academy still managed to surprise us. I knew that we were going to get a shocker or two, but early this morning the Oscar nominations threw everyone, myself included, for a bit of a loop. I’m sure you all have seen the nominees by now, but what is there to take from all of this? I’ll be updating predictions tomorrow to reflect who’s in better or worse position for wins now, but today I’m going to just give some quick reactions and try to make sense of it all. Wish me luck…
First of all, here’s who did the best. The nominations were led by Birdman and The Grand Budapest Hotel, which each received nine citations. Next in line with eight was The Imitation Game, while both American Sniper and Boyhood scored six each. Foxcatcher, Interstellar, The Theory of Everything, and Whiplash claimed five, while Mr. Turner took four. Finally, Into the Woods and Unbroken scored three, leaving every other contender with two (like Inherent Vive, Selma, and Wild) or fewer. Suffice to say, this wasn’t necessarily the combination that pundits like myself expected. We knew Birdman would do well, for example, but American Sniper, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and The Imitation Game all exceeded expectations. On the flip side, Gone Girl (one nomination) and Selma were snubbed all over the place.
Of course, the big category was Best Picture, where for the first time we had eight nominees, not the presumed nine due to the sliding scale (side note…can we just go back to ten?). The nominees here were American Sniper, Birdman, Boyhood, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Imitation Game, Selma, The Theory of Everything, and Whiplash. That left Foxcatcher and Nightcrawler just shy as probably the numbers nine and ten contenders, and as such out in the cold. I managed to get these picks right, but it’s just an odd looking lineup to me. It more or less locks in Boyhood for the win too, but more on that in the coming days and weeks.
Best Director blew me away by having the return of the Lone Director. For those of you who don’t know the reference, it means a filmmaker nominated for Best Director without their movie getting into Best Picture. When there were only five spots in Picture, it happened here and there, but when it went to [...]
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