Awards Season Dichotomy: Easy Calls & Tough Choices
Thursday, February 19, 2015 at 4:00PM 
With time rapidly running out until we get to Oscar - we're just 3 days away - I'm afraid there's no time left for obsessive predictive postings and chart updates. So as a final predictive wrap up, we illustrate one of the conundrums of awards season via Oscar Predictions and our own Film Bitch Awards. With Oscar it seems categories often become either truly easy calls or are just impossible to figure. For the conscientous voter, personal ballots are never easy calls. They're another matter entirely.
To quote the witch Ursula who is not good and not nice but just right:
Life's full of tough choices, in'n't it?
Speaking of personal choices, if you haven't yet voted on the polls on each chart page, go and do that. I'll announce the Reader's Choice this Saturday before the Oscars.
OSCAR PREDICTIONS
Isn't it weird how things just line up for Oscar's "duh" calls for predictions each year-- even if there's no appreciable difference in quality or the quality actually goes another way? So as recap. Here are the final predictions. Later today I'm doing a piece for Towleroad where you can read further thoughts on all of this if you haven't got enough of it right here. I also urge you to check out the Gurus of Gold chart at Movie City News to see what the general consensus is versus where I and maybe you if you predict at home, fall.
THE EASIEST CALLS
Actress Julianne Moore, Still Alice (just discussed)
Supporting Actor J.K. Simmons, Whiplash (a press favorite all year)
Supporting Actress Patricia Arquette, Boyhood
Production Design / Costume Design -Stockhausen & Canonero for Grand Budapest Hotel
Cinematography Emmanuel Lubeski - Birdman
SEEMINGLY EASY CALLS BUT THESE CATEGORIES ARE KNOWN FOR UPSETS
Foreign Film -Ida
Documentary - Citizen Four
Makeup - Grand Budapest Hotel
SLIGHTLY MORE COMPLICATED CALLS
Actor - Eddie Redmayne, Theory of Everything I understand some are arguing for a Cooper stealth win or a Keaton triumph with Birdman surging but I'm sticking by my original prediction. Oscar has always been deeply fascinated by mimicry and by men playing characters with physical challenges.
TRULY DIFFICULT CALLS
Picture/Director I'm going with a Boyhood/Birdman split though any combo or double from either makes sense. It's all terribly mystifying (Discussed on the podcast)
Visual Effects Interstellar (though I'm not confident)
Editing Whiplash (though Boyhood seems just as likely)
Original Screenplay Grand Budapest (or will it be Birdman?)
Adapted Screenplay Imitation Game (with an outside shot for Whiplash)
Doc Short Glenn thinks Crisis Hotline. I'm going with Joanna
Live Action Short The Phone Call
Animation Short Tim thinks Feast or The Dam Keeper. I'm going with The Bigger Picture
Score Theory of Everything
Sound Mixing Whiplash
Sound Editing American Sniper
And that's it for predictions. I look forward to being completely wrong this year. I love the volatile years most. Punditry is no fun when it's too easy.
FILM BITCH AWARDS
As for my own annual prizes with their own rich history... those are still in progress and much fussed over though the Oscar Correlative categories are all fully complete.
4 nominations for NIGHTCRAWLERNATHANIEL'S BALLOT - ALWAYS TOUGH CHOICES
PAGE 1 - Picture, Director, Screenplay, Animated (complete)
PAGE 2 - Acting (newly completed!)
PAGE 3 - Visuals (newly completed!)
PAGE 4 - Aurals and Oscar-Parallel Tally (newly completed with love for The Homesman, Gone Girl, Begin Again and more...)
...and the extra "fun" categories are still in progress though there's a little something on each page now to whet your appetite.
PAGE 5 - Extras (new kudos for Pride, Love is Strange & Selma)
PAGE 6 - Character Prizes
PAGE 7 - Scene Work
Reader Comments (16)
12 Best scenes that don't fit those 8 categories?
The paratrooper drop from Godzilla (Gorgeous.)
The MUTO Feeding from Godzilla (Also gorgeous.)
Cliff's admission from Pride.
Dressing in a white void from Under the Skin.
Groot lit infiltration from Guardians of the Galaxy.
Cap and Old Peggy from Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Plane injection from Lucy.
Final statement of reason from John Wick.
Alice's suicide recording from Still Alice. (The rest of the movie is mostly dull outside of Moore's work, but that was at least thrilling in how short sightedly cruel it was.)
Tabitha Dickinson's dressing down from Birdman.
The Grocery Store hallucinations from Big Eyes (The movie pretty much didn't work most of the way through, as much as Adams was trying, but this deemphasized the reason why it didn't work and showed that, with a more fitting actor as Walter, it might have been an Ed Wood level masterwork.)
Baymax's Introduction from Big Hero 6 (This one also didn't work that well, though better than Big Eyes, but Baymax became the big marketing focus was the right move.)
Having just seen GBH again and Nightcrawler for the first time, it is a damn shame that Fiennes and Gyllenhaal were not nominated for their performances. Glad they made your FB awards.
There was a few recent examples where the Academy didn't even nominate the physically challenged performance.
Hawkes for The Sessions and Bardem for The Sea Inside were talked about as possible nominees but didn't actually get nominated.
I think...if Redmayne wins this year, it'll be the first time something like that has won Best Actor since Daniel Day-Lewis for My Left Foot.
@Justin: Hanks (#1), Foxx, Firth and McConaughey were all in the ballpark, but not as on the nose as Redmayne.
Sound Mixing strikes me as pretty tough, too. It could be Sniper... or Whiplash... or Birdman.
The second Brutally Honest ballot is up. Wow. I"m speechless.
I"ld love o know how many people they interview for this series and how they choose which voters to print.
On THR... "I just can’t separate a performance from the film it’s in." These people are idiots.
If you are taking FYC for your awards, can I recommend both Sandra and her husband from 'Two Days, One Night' for hero of the year? Her decision at the end to not put someone else in the same position she is in a few months down the road, and the fact that she found some hope to grasp onto and move forward through her depression was inspiring. And the husband's empathy and support without indulging the self-pity and self-hatred of depression was the exact way to deal with a loved one with depression, something that is not portrayed often.
Another Brutally Honest "need to give something to Guardians of the Galaxy"...
Nathaniel: Score and Sound?
I mean: Score and Song?
I love the extra categories. So much fun.
Thank you for having "Like A Fool" from Begin Again in your top five! It's my favorite song from the film, a beautiful, truly natural musical moment that has stayed with me since I've seen it. I wish they had submitted it along with Lost Stars...
The third Brutally Honest ballot is now up and while it's not insane/disturbing like the first two, it kind of unravels after the big eight categories. And this voter also feels the need to reward Guardians of the Galaxy (twice). Hmm.
The most disturbing thing about all three of the Brutally Honest ballots is how many of the films they haven't seen.
A good piece on the casual racism (among other things) of these Brutally Honest profiled voters: http://defamer.gawker.com/oscars-voters-unsurprising-confessions-we-are-crazy-an-1686881544/+LeahBeckmann