Sunday, February 22, 2015

Oscars 2015 - The Challenge Post

So, we're basically minutes away from the greatest movie award event of the year: those golden statues thing hosted by legen-wait for it-dary Neil Patrick Harris himself this year.

So, expect a big musical number combined with witty remarks and some big surprises as the winners of the most prestigious award in the film industry are announced.
Or are they truly surprises?

Here's our list of tips for the winners and we do think we're onto something here, so check it out right now:


OSCARS 2015 - OUR WINNERS

Best Motion Picture - Birdman (or Boyhood but let's go with the less logical one) WON

Best Performance by a Lead Actor - Eddie Redmayne (Theory of Everything) WON

Best Performance by a Supporting Actor - J.K. Simmons (Whiplash) WON

Best Performance by a Lead Actress - Julianne Moore (Still Alice) WON

Best Performance by a Supporting Actress - Patricia Arquette (Boyhood) WON

Best Animated Feature - How To Train Your Dragon 2 BIG HERO 6

Cinematography - Mr. Turner (Dick Pope) BIRDMAN (Emmanuel Lubezki)

Costume Design - The Grand Budapest Hotel WON

Directing - Boyhood, Richard Linklater BIRDMAN, Alejandro G. Iñárritu
EDIT: Well, that was a surprise and a first in recent (20 or so?) years for the Academy. Normally, Best Picture and Best Director are shared between the two most likely winners of Best Picture, so the loser in the most important category of the evening would be send off with at least another highly prestigious award. But not this time, which was arguably the biggest surprise of the whole show and maybe even year as this is highly unusual. But it still happened that both awards went to 'Birdman', so this shall just serve as a friendly note to you. This is no excuse. (Maybe.)

Best Documentary Feature - The Salt of the Earth CITIZENFOUR

Best Documentary Short - Joanna CRISIS HOTLINE: VETERANS PRESS 1

Editing - American Sniper WHIPLASH

Best Foreign Language Film - Leviathan (Russia) IDA (Poland)

Makeup & Hairstyling - The Grand Budapest Hotel WON

Original Score - The Theory of Everything, Johann Johannsson THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL, Alexandre Desplat

Original Song - "Glory", Selma WON

Production Design - Interstellar THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL

Best Animated Short Film - The Bigger Picture EDIT: Well, we actually got that one right as during the broadcast but of course before any winner was to be announced we changed our horses midstream and went with 'FEAST' which eventually did win this category. But since we changed our minds relatively late (read: after writing this post), we won't count this one as a win for us but out of fairness we won't neither take it inot account as a loss. TIE

Best Live Action Short Film - Parvaneh THE PHONE CALL

Sound Editing - American Sniper (could also go to Interstellar) WON

Sound Mixing - Interstellar WHIPLASH

Visual Effects - Interstellar WON

Adapted Screenplay - The Imitation Game, Graham Moore WON

Original Screenplay - The Grand Budapest Hotel, Wes Anderson BIRDMAN OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE), Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Jr. & Armando Bo
EDIT: This was another huge surprise as Birdman took home already so much trophys this evening that it would beat out Budapest here as well. Spoiler: it did.


There you have it. Now, enjoy the show and come back tomorrow / later on for our famous bit where we face the music: Were we right and how often so?
See ya around, people. More to follow.

And the Oscar goes to... The Krautics. ;)

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UPDATE/EDIT: 

So, how often did we pick the right winner? Not as often as we'd hoped/thought, actually, due to some unprecedented stuff (read Edits for more info). In the end, we reached a ~48% quote (Tie = 0.5 win). Half right, half dead wrong. Therefore, our challenge was... LOST

But no worries, we'll be back next year and then we will win the challenge once again, for honour, for blood fun and whatever you think fits here as well. Until the curtain rises again and The Krautics do finally get their long overdue Oscar nod. 

Bye.