Predicting The 87th Annual Academy Awards

Best Director

“Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)” Alejandro G. Iñárritu
“Boyhood” Richard Linklater
“Foxcatcher” Bennett Miller
“The Grand Budapest Hotel” Wes Anderson
“The Imitation Game” Morten Tyldum

If you had asked me about a month ago who I thought would be winning Best Director at the Oscars, I wouldn’t have hesitated to tell you it would be Richard Linklater for Boyhood, especially after winning the vast majority of Best Director prizes throughout the critics awards, including the Golden Globe. However, after Birdman unexpectedly won the Producers Guild award, followed by its fully-expected win for Best Cast from SAG, there seemed little doubt that Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu would go on to win the Directors Guild award, which he did.

Pulling a Tom Hooper-esque coup, it’s now Inarritu who has the best chance of winning the Best Director Oscar for his brilliant work on Birdman since those who win the DGA award for Feature Film go on to win the Oscar about 90% of the time (there have only been seven instances in the DGA’s 67-year history where the two have disagreed). Of course, there was disagreement between the two merely two years ago, but that was because Ben Affleck was unexpectedly snubbed by the Directors’ Branch of the Academy.

You’d have to go back 12 years to find a nominee for the Best Director Oscar that failed to win after having won the DGA award (Rob Marshall won the DGA for Chicago, but Roman Polanski won the Oscar for The Pianist). However, once that DGA award is handed out, it’s very hard to argue against it, especially when the DGA winner is among the five Best Director nominees, meaning that Inarritu will most likely be taking home a very deserved Oscar in this category on the big night.

Best Picture

“American Sniper” Clint Eastwood, Robert Lorenz, Andrew Lazar, Bradley Cooper and Peter Morgan, Producers
“Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)” Alejandro G. Iñárritu, John Lesher and James W. Skotchdopole, Producers
“Boyhood” Richard Linklater and Cathleen Sutherland, Producers
“The Grand Budapest Hotel” Wes Anderson, Scott Rudin, Steven Rales and Jeremy Dawson, Producers
“The Imitation Game” Nora Grossman, Ido Ostrowsky and Teddy Schwarzman, Producers
“Selma” Christian Colson, Oprah Winfrey, Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner, Producers
“The Theory of Everything” Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Lisa Bruce and Anthony McCarten, Producers
“Whiplash” Jason Blum, Helen Estabrook and David Lancaster, Producers

We come to it at last. Here we have another instance where if you had asked me a month ago what I thought would be taking home Best Picture, I wouldn’t have hesitated to say Boyhood, especially after its domination over the critics awards, which included a Best Drama win at the Golden Globes. However, after Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s masterpiece Birdman surprisingly took the Producers Guild award, things began to change, and after its subsequent wins from SAG and the DGA, we suddenly found ourselves with a new and unbeatable frontrunner.

Since the inception of the Best Cast award back in 1995, there has only been one film to win the “Triple Crown” and lose the Best Picture Oscar. That film was, of course, Apollo 13, which lost to Braveheart. However, this was not something totally unexpected as Ron Howard had failed to get a Best Director nomination, meaning that the film was not as strong with the Academy as it had been with the guilds. In fact, at the end of the night, the film only walked away with Best Film Editing and Best Sound. That being said, Birdman is extremely popular with the Academy, earning nominations in all major categories except Film Editing (as previously explained, this was probably due to the Editor’s Branch thinking that there wasn’t much editing there).

Going back to Braveheart for one second, the one semi-important guild it did manage to nab a victory with was the WGA, making it the smallest precursor that a film has won Best Picture with in the last 25 years (i.e. since the inception of the PGA awards). Now, there are still those that are thinking that Boyhood will pull off some last-minute victory here, but with its recent and fully-expected loss at the WGA, the last nail seems to have been driven into its coffin, meaning that, if it were to somehow claim the Best Picture Oscar, it would be the biggest upset in at least 25 years, for there’s no precedent for a film to win it after losing the PGA, DGA, SAG, and WGA starting from 1989.

All this is to say that it seems as though there is little doubt that Birdman will be taking its well-deserved Best Picture Oscar on February 22^nd, marking the first time in 11 years that my favorite film of the year takes the top prize. This just goes to show how incredibly unpredictable the awards race can be. Four years ago, everyone would’ve bet the farm on The Social Network continuing its hot streak right through the guilds and the Oscars, only to have the guilds and the Academy suddenly go with The King’s Speech. This year, Boyhood seemed like the sure thing until the guilds decided to go with Birdman, and just like back then, I fully agree with the switch. Birdman is an absolute masterpiece, a brilliant actors’ showcase that is a phenomenal combination of outstanding directing, editing, and cinematography. Unlike many of the Academy’s recent choices for Best Picture, this is one that’s going to be remembered for a long time.

So, there you have my predictions for all 24 categories of The 87^th Annual Academy Awards. Head on down to the comments and let us know if you agree/disagree.