With Oscar voting ending tonight, I was looking over my Oscar predictions in preparation for when I post my final predictions and open up the polls for the readers to predict who they think will win at this Sunday’s 2015 Oscars and, in all honesty, I didn’t want to change a thing. Below the line there are a few that could go one way or another and above the line there are three categories that I wouldn’t be surprised to see I get wrong, and they are three biggies:
Best Picture
Are you going with Birdman or Boyhood? You can argue for both using statistics beginning with Birdman winning the PGA, DGA and SAG awards. Just taking SAG and PGA into consideration, only Apollo 13 and Little Miss Sunshine won both the SAG and PGA awards and didn’t win Best Picture. Of course, on Boyhood‘s side is the fact it’s likely to win Best Film Editing, a category Birdman wasn’t even nominated in and it has been 35 years since a film wasn’t nominated for Best Editing and still went on to win Best Picture.
Then you have that old argument where people suggest the two leaders could split the vote making way for a third party… I don’t typically ascribe to that theory since the Academy doesn’t reveal any voting numbers, but I guess anything is possible. So what pony do you have in this race?
Best Actor
This time it’s Michael Keaton (Birdman) vs. Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything). Redmayne won the BAFTA, Golden Globe (Drama) and Screen Actors Guild Award whereas Keaton won the Golden Globe (Comedy), Broadcast Film Critics Association Award, Gotham Award and National Board of Review awards. Clearly, Redmayne has the edge when it comes to high profile awards and it’s for this reason most have him winning the Oscar and of all the categories I’m on the fence on it’s this one. I just have such a hard time picking Redmayne’s performance over Keaton. Where do you stand?
Oh, and please don’t bring up the stupid, “Jupiter Ascending is Redmayne’s Norbit” argument… there is nothing to see there.
Best Director
Again it’s Boyhood vs. Birdman and up until Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu took the Directors Guild award I think most people believed this was going to Richard Linklater. While it still might go Linklater’s way, it’s hard to argue with the DGA history, which tells us all but seven times since they began handing out awards in 1948, the DGA winner has gone on to win for Best Director. That’s history that’s hard to argue with, but will you?
I’ll be back on Thursday with my final predictions in all the categories, but for now the floor is yours. Take to the comment section and be sure to vote in the polls above.
