Offbeat showbiz satire bests Boyhood.
By Brandon Wolfe
The 87th Annual Academy Awards initially seemed like a horse race, but it wound up being strictly for the birds, as Birdman took home the prizes for Best Picture, Best Director for Alejandro González Iñárritu and Best Original Screenplay. Up until recently, Richard Linklater’s sublime Boyhood seemed like it had the Best Picture and Best Director categories all sewn up, but Birdman experienced a major resurgence in recent weeks, collecting several other major film awards in the lead-up to the Oscars. It would seem that the more insular showbiz milieu of Iñárritu’s surrealistic film struck a stronger chord with those in the film industry than did Linklater’s more universal film.
The one prize that Birdman didn’t take home was the one that it initially seemed to have in the bag: Best Actor for Michael Keaton. The former Batman went home empty-handed as Eddie Redmayne won for his striking performance as Stephen Hawking in the otherwise unremarkable The Theory of Everything. While Keaton turned in fine work as embattled actor Riggan Thompson, the Academy loves nothing more than when an actor portrays a real-life figure with some physical impairment, so Redmayne walked away with the prize predictably, though not undeservedly.
Patricia Arquette garnered Boyhood’s sole win, for Best Actress, and used her acceptance speech as a stirring call to arms for female equality. Julianne Moore finally took home a long-overdue Oscar, winning Best Supporting Actress for the little-seen Still Alice. And rounding out the major acting categories was J.K. Simmons, who won Best Supporting Actor for his powerhouse performance in Whiplash.
The biggest winner of the night outside of the top categories was Wes Anderson’s delightful The Grand Budapest Hotel, which took home four awards (tying it with Birdman) for Best Production Design, Best Original Score, Best Makeup and Hairstyling and Best Costume Design.
Neil Patrick Harris was a sprightly host, even if the material he was given was creaky in the traditional Oscar-writer fashion (the less said about his “prediction box” bit, the better).
The full list of winners are as follows:
BEST PICTURE: Birdman or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance
BEST ACTOR: Eddie Redmayne, The Theory of Everything
BEST ACTRESS: Julianne Moore, Still Alice
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: J.K. Simmons, Whiplash
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Patricia Arquette, Boyhood
BEST DIRECTOR: Alejandro González Iñárritu, Birdman
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Graham Moore, The Imitation Game
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Alejandro González Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris and Armando Bo, Birdman
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: Citizenfour
BEST FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FEATURE: Ida
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE: Big Hero 6
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Emmanuel Lubezki, Birdman
BEST COSTUME DESIGN: The Grand Budapest Hotel, Milena Canonero
ACHIEVEMENT IN FILM EDITING: Whiplash, Tom Cross
BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING: The Grand Budapest Hotel, Frances Hannon and Mark Coulier
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE: The Grand Budapest Hotel, Alexandre Desplat
BEST ORIGINAL SONG: “Glory” from Selma, music and lyrics by Common and John Legend
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN: The Grand Budapest Hotel, Adam Stockhausen (production design), Anna Pinnock (set decoration)
ACHIEVEMENT IN SOUND EDITING: American Sniper, Alan Robert Murray and Bub Asman
ACHIEVEMENT IN SOUND MIXING: Whiplash, Craig Mann, Ben Wilkins and Thomas Curley
ACHIEVEMENT IN VISUAL EFFECTS: Interstellar, Paul Franklin, Andrew Lockley, Ian Hunter and Scott Fisher
BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM: Feast
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILM: Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1
BEST LIVE-ACTION SHORT FILM: The Phone Call
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