The State of the Race: The Nominations are in, Who is Winning What?

The Best Picture race has just got a little more interesting. Where Boyhood still has the lead, it has two movies to beat and both are very strong films in the race all of a sudden. The biggest surprise of all is the appearance of little known Morten Tyldum in the Best Director race, even when the BAFTA did not include him in theirs. They went for James Marsh instead for The Theory of Everything. But Tyldum’s appearance in the race now makes The Imitation Game a lot stronger of a competitor against Boyhood. To win Best Picture, generally, you need the additional Directing, Editing, Writing and Acting nominations. No nominations hurts Grand Budapest Hotel – though it’s not out of the race entirely. Anyone inclined to vote for it, though, is someone who thinks outside the box and doesn’t like the three frontrunners.

Here is how it is shaking out:

Boyhood
Acting nominations – 2
Directing
Writing
Editing

The Imitation Game
Acting nominations 2
Directing
Writing
Editing

Birdman
Acting nominations – 3
Directing
Writing

American Sniper, and Whiplash have no corresponding directing nominations. Selma has only two nominations total. You might think that puts it at a disadvantage but back in 1932 Grand Hotel won Best Picture and that was its only nomination. It’s not outside the realm of possibility that it could win but it’s outside the realm of probability.

My instincts are telling me that Birdman is Boyhood’s biggest challenger at the moment because it is the anti-Boyhood vote. Both films are accused of being “gimmicks” — one is about an actor’s futility in a changing world. The other is a real time coming of age. Birdman should be wildly popular with the actors – it also gives people a hit when they see it. They feel invigorated, amped up, super-charged. Boyhood makes one feel reflective, somber, gazing back at one’s life with bittersweet contemplation.

But Birdman is also a movie where its only source of depth can be found in its main character’s trajectory. Everyone else in the film is mostly a hollow apparition. There isn’t a lot of there there outside Keaton’s breathtaking performance other than bravura filmmaking, which certainly is enough but might not turn on the voters’ heart lights like Boyhood will.

Finally, Harvey Weinstein has an “important” movie and he’s going to run with it. No other film checks every Oscar box like The Imitation Game. And that fact might its biggest weakness for a win, as Grantland’s Mark Harris once explained. They might not want to play into the predictable hand. The film is the one that has the biggest emotional punch at the end. He overcomes two obstacles – being gay in a world that rejected homosexuality and being “on the spectrum,” with an inability to communicate with people well. Finally, dude helps beat back the Nazis and stars a charismatic British super star. What more could Oscar vote want? That is their catnip. Also, it will make a goodly amount of money at the box office to justify it being in the race at all.

Boyhood is walking a delicate line. Their publicity team has been doing their best to fly under the radar and only now pulling out the big guns. Linklater and Arquette and the whole team have given themselves over as much as they can to make sure the movie gets a fair shot in a difficult market to sell this kind of movie. They picked the right awards strategist to give it the look of a serious Oscar campaign while also continuing to sell it as the remarkable little movie that could. They are up against the two most aggressive campaigners in the business and with these three you pretty much have how modern Oscar campaigns are run now. There’s a reason they’re called the best and you’re seeing that play out now.

Also ferocious behind the scenes are the teams behind American Sniper, Selma and Theory of Everything. We in the Oscar game know the seeds are planted early. No movie lands in the Oscar race accidentally. They are planted there, nurtured, watered and protected as long as possible. Even the critics couldn’t really knock out American Sniper or Theory or Imitation, even though they weren’t as well reviewed as the three frontrunners.

Boyhood’s biggest challenger looked like Selma for a while there. Now that Selma’s been knocked out of the race mostly, that leaves the other two to put pressure on the frontrunner. It will be a fight to the finish – an Oscar bloodbath of the highest order. I do not currently know who will come out on top but I suddenly feel that Boyhood could have some serious competition all of a sudden. I didn’t think it would if the movies I hoped would get into the race, did. The darker films like Gone Girl, Nightcrawler and Foxcatcher only help boost the wonderfulness of Boyhood. But this is like a game of chess. With two movies coming up beside Boyhood and challenging it for the top prize things could get ugly.

In the other categories, the Best Actor race is mostly Keaton’s. He’s going to have major competition with Cumberbatch and Redmayne and now, Bradley Cooper. Sniper seems destined to win maybe both Sound categories and perhaps editing, while Birdman should take home original screenplay and actor.

Best Actress is Julianne Moore’s to lose but she just got some major competition with Marion Cotillard’s sudden appearance in the race. She gave a great performance but I’ve never been on the “Cotillard nailed on a cross” train like many who write about film. The great injustice, in their minds, gathered them all together to vote for her. I never saw it that way, though she’s great in the film and worthy of a nomination. Because they shut out Gone Girl I hope Pike takes it. Given this silly Academy’s cliched way of picking nominees we should not expect that to happen. But let it be known, Amazing Amy is the female protagonist the Academy has coming.

Director is still Linklater’s to lose. I’m not buying the split prediction of Inarritu taking it and Boyhood taking Best Picture. Why would they do that to Linklater? He should get all of the credit for Boyhood. And to that, there is some rumbling that Boyhood takes director and Imitation Game takes picture. That would be one of those wins that immediately sparks outrage, controversy and backlash agains the movie. But if anyone can pull that out, the Weinstein Co. can.

Original Screenplay looks to be a fight between Grand Budapest and Birdman. I’m thinking Birdman takes it, especially if Boyhood takes Picture and Director.

Adapted Screenplay is now a wash without Gillian Flynn. Whatever wins there it won’t be the most deserving and not a better screenplay than the one she wrote. I’d look for Imitation Game to win there. Unfortunately, the Academy deemed Whiplash adapted, which knocked Gone Girl out of the race. I suppose that puts Whiplash in the frontrunner’s spot to win. The problem with the Flynn snub is that the WGA and the Scripter could not vote for her screenplay because it wasn’t nominated for an Oscar. People want to be on the winning side — thus, in the past frontrunners like Flynn that are taken early lose to screenplays that ARE nominated. This category has no frontrunner now – any of these mostly weak screenplays could win. At the moment I’d go with Sniper or Imitation Game. You won’t know if Chazelle will win the Oscar because he’ll only be competing in original for the precursors.

Grand Budapest should take the design categories fairly easily; much of the time the winner in a category leans towards a Best Picture contender, but not always. Love for the movie amounts to love in the tech categories, especially if the film isn’t winning any of the major categories.

Probably there won’t be that many surprises, but there is no way Selma will lose Best Song. How sad that it comes to that — but Spike Lee said it best, fuck ’em, #1. And #2, the test of a great film is whether people will be talking about it in twenty years. Already, the only name that bubbled up to the top of the news cycle yesterday was the first black woman to have a film come anywhere near the Oscar race, Ava DuVernay.

Best Picture

1. Boyhood
2. Birdman
3. The Imitation Game
4. Selma
5. American Sniper
6. The Grand Budapest Hotel
7. Whiplash
8. The Theory of Everything

Best Actor

1. Michael Keaton, Birdman
2. Eddie Redmayne, The Theory of Everything
3. Benedict Cumberbatch, The Imitation Game
4. Bradley Cooper, American Sniper
5. Steve Carell, Foxcatcher

Best Actress

1. Julianne Moore, Still Alice
2. Marion Cotillard, 2 Days, 1 Night
3. Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl
4. Reese Witherspoon, Wild
5. Felicity Jones, The Theory of Everything

Supporting Actor

1. JK Simmons, Whiplash
2. Edward Norton, Birdman
3. Mark Ruffalo, Foxcatcher
4. Robert Duvall, The Judge
5. Ethan Hawke, Boyhood

Supporting Actress

1. Patricia Arquette, Boyhood
2. Laura Dern Wild
3. Emma Stone, Birdman
4. Keira Knightley, The Imitation Game
5. Meryl Streep, Into the Woods

Director

1. Richard Linklater, Boyhood
2. Alejandro G. Inarritu, Birdman
3. Wes Anderson, Grand Budapest Hotel
4. Morten Tyldum, The Imitation Game*
5. Bennett Miller, Foxcatcher

Original Screenplay

1. Alejandro Inarritu et al, Birdman
2. Wes Anderson, Grand Budapest Hotel
3. Richard Linklater, Boyhood
4. Dan Gilroy, Nightcrawler
5. E. Max Frye, Dan Futterman, Foxcatcher

Adapted Screenplay

1. Damien Chazelle, Whiplash
2. Graham Moore, The Imitation Game
3. Jason Hall, American Sniper
4. Anthony McCarten, The Thoery of Everything
5. Paul Thoman Anderson, Inherent Vice

Editing

1. American Sniper
2. Boyhood
3. The Grand Budapest Hotel
4. Whiplash
5. The Imitation Game

Cinematography

1. Birdman
2. Grand Budapest Hotel
3. Mr. Turner
4. Unbroken
5. Ida

Production Design

1. Grand Budapest Hotel
2. The Imitation Game
3. Mr. Turner
4. Into the Woods
5. Interstellar

Sound Mixing

1. American Sniper
2. Birdman
3. Whiplash
4. Interstellar
5. Unbroken

Sound Editing

1. American Sniper
2. Interstellar
3. Birdman
4. Unbroken
5. The Hobbit

Costume Design

1. Into the Woods
2. Grand Budapest Hotel
3. Maleficent
4. The Imitation Game
5. Mr. Turner