It is predicted that tonight’s Oscars or, to give it its official name, the 87th Academy Awards, will offer few surprises. Although the beginning of the awards season promised an intriguing battle between the contenders, now that the myriad critics’ associations across the US named their favourites and the Golden Globe and the Bafta award ceremonies came and went with much fanfare, the wheat has been firmly separated from the chaff and it has become pretty clear who will go home tonight clutching a 34cm high golden statue.
Critics’ murmurings on its release last summer that Boyhood would be a frontrunner in the 2014 awards season were proved right as director Richard Linklater’s extraordinary film – about a young boy growing from ages six to 18 and filmed over 12 years charting actor Ellar Coltrane’s actual growth – has already walked off with myriad Best Picture awards, so should be the one to walk off with the main prize tonight.
Patricia Arquette, who starred as the boy’s mother in Boyhood has already bagged the Best Supporting Actress awards from the Screen Actors Guild, the Golden Globes and the Baftas (among many others) – so count her among the winners tonight.
Equally acclaimed has been the Best Supporting Actor nominee J.K. Simmons, a hard-working character actor who will be re-cognised for his turn as a ruth-less music conductor in the film Whiplash.
It has only been a few short years since Eddie Redmayne has been on the radar, gaining notices for his turn in 2011’s My Week with Marilyn, but his amazing performance as astrophysicist Stephen Hawking in the beloved The Theory of Everything will see him beat out second favourite, his compatriot Benedict Cumberbatch, to the Best Actor award.
Five nominations into her career, Julianne Moore will finally win an Academy Award for her role as a woman suffering with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease in Still Alice.
It’s pretty clear who will go home with a golden statue
With nine nominations, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) is one of two films with the most nominations. Birdman director Alejandro González Iñárritu will fight off frontrunner Linklater for the Best Director award.
The second movie with nine nominations is director Wes Anderson’s typically quirky The Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson should himself take home the best Original Screenplay award, for this zany comic caper set in a fictional east European country was truly original.
The best adapted screenplay is harder to predict – yet in all probability, this will go to Jason Hall for American Sniper – one of the awards the film will win out of its six nominations.
In the other categories, How to Train Your Dragon 2 will be pronounced the winner in the Best Animated Feature category; while Ida, the dramatic post- World War II film from Poland, will take home the Best Foreign Language film award. Citizenfour, director Laura Poitras’s powerful documentary about whistle-blower Edward Snowden will win the Best Documentary Feature award.
As for the rest: Grand Budapest Hotel’s colourful production and costume design should see its respective nominees in those categories – Adam Stockhausen (with set decoration by Anna Pinnock) and Milena Canonero winning tonight.
Birdman will add to its tally with Best Cinematography for Emmanuel Lubezki, his second Oscar in as many years. The editing Oscar will in all likelihood go to Sandra Adair for Boyhood.
Surprisingly missing out on the Best Picture and other major categories, director Christopher Nolan’s sublime Interstellar should make up for its disappointment with wins in the technical categories including Sound and Visual Effects. The Make-Up and Hairstyling Oscar should go to Elizabeth Yianni-Georgiou and David White for creat-ing such colourful characters in Guardians of the Galaxy.
Jóhann Jóhannsson will probably win best Original Score for The Theory of Everything; while the winning song should be Glory with music and lyrics by John Stephens and Lonnie Lynn from the film Selma, the consolation prize for this civil rights movie, much hyped on its release, yet coming out with a mere two nominations.
Tonight’s ceremony will be held at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, and is presented by actor, singer and dancer Neil Patrick Harris.