2015 Oscar Preview: Best Picture

THE NOMINEES:

- American Sniper
- Birdman
- Boyhood
- Selma
- The Imitation Game
- The Grand Budapest Hotel
- The Theory of Everything
- Whiplash




WHAT SHOULD BE HERE: Nightcrawler

Recently I wrote about why Edge of Tomorrow should have received a Best Picture nomination, Action flicks and superhero flicks can be good and there's no reason we can't say they're one one the 8 to 10 best films of the year when they're done properly. Star Wars was nominated for Best Picture in 1978. The Dark Knight may not have earned a Best Picture nod, but its snub was the main reason The Academy changed how voters choose the Best Picture nominees. Frankly, the way Hollywood is leaning with more emphasis on Marvel and DC properties and less emphasis on "prestige" films, the Academy might as well steer into the skid.

However, there's no way on God's Green Earth that a film like Edge of Tomorrow or Guardians of the Galaxy was going to get a Best Picture nomination in 2015. A film that actually had a chance to earn a nomination was Dan Gilroy's dark and twisted thriller Nightcrawler. The acting in the film was spectacular, the story was so complex, layered, and nuanced, and it sucked you in from the get go. Just an incredible film and a perfect movie to speak to those 30 and under- which of course is not in The Academy's wheelhouse which is why it didn't receive a nomination.

Click here for my full review of Nightcrawler

2015 Oscar Preview: Best Director

THE NOMINEES:

- Wes Anderson (The Grand Budapest Hotel)
- Alejadro Gonzalez Inarritu (Birdman)
- Richard Linklater (Boyhood)
- Bennett Miller (Foxcatcher)
- Morton Tyldum (The Imitation Game)

SHOULD BE HERE: David Fincher (Gone Girl)

James Gunn, the director of Guardians of the Galaxy, recently ripped the Best Director nominees, mainly the fact that Bennett Miller earned a nomination for Foxcatcher yet the film itself didn't get a Best Picture nomination. He had this to say about that selection:

The director has creative control of a film... although there are some great films made without great directors, it is impossible to distinguish that without being on the inside.

It's an extremely valid point, and frankly probably the correct outlook, but I also think how good the screenplay is factors a lot into how good a movie is. A great screenplay can make an average director look great (we'll see an example of that below) and a great director can make a terrible screenplay a palatable movie. That's what I think is the case with David Fincher and Gone Girl. I think the story is so bonkers and bat shit crazy that this flick would have been awful in the hands of a lesser director. In fact, if almost anybody else but Fincher directs this film it doesn't become the national sensation it did.

There's a baseball statistic called VORP: Value Over Replacement Player. Basically, this statistic measures how good a baseball player is compared to an average one at the same position. Mike Trout- the reigning AL MVP and best outfielder (and player) in the game- has an extremely high VORP because he's so much better than just an average outfielder. The reason I bring up this up is because that's how I look at some categories and nominations. In this case, Fincher's VORD (Value Over Replacement Director) is extremely high because almost no one else could have made Gone Girl. Only Fincher could have told a story as bananas as Gillian Flynn's story was and turned it into the really good movie it turned out to be.

Using Oscarmetrics To Win Your Oscar Pool

I'm a huge proponent of using numbers to analyze sports data in football and baseball, and that carries over into how I predict Academy Award winners. I use numbers to analyze data in order to seek the truth. You can claim emotional reactions, but at the end of the day, numbers never lie. That's why these numbers are going to help you predict the winners of the 2015 Academy Awards.

THE BIG TWO

BEST PICTURE: Birdman (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, John Lesher, & James W. Skotchdopole)

BEST DIRECTOR: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

WHAT DO THE OSCARMETRICS SAY: Whether you want to claim that the Director's Guild of America (DGA) awards (12 out of the past 15 years correct) or the Producer's Guild of America (PGA) awards (11 out of the past 15 years correct) is the best predictor on who will win Best Director and Best Picture, Birdman won both major guild awards this year. Further, a film winning both the Best Director and Best Picture Academy Award is extremely common- 62 out of the 86 previous award shows had that happen. This makes sense because the reason a film is good is because of the director and the way you know a director is good is because of how amazing the film is,

ACTING CATEGORIES

BEST ACTOR: Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything)

BEST ACTRESS: Julianne Moore (Still Alice)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: J.K. Simmons (Whiplash)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Patricia Arquette (Boyhood)

WHAT DO THE OSCARMETRICS SAY: All four of these actors not only are the favorite to win their respected category (which always helps), but these people have won BOTH a Golden Globe and a SAG award for their work. The percentage of the people who have won both awards since 1994 (the first year the SAG wards existed) that also went on to win an Oscar is just incredible. Listen to this: 100% (14 out of 14) of the Best Actor nominees, 85% (11 out of 13) of the Best Actress nominees, 90% (9 out of 10) of the Best Supporting Actor nominees [1], and 92% (11 out of 12) of the Best Supporting Actress nominees [2] who won both a Golden Globe and a SAG award also went on to win an Academy Award. It's extremely rare that a person wins both a Golden Globe and a SAG award yet doesn't take home the gold. Bet on the boring.

[1] Benicio Del Toro (Traffic) won the Best Supporting Actor Golden Globe and Oscar, but won the Best Actor SAG award

[2] Kate Winslet (The Reader) won the Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe and SAG award, but won the Best Leading Actress Oscar.

2015 Oscar Preview: Best Actor

THE NOMINEES:

- Steve Carell (Foxcatcher)
- Bradley Cooper (American Sniper)
- Benedict Cumberbatch (The Imitation Game)
- Michael Keaton (Birdman)
- Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything)

WHO SHOULD BE HERE: Jake Gyllenhaal (Nightcrawler)

I get so incensed whenever I see this category and I don't see Jake Gyllenhaal's name listed. He was so fucking good in Nightcrawler that every acting performance this year (and especially those in this category) is ruined for me because it's not as good as Gyllenhaal in this film. Seriously. his biggest "problem" for not getting a nomination is that Nightcrawler is a film that speaks to Generation X and Millennials and the voting branch of The Academy is full of old farts who still wish Gone With The Wind was playing at the cinemas. Truthfully, I should stop expecting this branch as a whole to start making correct decisions, but I unfortunately care too much and snubs like this unnecessarily upset me to no end. Jake Gyllenhaal gave the greatest acting performance since Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight and gave a performance no other actor could do. Gyllenhaal not only had to have you root for this villain he plays but suck you into a pretty twisted tale and make it believable.

I'm just glad someone else is on my side in this imaginary war.

Click here to read my full review of Nightcrawler

2015 Oscar Preview: Best Actress

THE NOMINEES:

- Marion Cotillard (Two Days, One Night)
- Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything)
- Julianne Moore (Still Alive)
- Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl)
- Reese Witherspoon (Wild)

WHO SHOULD BE HERE: Jenny Slate (Obvious Child)

Recently I wrote an article about how Oscar nominated female performances come from bad movies. We shouldn't need to watch bad movies in order to see a great female performance. Obvious Child is the perfect example of a film that is not only enjoyable to watch, but also has an Oscar-worthy performance by stand-up comedienne Jenny Slate. While Slate's Donna Stern is an up-and-coming stand-up comedian and therefore isn't melodramatic or serious all of the time (although Slate does give a good cry when the script needs her to), this is the type of performance that anyone can relate to. It's the sort of nuance performance that seldom gets recognized, but is the performance The Academy really should be praising. Even better, those who watch Obvious Child "just to watch Slate's performance" will be treated with a lovely Indie date night flick.

2015 Oscar Preview: Best Supporting Actor

THE NOMINEES:

- Robert Duvall (The Judge)
- Ethan Hawke (Boyhood)
- Edward Norton (Birdman)
- Mark Ruffalo (Foxcatcher)
- J.K. Simmons (Whiplash)

WHO SHOULD BE HERE: Toby Kebbell (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes)

It's absolutely insane the snobbery The Academy has for actors who don't appear on screen. The Academy declared a film like The Adventures of Tintin was not eligible for the Best Animated Picture category because there was too much motion capture to the animation, yet those actors aren't deemed to be good enough to be eligible in the acting categories. Good acting is good acting no matter what medium you're using. Andy Serkis not only deserved to be nominated for a Best Supporting Actor back in 2011 for his work as Caeser in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, but he deserved to win. The depth to that performance was incredible. Scarlett Johansson was so fantastic in Her that you actually believed the relationship the characters Theordore and Samantha had that she also deserved an Academy Award nomination. Johansson's performance also proved that not everyone can do great voice acting as she famously replaced Samantha Morton in the film.

The work that Toby Kebbell did this year and what Andy Serkis did prior is just so insanely good. These actors did more than just sit in a booth and record lines; these actors were doing the grunt work having those white bubbles taped to themselves while they actually acted their asses off. Just because VFX was used later to scrub out the actors doesn't lessen the emotional connection they forced you to have with these characters. Kebbell played Koba in the film and was the defacto bad guy. However, Koba was more than just evil, he was a character who felt genuine and passionately about how the leadership should be run and did what he had to do to advance his goals. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes isn't the critical and commercial success that it was without the acting of Toby Kebbell.

2015 Oscar Preview: Best Supporting Actress

THE NOMINEES:

- Patricia Arquette (Boyhood)
- Laura Dern (Wild)
- Kiera Knightly (The Imitation Game)
- Meryl Streep (Into The Woods)
- Emma Stone (Birdman)

WHO SHOULD BE HERE: Tilda Swinton (Snowpiercer)

I really want to nominate Missi Pyle for her Nancy Grace-esque portrayal in Gone Girl and her personification of everything wrong with the 24/7 news media nowadays, but it's tough to justify a nomination for a role as small as hers. So instead, I'll go with the great Tilda Swinton. Snowpiercer is a science fiction dystopian action piece from South Korea helmed by a first time director. Despite the individual city critics praising the film and Swinton (and rightfully so), I can easily see why The Academy didn't nominate Swinton. I wonder if they even saw the film. If films like Foxcatcher and Nightcrawler can't get a Best Picture nomination, then there is just no way a film like Snowpiercer would garner any nominations from an elderly trending Academy. However, if Oscar voters would have seen Snowpiercer, then they would have seen a tremendous performance by an Oscar winning actress. Swinton plays a politician in charge of keeping down the poor, and her job of both being a master of propaganda as well as saying what she can to stay alive after the poor revolt is the work of a true master.

Click here to read my full review of Gone Girl

2015 Oscar Preview: Best Screenplay

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

THE NOMINEES:

- Birdman (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, et al.)

- Boyhood (Richard Linklater)

- Foxcatcher (E. Max Frye & Dan Futterman)

- Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy)

- The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson)

WHAT SHOULD BE HERE: Selma (Paul Webb)

Paul Webb first deserves all the credit in the world for calling his script Selma as opposed to obvious "King", or really anything involving Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's name. The film is not a true biopic of Dr King's life, but rather it just focuses on a certain time in his life protesting in Selma, Alabama. The title tells us this right off of the bat. One of the many problems with Lincoln was that the title lead us to believe we were getting an Abraham Lincoln biopic, when in fact we were just getting a perspective of Lincoln's life trying to get the 13th Amendment passed. There are a lot of similarities between Lincoln and Selma, but like most things, Selma stands head and shoulders above Lincoln. Further, Webb does a fantastic job of telling the audience the certain grunt work it takes to start a revolution, and by doing so, he not only created an entertaining film, but he managed to do so while only focusing on one major character. It's really hard to create a good film while writing so many two-dimensional characters as Selma had.

Lastly, I have no idea why Selma would have been considered an original script. I understand that Paul Webb didn't work off of a particular book, movie, or newspaper article, but he also didn't write this entire script from the top of his head either. Webb almost certainly looked through historical documents in order to tell even a half-accurate story. Movies like Nightcrawler and The Grand Budapest Hotel are works that are solely the product of a writer sitting down in a room and using their creativity to craft stories and characters. Webb had to do a touch more work than that.

Click here to read my full review of Selma

Why Edge Of Tomorrow Deserved A Best Picture Oscar Nomination

First things first, Edge of Tomorrow is a really, really good film. Despite how dumb you thought the trailer looked or title sounded, Doug Liman’s action version of Groundhog’s Day was a smart and enjoyable film. You look past the initial set up of why the day resets and you focus on the plot and story at hand, and you get a movie that leaves you on the edge of your seat. Sure it’s a summer blockbuster, but it’s a smart, funny, and well-crafted summer blockbuster. I thought the film was so good I put it in my top 10 films of 2014, and I wasn't the only one. The master of pretentiousness Wesley Morris had Edge of Tomorrow as his 6^th best film of last year. Edgar Wright, Collider, and The Washington Post all also had Edge of Tomorrow in their top 10 with many more praising the film but having it just miss the cut. The film has a 71 on Metacritic and a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. Moral of the story: Edge of Tomorrow is just an excellent movie that you should watch if you haven’t already. If you have, then watch it again.

The real question boils down to this: Why does a film like Edge of Tomorrow deserve the prestigious Academy Award nomination? On first blush this answer is simple: action flicks like Edge of Tomorrow just are not good enough to be lumped in with the highfalutin flicks like Foxcatcher or Selma. These films are true works of art and a film like Edge of Tomorrow is just beneath them. That may be how The Academy views action films in general, but this is a result of institutionalism rather than judging the best from the best. When you actually look behind that reasoning you see there’s nothing there. Good is good no matter what the genre is and there is absolutely no reason you can’t compare a film like Edge of Tomorrow or Guardians of the Galaxy to a film like American Sniper or The Grand Budapest Hotel. If a film truly is one of the 8 -10 best films of the year, then it deserves a nomination for Best Picture.

2015 Oscar Preview: Best Song and Best Soundtrack

BEST SONG

THE NOMINEES:

- "Everything Is Awesome" by Tegan & Sara f/ The Lonely Island (The Lego Movie)

- "Lost Stars" by Kiera Knightly (Begin Again)

- "Glory" by John Lennon & Common (Selma)

- "Grateful" by Rita Ora (Beyond The Lights)

- "I'm Not Going To Miss You" by Glen Campbell (Glen Campbell... I'll Be Me)