Podcast Pt 2: Oscar Predix Finale

In case you missed part one of this finale, that's here. Let's wrap up our final pre-Oscar prediction discussions: Joe pretends he's not an Inherent Vice fan, Nick sadistically hopes Imitation Game "gets Up in the Aired", and Nathaniel goes full blurb whore on Mr Turner. 

Oscar Prediction Finale Pt 2
41 Minutes

00:01 -Production Design & Costume Design. Into the Woods spurs dark memories and self parody. But can Grand Budapest actually win both and will Wes Anderson career tribute be the cause?
08:40 -Cinematography. Beautiful across the board
13:12 -Screenplays. Are these the two most difficult categories to predict? Consolation prizes, career tributes, or Best Picture heat?
21:45 -Acting Races. Whose running second behind Julianne Moore?
27:32 -Best Director & Best Picture. Who would we vote for and what about the Academy: will it be Richard Linklater and Boyhood or Alejandro G Inarritu and Birdman or some combo thereof. Either way long-standing theories of everything get disproven and the Academy gets dinged.
36:10 -Exit Game: Who would last year's winners vote for? We read the minds of Blanchett, McConaughey, Leto, and Nyong'o.
40:00 -Boyman Goodbye!

Supplemental Material for this Podcast:
Prediction Finale Part 1
Nick's Top Ten List (in progress)
Joe Reid ranks all 60 Oscar nominated films

Please to enjoy and continue the golden conversation in the comments. You can listen at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes.  

Oscar Prediction Finale Pt 2

Best Film Editing: Drums, Guns, or Twelve Years of "Boyhood"?

They call Editing the "invisible art" but when it comes to Oscar Watching each year, the prize is highly visible. Most pundits, armchair and professional, think of it as a bellwether. Everyone knows this one key stat: No movie has won Best Picture without an Editing nomination since Ordinary People (1980). But that stat is actually kind of misleading because it IS possible to win without an editing nomination and it's not even super rare. Birdman, should it triumph, would be the eighth film to do so... it used to happen about once a decade. Birdman's failure to get nominated in the category isn't particularly telling, if you ask me. Inarritu's technical gamble has very little visible editing given that the picture is a series of continuous shots stitched together in clever ways to appear to all be one thing.

The Nominees:

American Sniper - Joel Cox & Gary Roach
Boyhood - Sandra Adair
Grand Budapest Hotel - Barney Pilling
The Imitation Game - William Goldenberg
Whiplash - Tom Cross 

Should Boyhood lose the editing Oscar many people will be all "it's over, Birdman is winning!" but this isn't necessarily the case. In fact, Best Pictures only win this award about 50% of the time. Which is why this category feels up in the year. Any of the contenders could win: comedy doesn't win this category much (a pity since editing is so crucial to comic rhthyms) but Budapest feels like a real threat in all the craft categories; Boyhood could win on love for the film + respect for the time commitment but it's far less showily edited than the others and Oscar often wants to see your work;  If they want to honor American Sniper or The Imitation Game this could be the place for either with the ticking time bomb suspense that these former Oscar winners drum up; But speaking of drums... my bet is that Whiplash is the surprise winner here and I was going to make that call, I swear, before it won the BAFTA in this category. Whiplash's very masculine energies, focus on rhtymic intensity, and taut energy (despite repetitive scenes) are well served by this department. Bonus points for the editor's name being "Tom Cross". It's like an old fashioned stage name for a young movie star. It's just great. Well done, Mr & Mrs. Cross.

Will Win: Whiplash
Could Win: Boyhood
Should Win: Grand Budapest Hotel 

My ballot for this category 

Would It Be Truly Terrible If 'Boyhood' Was in Fact About a Racist?

Roland Ruiz with Patty Arquette on the set of Boyhood (image via his Facebook page)Jose here. A recent article on Latino Rebels in which the author claims that Richard Linklater’s Boyhood contains the worst kind of racism has caused a bit of a stir. Grisel Y. Acosta uses the infamous gardener subplot, in which Patricia Arquette’s character unexpectedly turns around the life of the only non-white character (played by Ronald Ruiz) featured in the film, as his basis to explain that the film is racist both by omission (where are all the other Hispanic characters in a film set in Texas?) and also by depicting “the horrific ‘save me White person’ trope” that has been prevalent in American filmmaking since, well, always.

It’s a shame that the article turned up the week when Oscar voting ends, because now it will be dismissed as having an “agenda”, or being part of a “smear campaign”, when the truth is that, beyond silly movie awards, the piece only directs us to a conversation we should have been having since the movie came out.

As a Hispanic immigrant living in the United States, there is not a single week that goes by where someone hasn’t congratulated me for "bothering" to learn English “...and writing it so well”, assumed I was Mexican or Puerto Rican, or when I’m asked by a peer if I went to college, or have a random person ask me if I’m a doorman or a cab driver. I have learned to live with people’s assumptions because of my ethnicity, and I often brush them off, because race is not something that's easy to discuss in this country...

Click to read more ...

DGA Chooses Birdman. But Who Wins BAFTA?

It's tough to call this a "surprise" exactly, given that Birdman recently took hom both the PGA's top producing honor and SAG's Best Ensemble but now the celebrated intricate metashowbiztragicomedywhatsit has won the DGA. Alejandro González Iñárritu was previously nominated for Babel. But this isn't actually his first DGA win.

More on Birdman's DGA and BAFTA Predictions after the jump

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How Many Oscars Will ______ Win?

This weekend was a biggie in terms of below the line awards. The Imitation Game won the USC Scripter Prize which goes to movies adapted from literature (and the source material author also wins this prize). The Art Directors guild chose Birdman for Contemporary Film, and The Grand Budapest Hotel for Period (as well as Guardians of the Galaxy for Fantasy). Meanwhile the Editors gave their "Eddies" to  Boyhood for Dramas and The Grand Budapest Hotel for comedies (in addition to prizes for The LEGO Movie in Animated and Citizen Four for Documentaries)

All of this has me wondering if its The Grand Budapest Hotel rather than Boyhood or Birdman that will take home the most Oscars on February 22nd if not Best Picture. It's got a decent shot at four or five statues: Costumes, Production Design, Screenplay, Score, and Makeup & Hair. Of those Screenplay is the longest shot since Birdman vs Boyhood will be tough to squeeze between to nab the Original Screenplay gold.

Perhaps it will be a spread the wealth kind of year with every Best Picture winning something. Like so...

How many oscars will The Grand Budapest Hotel win?

• Boyhood (4 or 5) Picture, Director, Supporting Actress, Editing (and maybe Screenplay?)
• Grand Budapest (3 or 4) Costumes, Production Design, Makeup & Hair (and maybe Score?)
• Birdman (2 or 3) Screenplay, Cinematography (and maybe Actor?)
• American Sniper (2) Sound Editing and Sound Mixing
• Theory of Everything (1 or 2) Actor (and maybe Score?)
• The Imitation Game (1 or 2) Adapted Screenplay (and maybe Score?)
• Whiplash (1 or 2) Supporting Actor (and maybe Adapted Screenplay?)
• Selma (1) Song

(As you can see I'm stumped about who might win Best Score. I can see it going any which way.)

Not that there's ever a year where every Best Picture nominee wins something now that we have so many Best Picture nominees. Someone or someones usually go home empty-handed - even if they have come into the big night with a ton of nominations. But there's a first time for everything and it could happen.

What'cha think?