Film: The Oscars

So film fans, I can’t imagine you’re talking about much else this week other than the Academy Awards ceremony, happening this Sunday! Let’s start the conversation with who I think (and hope) will win. You can tweet your responses to @latestjessica

Best Picture
I’m hoping that the extraordinary Whiplash, which muses on whether creative people need harsh environments to become brilliant, wins over the shot-over-12-years-but-I’m-a-bit-‘meh’-about-it Boyhood … but I doubt it. Twelve years! There is no way that won’t be rewarded.

Best Actress
Julianne Moore. I can think of eight times Julianne Moore should have won an Oscar, and didn’t. Her portrayal of a professor with early-onset Alzheimer’s in Still Alice is heartfelt and at this point it would be wrong to cheat her out of the statue!

Best Actor
Will it go to Eddie Redmayne for so successfully embodying Stephen Hawking in The Theory Of Everything or Michael Keaton, for playing a version of himself in Birdman? I’m falling into the Redmayne camp.

Best Supporting Actor
Although I loved Robert Davall in The Judge, as PostFeature viewers will remember (I cried more than buckets that day), J.K. Simmons in the aforementioned Whiplash is something else.

Best Supporting Actress
Please shock the world, Oscar voters, and give the award to Emma Stone for her ‘junkie daughter’ performance in Birdman. Emma Stone makes everything good. Emma Stone reading the telephone book would be a critical and commercial success.

Best Director
Richard Linklater for Boyhood – of the 86 films awarded Best Picture in the past, 62 have also been awarded Best Director. But I would like to see Alejandro González Iñárritu win for the single-shot Birdman.

Best Cinematography
Emmanuel Lubezki’s work on Birdman is the most eye-catching (one long shot!) but Mr Turner is sure to win … even though the cinematography rather takes away from its genius in creating scenes.

Best Adapted Screenplay
I would like to see Whiplash given another award. It doesn’t actually belong in this category but was included after the Academy decided it had been adapted from the short film that was (only) made to finance the main film. Ridiculous.

Best Original Screenplay
Nightcrawler may just take this one home – despite the script being the poorest part of the film. But I would really like a win for Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, please.

Best Song
Also snubbed in nominations this year was Martin Luther King biopic Selma, so possibly voters will attempt to apologise by throwing it this award for the song ‘Glory’, but it really should go to The Lego Movie. Because ‘Everything Is Awesome’ makes everything awesome.