Best Film Editing
“American Sniper” Joel Cox and Gary D. Roach
“Boyhood” Sandra Adair
“The Grand Budapest Hotel” Barney Pilling
“The Imitation Game” William Goldenberg
“Whiplash” Tom Cross
With the shocking exclusion of Birdman (apparently due to the Editors’ Branch thinking that there wasn’t much editing there), this category seems like a lock for Boyhood, which recently took the ACE award for Drama. The Grand Budapest Hotel also took an ACE award for comedy/musical, but the dramas are almost always favored here. Plus, if the rest of the night goes as it’s expected to, then I highly doubt that the Academy would choose to take it away from Boyhood. Birdman should be winning here due to the brilliant editing of the film that makes it look like one continuous shot, but Boyhood is a solid 2nd place choice, especially given that the editor had to cut together 12 years of material.
Best Original Screenplay
“Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)” Written by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Jr. & Armando Bo
“Boyhood” Written by Richard Linklater
“Foxcatcher” Written by E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman
“The Grand Budapest Hotel” Screenplay by Wes Anderson; Story by Wes Anderson & Hugo Guinness
“Nightcrawler” Written by Dan Gilroy
Finally, we arrive at the major categories. For Original Screenplay, Inarritu and co. seem to have a pretty solid lock for their outstanding screenplay for Birdman. Having won the Golden Globe and Critics Choice awards, this puts them front and center for the win, especially given the fact that nearly every screenplay that’s done so for the past decade has gone on to win the Oscar (the one exception being Up in the Air, which lost due to controversy).
Unfortunately, we won’t be able to pile the WGA win on top of its accolades due to their silly rules that excluded it from competition, meaning their Original Screenplay award doesn’t mean anything this year. However, you can be certain that, had it been included, it would have won due to the fact that all six eligible screenplays for the past decade that have won both the Golden Globe and Critics Choice awards have gone on to do so.
All of these stats beg the question of why the majority of pundits are still picking The Grand Budapest Hotel to win. It reminds me of last year when, even when faced with overwhelming stats saying that Her was going to win this category (Golden Globe + Critics Choice + WGA), the majority of pundits picked American Hustle to win, and we all know how that turned out.
Again, when faced with some overwhelming stats, most are predicting another screenplay that has no basis for winning. True, it won the BAFTA, but their corresponding category has differed several times in the past few years (American Hustle instead of Her (not even nominated), The Artist instead of Midnight in Paris, and In Bruges instead of Milk), so that doesn’t really give it any kind of boost. There’s also this misguided notion of the Academy wanting to “spread the wealth,” which seems to be the idea behind last year’s bizarre picks, but as David O. Russell can tell you, this was and still is nonsense. Besides, this doesn’t even apply here as The Grand Budapest Hotel will be picking up three (maybe four) Oscars anyway. All this is to say that it would be very, very unwise to bet against Birdman in this category.
Best Adapted Screenplay
“American Sniper” Written by Jason Hall
“The Imitation Game” Written by Graham Moore
“Inherent Vice” Written for the screen by Paul Thomas Anderson
“The Theory of Everything” Screenplay by Anthony McCarten
“Whiplash” Written by Damien Chazelle
Just a few weeks ago, it seemed as though Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl was an unstoppable force in this category. That is, until it was suddenly and unexpectedly snubbed by the Academy. This has forced us to look for another leader, which has shown up in a big way with Graham Moore’s excellent screenplay for The Imitation Game. After winning both the USC Scripter and the Writers Guild awards for Adapted Screenplay (defeating Gone Girl in both instances), there seems little doubt that Moore will go on to win this Oscar. As the best screenplay of this lot, I have no objection.