Tough Race 2: Electric Boogaloo
Congratulations to Birdman, it really is the most deserving film in the Best Picture category. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and was glad to see the Oscars (for once) rise above the pressure of historians and human rights activists.
Still…I hate being wrong.
It’s rather shocking to me that Boyhood, the clear frontrunner mere months ago, only picked up one award for Best Supporting Actress. It therefore joins The Imitation Game, American Sniper, and Interstellar in the category of “multi-nominated single-award winners”. Boyhood is far better than those three and it’s clearly a more innovative piece of filmmaking than any other entree this year, so what happened?
It turns out that even when the Oscars are unpredictable…they’re still predictable. Many astute observers pointed out that Birdman winning big at the SAG (Screen Actors Guild) Awards cemented its victory at the “night of nights”. I naively hoped they were wrong, and painfully discovered they were right. That’s far from the only thing I messed up, though.
To start with, I accidentally doubled up on my nominations for Best Visual Effects, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Adapted Screenplay.
I typed up my predictions in Word and pasted them into Photoshop about 5 min before going to bed, so…fuck you! I was tired.
I’m more angry at myself for laying down so many incorrect guesses. Here’s how my predictions ended up:
11 Correct and 10 incorrect. Technically that’s a victory, but if I had bothered to take a stab at the “short film” categories it would all be over for me.
But hey, it’s not all about me. The 87th Academy awards ended up being intensely political. First there were awkward but solid Neil Patrick Harris jokes like calling the Oscar nominees “Hollywood’s best and whitest” and explaining that Edward Snowden was absent “for some treason“. Then it became clear that The Academy got the memo about their racial discrimination, and decided to tip the scales back the other way by flooding the ceremony with black presenters, singers, and musical numbers. If you watched the event out of context, you’d think that Selma was well on its way to winning. Every few minutes someone was on screen sobbing about the power of the picture. Maybe, if it’s so important, you could have given it more than one “pity award” for Best Original Song.
Finally Patricia Arquette beat her chest on stage for female wage equality, clearly the most honest and worthwhile moment of the whole night (aside from J. K. Simmons’ plea for everyone to call their parents).
After a shitty year, the Oscars were better than I’d expected after all. Congratulation, again, to Birdman. You deserve it…especially you Keaton. As far as I’m concerned…you were robbed.
– Rant Over!
Cinema Rant 