Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) soared above the competition, especially Boyhood, and swept this year’s Academy Awards in the categories that mattered. Birdman picked up gongs for the best movie, director, cinematography and original screenplay – proof of its overall awesomeness for Academy voters as well as recognition of its cinematic virtuosity.
Richard Linklater’s coming-of-age story, shot with the same set of actors over a 12-year period, seemed no less wondrous for its anthropological narrative style and its ability to imitate real life, but Academy voters were unimpressed. Boyhood went home with just one Oscar, for best supporting actress for Patricia Arquette, who plays a troubled and much-married matriarch. Had the voters decided to do a Slumdog Millionaire on this year’s nominees, they might just have snatched away the prize from Arquette and given it instead to Emma Stone for her lovely turn as a recovering drug addict in Birdman.
The complete list of winners is here.
Boyhood versus Birdman
Boyhood’'s shocking relegation to beneath-underdog status helped Damien Chazelle's Whiplash emerge as an Academy award voter favourite. JK Simmons won the most predictable Oscar of the night early on in the ceremony for his compelling performance as a monstrous music teacher trying to bang some sense into his jazz drummer student. But there was more in store for Whiplash: it won in the best editing category over Boyhood, and also picked up a gong for sound mixing. Apparently, Boyhood simply didn’t make the cut.
Boyhood now finds itself in the same corner as Selma, Ava DuVernay’s civil rights drama featuring David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King. Selma competed in the biggest category of them all – Best Picture – but won only for its stirring song “Glory”, written, composed and performed by John Stephens and Lonnie Lynn (stage name Common). The award was handed out seconds after a rousing performance by the musicians that brought the audience to their feet. Heartthrob Chris Pine’s face was even wet with tears.
If Selma had failed to move the Academy at the nominations stage, Boyhood failed to move them afterwards. None of this takes away from Birdman’s achievements. Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s lightest and most enjoyable movie, coming after such heavy fare as Amorres Perros, 21 Grams, Babel and Biutiful, is a dazzling team effort, proof that many hands truly make fantastic work. The story of a former superhero striving against the odds and battling personal demons to put on a Broadway production is beautifully and effortlessly acted, shot, edited and written. One of Birdman’s heroes, Emmanuel Lubezki, won the best cinematography Oscar for Gravity last year, but his sensuously swirling camerawork deserves all its encomiums this year too.
Still Julianne
The Academy hasn’t been ignoring the likes of Lubezki, but it has been strangely impervious to Julianne Moore’s talents. Nominated before and forced to wear her fixed smile as lesser actresses clambered onto the stage in the past, Julianne Moore was finally recognised for Still Alice. The Oscar doubled up as a lifetime achievement award, in one sense. Moore has been fabulous in Boogie Nights, Magnolia, The Hours, and The Kids Are Alright, but she won the trophy for one of her least edgy roles, as an early onset Alzheimer’s patient in Still Alice. It’s a fine performance, but Moore has been better.
The Brit Invasion of Hollywood continued with Eddie Redmayne scooping the Best Actor award, perhaps unfairly winning over Benedict Cumberbatch for The Imitation Game and Michael Keaton for Birdman. The Imitation Game, a biopic of persecuted homosexual Cambridge mathematician Alan Turing, did win in the best adapted screenplay department, which prompted one of the evening’s most emotional speeches. Graham Moore spoke of how he had tried to kill himself, and made a plea to “stay weird” and “stay different.”
The liberal, all-embracing side of the Academy, notwithstanding host Neil Patrick Harris’s opening line “Welcome to the brightest and the whitest,” was there for all to see in the on-stage support of a range of issues, from the need for racial equality to the support for patients of debilitating illnesses. The Academy may have ignored Selma, but it rewarded another ethnic minority. Inartitu’s jokes about Mexicans winning Oscars, his tribute to America’s multi-cultural traditions, and his prayer for a stable government back home and for improved immigration policies helped negate longstanding criticism that the Academy is insular, closet racist and, despite its proclamations, blind to the stirrings across present-day America.
In another year, Wes Anderson might have won in the top categories for The Grand Budapest Hotel, a gorgeous confection of the kind only Anderson is capable of. The movie’s technical marvels didn’t go unnoticed. It won for costumes (Milena Canonero), production design (Adam Stockhausen and Anna Pinnock), original score (Alexandre Desplat) and make-up and hairstyling (Frances Hannon and Mark Coulier). The movie never looks anything but scrumptious, but is it saying something? The Grand Budapest Hotel failed the test that Birdman passed handsomely, but its victories are proof that voters are finally warming to Anderson’s quirky aesthetic and might just recognise his auteur-driven cinema in the future.
Watching pancake dry
The Boyhood mega-snub was perhaps the most startling event of the ceremony, which featured lacklustre compering by Neil Patrick Harris and only a couple of noteworthy musical performances (Lady Gaga proving that yes, she sings too, in her tribute to The Sound of Music).
There was either a problem with the teleprompter, since several presenters flubbed their lines or seemed to be unable to comprehend them (Terence Howard appeared especially dazed and confused), or the Oscars are suffering from award season fatigue. Should the event be the first out of the gate, rather than the last after the Globes, the Screen Actors Guild, the BAFTAs, and just about anybody else? Should the Oscars be setting the tone, rather than trying to be the final voice of authority in who matters and doesn’t?
One of the smartest movies of last year, Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler, managed to get a single nomination for best original screenplay. Jake Gyllenhaal’s creepy performance as a thief-turned-crime reporter was far more layered than Bradley Cooper’s one-note turn in American Sniper. Yet, Nightcrawler featured nowhere, nor did Selma and, now that it’s all over, Boyhood.
The Academy voters appear to have identified closest with Birdman’s handling of the ageless tussle between art and commerce. Keaton might not have won the award for playing a former superhero desperately trying to earn credibility and respect by adapting Raymond Carver for the stage, but his struggles mirror those of writers, directors, producers and actors trying to make a place for themselves under the Hollywood tentpole. Who better to voice their creative aspiration than a superhero who is secretly an artist?
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Richard Linklater’s coming-of-age story, shot with the same set of actors over a 12-year period, seemed no less wondrous for its anthropological narrative style and its ability to imitate real life, but Academy voters were unimpressed. Boyhood went home with just one Oscar, for best supporting actress for Patricia Arquette, who plays a troubled and much-married matriarch. Had the voters decided to do a Slumdog Millionaire on this year’s nominees, they might just have snatched away the prize from Arquette and given it instead to Emma Stone for her lovely turn as a recovering drug addict in Birdman.
The complete list of winners is here.
Boyhood versus Birdman
Boyhood’'s shocking relegation to beneath-underdog status helped Damien Chazelle's Whiplash emerge as an Academy award voter favourite. JK Simmons won the most predictable Oscar of the night early on in the ceremony for his compelling performance as a monstrous music teacher trying to bang some sense into his jazz drummer student. But there was more in store for Whiplash: it won in the best editing category over Boyhood, and also picked up a gong for sound mixing. Apparently, Boyhood simply didn’t make the cut.
Boyhood now finds itself in the same corner as Selma, Ava DuVernay’s civil rights drama featuring David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King. Selma competed in the biggest category of them all – Best Picture – but won only for its stirring song “Glory”, written, composed and performed by John Stephens and Lonnie Lynn (stage name Common). The award was handed out seconds after a rousing performance by the musicians that brought the audience to their feet. Heartthrob Chris Pine’s face was even wet with tears.
If Selma had failed to move the Academy at the nominations stage, Boyhood failed to move them afterwards. None of this takes away from Birdman’s achievements. Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s lightest and most enjoyable movie, coming after such heavy fare as Amorres Perros, 21 Grams, Babel and Biutiful, is a dazzling team effort, proof that many hands truly make fantastic work. The story of a former superhero striving against the odds and battling personal demons to put on a Broadway production is beautifully and effortlessly acted, shot, edited and written. One of Birdman’s heroes, Emmanuel Lubezki, won the best cinematography Oscar for Gravity last year, but his sensuously swirling camerawork deserves all its encomiums this year too.
Still Julianne
The Academy hasn’t been ignoring the likes of Lubezki, but it has been strangely impervious to Julianne Moore’s talents. Nominated before and forced to wear her fixed smile as lesser actresses clambered onto the stage in the past, Julianne Moore was finally recognised for Still Alice. The Oscar doubled up as a lifetime achievement award, in one sense. Moore has been fabulous in Boogie Nights, Magnolia, The Hours, and The Kids Are Alright, but she won the trophy for one of her least edgy roles, as an early onset Alzheimer’s patient in Still Alice. It’s a fine performance, but Moore has been better.
The Brit Invasion of Hollywood continued with Eddie Redmayne scooping the Best Actor award, perhaps unfairly winning over Benedict Cumberbatch for The Imitation Game and Michael Keaton for Birdman. The Imitation Game, a biopic of persecuted homosexual Cambridge mathematician Alan Turing, did win in the best adapted screenplay department, which prompted one of the evening’s most emotional speeches. Graham Moore spoke of how he had tried to kill himself, and made a plea to “stay weird” and “stay different.”
The liberal, all-embracing side of the Academy, notwithstanding host Neil Patrick Harris’s opening line “Welcome to the brightest and the whitest,” was there for all to see in the on-stage support of a range of issues, from the need for racial equality to the support for patients of debilitating illnesses. The Academy may have ignored Selma, but it rewarded another ethnic minority. Inartitu’s jokes about Mexicans winning Oscars, his tribute to America’s multi-cultural traditions, and his prayer for a stable government back home and for improved immigration policies helped negate longstanding criticism that the Academy is insular, closet racist and, despite its proclamations, blind to the stirrings across present-day America.
In another year, Wes Anderson might have won in the top categories for The Grand Budapest Hotel, a gorgeous confection of the kind only Anderson is capable of. The movie’s technical marvels didn’t go unnoticed. It won for costumes (Milena Canonero), production design (Adam Stockhausen and Anna Pinnock), original score (Alexandre Desplat) and make-up and hairstyling (Frances Hannon and Mark Coulier). The movie never looks anything but scrumptious, but is it saying something? The Grand Budapest Hotel failed the test that Birdman passed handsomely, but its victories are proof that voters are finally warming to Anderson’s quirky aesthetic and might just recognise his auteur-driven cinema in the future.
Watching pancake dry
The Boyhood mega-snub was perhaps the most startling event of the ceremony, which featured lacklustre compering by Neil Patrick Harris and only a couple of noteworthy musical performances (Lady Gaga proving that yes, she sings too, in her tribute to The Sound of Music).
There was either a problem with the teleprompter, since several presenters flubbed their lines or seemed to be unable to comprehend them (Terence Howard appeared especially dazed and confused), or the Oscars are suffering from award season fatigue. Should the event be the first out of the gate, rather than the last after the Globes, the Screen Actors Guild, the BAFTAs, and just about anybody else? Should the Oscars be setting the tone, rather than trying to be the final voice of authority in who matters and doesn’t?
One of the smartest movies of last year, Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler, managed to get a single nomination for best original screenplay. Jake Gyllenhaal’s creepy performance as a thief-turned-crime reporter was far more layered than Bradley Cooper’s one-note turn in American Sniper. Yet, Nightcrawler featured nowhere, nor did Selma and, now that it’s all over, Boyhood.
The Academy voters appear to have identified closest with Birdman’s handling of the ageless tussle between art and commerce. Keaton might not have won the award for playing a former superhero desperately trying to earn credibility and respect by adapting Raymond Carver for the stage, but his struggles mirror those of writers, directors, producers and actors trying to make a place for themselves under the Hollywood tentpole. Who better to voice their creative aspiration than a superhero who is secretly an artist?
