Tonight we honour Hollywood’s best and whitest. I mean brightest.

Oscar Winners 2015

Neil Patrick Harris: Congratulations to all of the nominees, in particular the eight best-picture nominees. They have all grossed over $600 million. American Sniper alone is responsible for over $300 million of that. To put that in perspective: everyone on this side is the seven other nominees. And, American Sniper is — Oprah. (To Oprah) Because you’re rich.

David Letterman: (To Oprah) Oprah, Uma. (To Uma) Uma, Oprah.

As usual, I didn’t watch. It would take David Letterman hosting again, or someone else guaranteed to be provocative. Which just won’t happen. Entertaining entertainers tend to bland out amid the worldwide broadcast headlights, for fear of causing offence. Respect is due to Neil Patrick Harris however. He merely tripped where Letterman had previously buried himself, but he still got in an Oprah gag. True, Harris’ wasn’t as disarmingly batty as Dave’s but all credit to him for having a go.

Last year my mix of stabs in the dark and sure things yielded 16 out of 24 correct picks. This year I only got 12. Much of that – aside from the shorts categories, where no one has the faintest – came from miscalculating the swing to the Birdman and being left high and dry by Boyhood’s spectacular misses.

Best Picture

Winner: Birdman

I guessed: Boyhood

I got the big three completely wrong, but the most curious thing is how Birdman scored the big one but missed its formerly most likely slam dunk (Best Actor). Following Alfonso Cuaron’s win last year, Alejandro González Iñárritu is to be congratulated for not succumbing to British-style self-glorification and proclaiming, “The Mexicans are coming”.

How will this win look in years to come? I suspect The Grand Budapest Hotel and Boyhood will have greater longevity, but few are going to say a lousy film won, and a good four of the nominees might have had that levelled at them.

Best Director

Winner: Alejandro González Iñárritu (Birdman)

I guessed: Richard Linklater (Boyhood)

I called Linklater, putting Iñárritu a distant second in likelihood. As with Best Picture, at least someone deserving won out.

Best Actor

Winner: Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything)

I guessed: Michael Keaton (Birdman)

And the disability Oscar goes to… everyone! I seriously didn’t think even the Academy would do a double-header for both Actor and Actress, the kind of self-congratulatory heart-bleeding for which Hollywood rightly gets ridiculed. But they did. And Redmayne is just the latest actor to convince undiscerning voters that the best performance is the most obvious one.

Not that Redmayne wasn’t very good, of course. I just doubt he would have been so warmly welcomed by voters if he had gone “full retard”. As for Keaton, it’s really hard luck. I don’t think he was ever really on radar before as a Best Actor contender (Clean and Sober maybe?), and I don’t think he will be again.

Best Actress

Winner: Julianne Moore (Still Alice)

I guessed: Julianne Moore (Still Alice)

And the second disability Oscar goes to… The only one of the Big Four I got right, mainly because everyone got it right. And bless Julianne, she deserves it. The only unfortunate side is that, like Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart or Jessica Lange in Blue Sky, no one is going to remember the movie for which they were rewarded.

Best Supporting Actor

Winner: J.K. Simmons (Whiplash)

I guessed: J.K. Simmons (Whiplash)

See Julianne above for likelihood.

Best Supporting Actress

Winner: Patricia Arquette (Boyhood)

I guessed: Patricia Arquette (Boyhood)

See Julianne and J.K. above for likelihood. The consolation prize for Boyhood too, which few would have guessed at the outcome even only a month ago (including me).

Best Original Screenplay

Winner: Birdman

I guessed: The Grand Budapest Hotel

I tipped The Grand Budapest Hotel, with this a runner-up. Some of the discussion (criticism) surrounding Birdman concerns how clever it actually is, and how much of it is down to its director’s ignorance of his expected lack of virtue.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Winner: The Imitation Game

I guessed: The Imitation Game

“Stay weird, stay different”, unlike your tepid screenplay, Graham Moore. The Weinsteins’ Oscar campaigning usually bears some fruit, and this was an easy call, despite being a bit rubbish.

Best Cinematography

Winner: Birdman

I guessed: Birdman

Emmanual Lubezki wins two years on the trot. Virtuoso enough to be the most likely contender, and leaving Birdman with a tidy four gongs.

Best Costume Design

Winner: The Grand Budapest Hotel

I guessed: The Grand Budapest Hotel

I called all but Screenplay right for Grand Budapest, which made a strong technical showing. Perhaps not so odd; it’s so hugely idiosyncratic it probably left some cold in respect of the main categories. It’s not remotely worthy, either.

Best Film Editing

Winner: Whiplash

I guessed: American Sniper

I have to admit I found Whiplash’s editing leant too much on the obvious. But the Academy likes obvious.

Best Sound Mixing

Winner: Whiplash

I guessed: American Sniper

Deserved, if (as I said in the predictions) an obvious choice. So obvious I chose American Sniper. Which had to make do with…

Best Sound Editing

Winner: American Sniper

I guessed: American Sniper

A glorious triumph.

Best Visual Effects

Winner: Interstellar

I guessed: Guardians of the Galaxy

Can’t say I’m not pleased, but I thought Guardians of the Galaxy would bag it.

Best Makeup

Winner: The Grand Budapest Hotel

I guessed: The Grand Budapest Hotel

Tilda Swinton looked phenomenally decrepit.

Best Production Design

Winner: The Grand Budapest Hotel

I guessed: The Grand Budapest Hotel

The best Hotel won.

Best Original Song

Winner: Glory (Selma)

I guessed: Glory (Selma)

It couldn’t not, really.

Best Original Score

Winner: The Grand Budapest Hotel

I guessed: The Grand Budapest Hotel

Alexandre Desplat’s first win, and well deserved (the only shame is, Interstellar had to lose out).

Best Animated Short

Winner: Feast

I guessed: The Dam Keeper

Disney got it! They didn’t last year, so these things are less certain than they may look.

Best Documentary Short

Winner: Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1

I guessed: Joanna

I bet on the Holocaust. I lost.

Best Live Action Short

Winner: The Phone Call

I guessed: Butter Lamp

After The Voorman Problem lost last year I didn’t expert the quirky British short to win. So if there’s one next year, it probably won’t. Unless that’s exactly what they want you to think.

Best Documentary Feature

Winner: Citizenfour

I guessed: Virunga

Harvey Weinstein’s other saving face of the evening. I think it’s safe to predict that Oliver Stone’s dramatisation of Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing won’t be winning any big prizes come its Oscar night.

Best Foreign Language Film

Winner: Ida

I guessed: Leviathan

See, I only went and picked the wrong Holocaust picture to win.

Best Animated Feature

Winner: Big Hero 6

I guessed: Big Hero 6

Disney win again! Smart money was on How to Train Your Dragon 2, which most agree is superior to Big Hero 6. The first Marvel movie to win a Best Picture Oscar.

Comments

There are times when I miss the darkness. It is hard to live always in the light.

She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

I had that Christopher Marlowe in my boat once.

Shakespeare in Love (1998)
(SPOILERS) You see? Sometimes Oscar can get it right. Not that the backlash post-announcement would have you crediting any such. No, Saving Private Ryan had the rug unscrupulously pulled from under it by Harvey Weinstein essentially buying Shakespeare in Love’s Best Picture through a lavish promotional campaign. So unfair! It is, of course, nothing of the sort. If the rest of Private Ryan were of the same quality as its opening sequence, the Spielberg camp might have had a reasonable beef, but Shakespeare in Love was simply in another league, quality wise, first and foremost thanks to a screenplay that sang like no other in recent memory. And secondly thanks to Gwyneth Paltrow, so good and pure, before she showered us with goop.

Move away from the jams.

Aladdin (2019)
(SPOILERS) I was never overly enamoured by the early ‘90s renaissance of Disney animation, so the raves over Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin left me fairly unphased. On the plus side, that means I came to this live action version fairly fresh (prince); not quite a whole new world but sufficiently unversed in the legend to appreciate it as its own thing. And for the most part, Aladdin can be considered a moderate success. There may not be a whole lot of competition for that crown (I’d give the prize to Pete’s Dragon, except that it was always part-live action), but this one sits fairly comfortably in the lead.

What you do is very baller. You're very anarchist.

Lady Bird (2017)
(SPOILERS) You can see the Noah Baumbach influence on Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut, with whom she collaborated on Frances Ha; an intimate, lo-fi, post-Woody Allen (as in, post-feted, respected Woody Allen) dramedy canvas that has traditionally been the New Yorker’s milieu. But as an adopted, spiritual New Yorker, I suspect Gerwig honourably qualifies, even as Lady Bird is a love letter/ nostalgia trip to her home city of Sacramento.

The Statue of Liberty is kaput.

Saving Private Ryan (1998)
(SPOILERS) William Goldman said of Saving Private Ryan, referencing the film’s titular objective in Which Lie Did I Tell? that it “becomes, once he is found, a disgrace”. “Hollywood horseshit” he emphasised, lest you were in doubt as to his feelings. While I had my misgivings about the picture on first viewing, I was mostly, as many were, impacted by its visceral prowess (which is really what it is, brandishing it like only a director who’s just seen Starship Troopers but took away none of its intent could). So I thought, yeah Goldman’s onto something here, if possibly slightly exaggerating for effect. But no, he’s actually spot-on. If Saving Private Ryan had been a twenty-minute short, it would rightly muster all due praise for its war-porn aesthetic, but unfortunately there’s a phoney, sentimental, hokey tale attached to that opening, replete with clichéd characters, horribly earnest, honorific music and “exciting!” action to engage your interest. There are…

Why would I turn into a filing cabinet?

Captain Marvel (2019)
(SPOILERS) All superhero movies are formulaic to a greater or lesser degree. Mostly greater. The key to an actually great one – or just a pretty good one – is making that a virtue, rather than something you’re conscious of limiting the whole exercise. The irony of the last two stand-alone MCU pictures is that, while attempting to bring somewhat down-the-line progressive cachet to the series, they’ve delivered rather pedestrian results. Of course, that didn’t dim Black Panther’s cultural cachet (and what do I know, swathes of people also profess to loving it), and Captain Marvel has hit half a billion in its first few days – it seems that, unless you’re poor unloved Ant-Man, an easy $1bn is the new $700m for the MCU – but neither’s protagonist really made that all-important iconic impact.

I’m the spoiled toff who lives in the manor.

Robin Hood (2018)
(SPOILERS) Good grief. I took the disdain that greeted Otto Bathurst’s big screen debut with a pinch of salt, on the basis that Guy Ritchie’s similarly-inclined lads-in-duds retelling of King Arthur was also lambasted, and that one turned out to be pretty good fun for the most part. But a passing resemblance is as close as these two would-be franchises get (that, and both singularly failed to start their respective franchises). Robin Hood could, but it definitely didn’t.

I should have mailed it to the Marx Brothers.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
When your hero(es) ride off into the sunset at the end of a film, it’s usually a pretty clear indication that a line is being drawn under their adventures. Sure, rumours surfaced during the ‘90s of various prospective screenplays for a fourth outing for the whip-cracking archeologist. But I’m dubious anyone really expected it to happen. There seemed to be a natural finality to Last Crusade that made the announcement of his 2007 return nostalgically welcome but otherwise unwarranted. That it turned out so tepid merely seemed like confirmation of what we already knew; Indy’s time was past.

It’s the Mount Everest of haunted houses.

The Legend of Hell House (1973)
(SPOILERS) In retrospect, 1973 looks like a banner year for the changing face of the horror movie. The writing was on the wall for Hammer, which had ruled the roost in Britain for so long, and in the US the release of The Exorcist completed a transformation of the genre that had begun with Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby; the realistic horror film, where the terror was to be found in the everyday (the home, the family). Then there was Don’t Look Now, which refracted horror tropes through a typically Nic Roeg eye, fracturing time and vision in a meditative exploration of death and grief. The Wicker Man, meanwhile, would gather its reputation over the passing years. It stands as a kind of anti-horror movie, eschewing standard scares and shock tactics for a dawning realisation of the starkness of opposing belief systems and the fragility of faith.

In comparison to this trio, The Legend of Hell House is something of a throwback; its slightly stagey tone, and cobweb…

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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