Academy Award Nominations for 2015

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced its nominations for the Oscars 2015. The biggest surprise: Selma, was only nominated for Best Picture and Best Song – an inspirational John Legend tune that will likely march to the gold. With no noms in above the line creds, Selma will likely not be a contender for Best Film. Other big snubs: Life Itself, the Roger Ebert doc, and The Lego Movie. This latter one was probably considered too much of an extended product placement commercial to be Oscar material but, undoubtedly, its animation was kick-ass.

On the good surprise side, Marion Cotillard was nominated for her role in Two Days, One Night. This is probably because the movie itself was snipped out of the Short List for Foreign Language film. The biggest push from the announcements came for American Sniper, collecting six nominations including Best Actor (third year in a row for Bradley Cooper), Best Screenplay and Best Film. No nod for its director, Clint Eastwood, though. Bennet Miller, Foxcatcher, edged him out on that one.

Birdman and The Grand Budapest Hotel lead in number of Academy Award nominations with nine each, followed by The Imitation Game with eight, American Sniper and Boyhood with six, and Foxcatcher (including Best Actor Steve Carrel, You’ve come a long way, baby!) and Interstellar (mostly technical) with five apiece. After the dust settled, another big surprise was GBH getting more nods than Boyhood. Still, GBH, while praised for its visual style, did not get any acting love.

These Oscar nominations place Birdman and Boyhood clearly in the lead as Best Film for 2014, with A Film Look Score of 46 for Boyhood and  47 for Birdman – a virtual tie. In third place the BAFTA favorite, The Grand Budapest Hotel, has 36 points.

Nominees for Best Film

American Sniper
Birdman – winner
Boyhood
The Grand Budapest Hotel
The Imitation Game
Selma
The Theory of Everything
Whiplash

All other nominations and winners.

This is the ultimate peer review event and that is why, really, it is an honor just to be nominated. A jury of peers has selected each nominee to be worthy of recognition over all the others. This last week has been an accumulation of such recognitions. To summarize all peer awards this year:

Screen Actors Guild of America:

Outstanding Ensemble Cast
Birdman – winner
Boyhood
The Grand Budapest Hotel
The Imitation Game
The Theory of Everything

Outstanding Male Actor in a Leading Role
Steve Carrel (Foxcatcher)
Benedict Cumberbatch (The Imitation Game)
Jake Gyllenhall (Nightcrawler)
Michael Keaton (Birdman)
Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything) – winner

Outstanding Female Actor in a Leading Role
Jennifer Aniston (Cake)
Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything)
Julianne Moore (Still Alice) – winner
Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl)
Reese Witherspoon (Wild)

All SAG nominations and winners.

Producers Guild of America:

Outstanding Achievement in Production
American Sniper. Producers: Bradley Cooper, Clint Eastwood, Andrew Lazar, Robert Lorenz, Peter Morgan.
Birdman. Producers: Alejandro G. Iñárritu, John Lesher, James W. Skotchdopole. – winner
Boyhood. Producers: Richard Linklater, Cathleen Sutherland.  There are interesting questions about that.
Foxcatcher. Producers: Megan Ellison, Jon Kilik, Bennett Miller.
Gone Girl. Producer: Ceán Chaffin.
The Grand Budapest Hotel. Producers: Wes Anderson & Scott Rudin, Jeremy Dawson, Steven Rales,
The Imitation Game. Producers: Nora Grossman, Ido Ostrowsky, Teddy Schwarzman.
Nightcrawler. Producers: Jennifer Fox, Tony Gilroy
The Theory of Everything. Producers: Tim Bevan & Eric Fellner, Lisa Bruce, Anthony McCarten.
Whiplash. Producers: Jason Blum, Helen Estabrook, David Lancaster.

Writers Guild of America:

Note: neither Birdman nor The Theory of Everything were eligible for WGA Awards under membership rules.

Original Screenplay
Boyhood, written by Richard Linklater (*)
Foxcatcher, written by E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman (*)
The Grand Budapest Hotel, written by Wes Anderson; story by Wes Anderson & Hugo Guinness (*) – winner
Nightcrawler, written by Dan Gilroy (*)
Whiplash, written by Damien Chazelle (*)

Adapted Screenplay
American Sniper, written by Jason Hall; based on the book by Chris Kyle with Scott McEwen and Jim DeFelice. (*)
Gone Girl, written by Gillian Flynn; based on her novel. (*)
Guardians of the Galaxy, written by James Gunn and Nicole Perlman; based on the Marvel comic by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning
The Imitation Game, written by Graham Moore; based on the book Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges. (*) – winner
Wild, written by Nick Hornby; based on the book by Cheryl Strayed. (*)

Screenplays identified with (*) are available for download.

Directors Guild of America:

Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for 2014
Wes Anderson (The Grand Budapest Hotel)
Clint Eastwood (American Sniper)
Alejandro Iñarritu (Birdman – Or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) – winner
Richard Linklater (Boyhood)
Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game)

American Society of Cinematographers:

Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in a Theatrical Release
Roger Deakins (Unbroken)
Óscar Faura (The Imitation Game)
Emmanuel Lubezki (Birdman) – winner
Dick Pope (Mr Turner)
Robert Yeoman (The Grand Budapest Hotel)

American Cinema Editors

Drama
Sandra Adair (Boyhood) – winner
Kirk Baxter (Gone Girl)
Joel Cox & Gary Roach, (American Sniper)
Tom Cross (Whiplash)
John Gilroy (Nightcrawler)
William Goldenberg (The Imitation Game)

Comedy
Douglas Crise & Stephen Mirrione (Birdman)
Leslie Jones (Inherent Vice)
Barney Pilling (Grand Budapest Hotel) – winner
Fred Raskin, Hughes Winborne, ACE & Craig Wood (Guardians of the Galaxy)
Wyatt Smith (Into the Woods)

And let us not Forget… The Razzies

As a reminder that not all achievements are created equally we also got the Razzie Nominations this week. Cameron Diaz gets a triple whammy (The Other Woman, Sex Tape, and  Annie) and Adam Sandler repeats his long streak of nomintions.

 AWARD SEASON 2014-2015
A FILM LOOK – FILMS OF 2014 RANKED