Patricia Arquette – Memphis Flyer

The results of last night’s Academy Awards ceremony defy an easily articulated narrative, except to emphasize that 2014 was actually a great year for films. The acting categories went pretty much as expected, with J.K. Simmons and Patricia Arquette winning handily in the supporting roles, and Julianne Moore and Eddie Redmayne both landing lead role statues for portraying people with progressive, debilitating diseases. (For the record, Moore was brilliant in Still Alice, but Reese Witherspoon’s Wild was a better film in every way.)

Best Picture winner Birdman.

Among the Best Picture nominees, no one film ran away with the evening. Selma won only Best Original Song for “Glory”, allowing Common and John Legend to give one of the best speeches of the night. SImilarly, American Sniper won only for Sound Editing. There seemed to be a Grand Budapest Hotel wave forming early, as the Wes Anderson film cleaned up in the design and costuming categories, but the tide turned when Birdman beat GBH for Best Original Screenplay. I had expected a Best Director/Best Picture split, with Richard Linklater taking director honors for his masterpiece Boyhood and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman winning the big prize, but Birdman pitched a shutout in the top line categories. Truthfully, all of the Best Picture nominees were worthy, so the indie hero Linklater and Selma‘s director Ava DuVernay had the misfortune to drop great movies into a very tough field. At least Citizenfour was vindicated with a Best Documentary win, even if it did come at the cost of Finding Vivian Maier.

To me, it’s another, less closely watched category that shows the strength of filmmaking in 2014. After The Lego Movie‘s inexplicable non-nomination, Disney won both the Best Animated Feature with Big Hero Six and the Best Animated Short with “Feast”, the adorable dog movie to end all adorable dog movies.

Academy Awards Spread The Love

But when the Oscar Shorts categories was screened by On Location Film Festival earlier this year, there was a clear winner in the animated category, and that was the brilliantly inventive and surprisingly deep “A Single Life”.

A SINGLE LIFE – TRAILER from Job, Joris & Marieke on Vimeo.

Academy Awards Spread The Love (2)

I guess if you’ve got to lose, you might as well lose to a cute dog.

It’s time for the annual ritual of complaining about the Oscar nominations, and I’m here to help. Or at least, throw fuel on the fire.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

2014 was a great year for movies. The two frontrunners, Birdman and Boyhood, both of which have nine nominations, are great movies, but to my mind, the Best Picture category is wide open. The Grand Budapest Hotel and Selma are both equal to the two frontrunners, and since Clint Eastwood has been an increasingly inexplicable perineal Oscar favorite in the twenty-first century, American Sniper could be a surprise winner. If you held a gun to my head, I would probably go with The Grand Budapest Hotel as best picture from the choices given, but I would be happy with any of the top four.

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Boyhood

To me, the Best Director category is clear: Richard Linklater’s Boyhood is an unprecedented directorial achievement. Movies can be derailed by tiny choices early in the production, and since Linklater’s Boyhood shoot stretched over 12 years, he had plenty of opportunity to mess up, but turned instead a perfect movie. The biggest omission from the Best Director category is Ava DuVernay for Selma, which is just inexcusable, especially when Bennett Miller is nominated for the mediocre morass that is Foxcatcher.

Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking in The Theory Of Everything

The Best Actor category also has two inexcusable snubs: First is John Lithgow’s career high performance in Ira Sach’s Love Is Strange. I think Love Is Strange should have been in the running for all of the top-line awards, but Lithgow, Alfred Molina, and Marissa Tormei’s performances in the film were simply unequalled this year. The second, and perhaps more glaring, snub is David Oyelowo, who is exceptional in a really difficult role as Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma. Steve Carrel’s name recognition got him a nomination, but his performance in Foxcatcher is a one-note disappointment. Among the nominees, I’ll take Eddie Remayne’s perfectly calibrated, physically demanding turn as Stephen Hawking in The Theory Of Everything.

Reese Witherspoon in Wild

Without Tormei in the Leading Actress category, it’s going to come down to between Reese Witherspoon in Wild and Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl. Both are fine performances, but I’ll have to go with the empathetic naturalism of Witherspoon.

Michael Keaton and Ed Norton in Birdman

My knee-jerk pick in the Actor in a Supporting Role is Ethan Hawke in Boyhood, but all of the nominees seem strong. Mark Ruffalo was the best thing about Foxcatcher, and if you watched the trailers for Whiplash, J.K. Simmons seemed like the lead actor, so he’s got a good shot. And don’t count out Ed Norton if a Birdman wave builds.

Patricia Arquette in Boyhood

Suporting Actress, however, should be a runaway for Patricia Arquette, who lays it all out there in Boyhood. Emma Stone greatly exceeded my expectations for her in Birdman, but this is Arquette’s trophy.

Inherent Vice

The screenplay categories are also pretty clear for me. Original Screenplay should go to The Grand Budapest Hotel, which is as tight and original piece of screenwriting as Wes Anderson has ever done. My Adapted Screenplay pick is Inherent Vice for pulling off the seemingly impossible task of adapting Thomas Pynchon’s prose. But it probably won’t win, because it has divided audiences so much, so this category is wide open. I wouldn’t be surprised if American Sniper got it, because the book it was based on has been extremely popular. I was surprised that Gone Girl didn’t get nominated, but the category is admittedly pretty stacked.

Guardians Of The Galaxy

I was stunned to see The Lego Movie snubbed in the Animated Feature category, but directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller should console themselves by rolling around in their giant piles of money. In the Editing category, Boyhood is the clear winner for the effortlessly clear and inventive way it strung together 12 years of one boy’s life. The visual effects category, however, is wide open. My pick is the photorealistic Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes, but Guardians of the Galaxy and Interstellar are both very strong contenders, and Magneto lifting RFK Stadium with his mind in X-Men: Days Of Future Past is among the year’s indelible images.

In sum, the Oscars have given us lots of stuff to argue about this year—which is pretty much their function, right?