Predicting the 2015 Oscars

by Emily Tandy 

It’s now awards season again, which is much less a season than half the year nowadays…However, I usually enjoy finding out the nominees, following the blogs speculating over who will win, and then the actual events themselves. 

Usually my favourite event is the Tonys, mainly for the performances from Broadway shows and the original opening performances by the hosts - Neil Patrick Harris’ in 2013 was phenomenal. I would recommend watching it on youtube if you’ve not already seen it.

At the moment it’s the 2015 Oscars that I’m finding exciting, with my predictions (and hopes) of who would be the nominees seeming pretty accurate. With the exception of The Lego Movie not being anywhere on the list for ‘Best Animated Film’; I felt that it deserved a place there, as one of the highest-grossing films of 2014, not to mention the fact that is an awesome film beautifully created with truly excellent animations. 

Meryl Streep, in Into the Woods
(source: huffington post)

The only other films that I feel have been slightly under-represented this year are Into the Woods and Annie. However, that may be just be my own musical theatre preferences. I am very pleased that the one of the three that Into the Woods is nominated for, is Meryl Streep for Best Supporting Actress. She performs a flawless portrayal of the evil witch in the film, with a very moving performance as the true character is slowly revealed.

Both The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything have both done very well this year and are, unsurprisingly, in many of the same categories. It seems to be popular at the moment, for dramatic portrayals of real people's lives, especially with the added period drama element of The Imitation Game. Personally, I think that The Imitation Game will do slightly better overall, especially as Steven Hawking is alive, which causes me to feel slightly weird about recreating his life while it’s still being lived. Although that may just be personal opinion and Eddie Redmayne's portrayal of Hawking and his decline is beautifully and sensitively done (see Kelvin Shiu's review here).

As per usual, the producer Harvey Weinstein has done very well out of the nominations. In total, his films have achieved 10 nominations. No real surprises there, though, as he usually does each year. It is also unsurprising that Boyhood has quite a few nominations, which it deserves mainly for the twelve years of work that was put into it, if not for anything else. Hans Zimmer (who wrote much of the Pirates of the Caribbean music) has been nominated for the Interstellar soundtrack, which I hope to win that Oscar.Neil Patrick Harris is hosting this year's Oscar ceremony for the first time; however, if his three times hosting the Tonys is anything to go by, then it should be wonderful.

If anyone is actually interested in this stuff then have a look at http://oscar.go.com/ which is a great site which lists all the nominees; view all the clips and trailers and you can make your own predictions.