Oscar Predictions for 2015

I think the best way I can describe how I feel about Boyhood is, it feels more like a part of my life than a movie.

Of course, bluedeed is better at explaining his thoughts than I am at explaining mine.

Not really. You're just different.

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What exactly was mind blowing about it?

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Mubi

Makes me think about another "topic of criticism" I've come across:

"It's easy to watch the film and recall similar moments in your own life. That's not enough; the film needs to inspire reflection, not just recollection."

Do you think that's a valid point?

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A film doesn't need to do what anybody says. Validity is in the eye of the beholder, his brain and his heart.

I just write like an engineer

That's a valid idea but I don't think it applies to the film - Boyhood definitely made me reflect. Partly because I was comparing my own life to his and the differences and commonalities made me understand myself a bit better.

It made my dad reflect too, to the kid as well as the parents. We had to drive two hours to see it (we were also looking at houses) and on the way home we had a huge talk about our own lives and the things the film made us reflect on. My dad was talking about how he feels he's wasted much of his life not doing the things he's truly passionate about, and feeling now like he "thought there was going to be more" - a direct quote from the movie said by Patricia Arquette, who plays the mother.

Actually, the movie makes me want to get up and do something with my life.

The fluency of the shots and the excellent use of 3D technology caused a very effective feeling of "being involved" with the film, while also being able to admire it as an outsider. It was pretty intense.
I also experienced the film on more than one layer (which I know many people didn't). The symbolic metaphores that were at the surface were so well presented that they very much enhanced my emotional attachment to the underlying (character) story that was actually going on. I started interpreting everything in a metaphysical kind of way and because of that, every bit of action and every single event in the movie had a much deeper impact on me.

Well, people are perceiving it as a mindless action film because that's what it is. It's all CGI and with the exception of some nice visuals (I'm not that impressed even by its visuals, tbh), I don't see what's so remarkable or profound about it.

It has a very poor script like bluedeed said, not to mention the numerous errors (even though that doesn't really bother me), and it's as though even the characters themselves were aware that they were inside a film. It just feels pretty contrived and artificial to me.

I feel like it's a sure-fire thing that Boyhood will at least win for something. Interstellar might do well also. I feel like Lego Movie for Best Animation is basically a guarantee. I'd like for the "love" to spread a little bit this year. Gravity was damn-good entertainment, but I don't think it deserved everything that it got.

One thing's for sure, Superhero movies, even though X-Men: Days of Future Past and Captain America: The Winter Soldier did extremely well, will be completely shunned.

I don't know about your prediction about The Lego Movie having a guaranteed win for Animated Film. I do believe it will be a nominee, but I also believe that it will have great competition from How to Train Your Dragon 2.

The film can be perceived as a metaphor for a woman's breakdown and her eventual resurrection. Her world-weariness seems to be taking the upper hand, but during a wonderful "hallucination scene", a kind of vision, she suddenly learns the value of life again and her main humane instinct of surviving ultimately prevails. The ending is filmed in such a way that it even makes us appreciate the most self-evident force on this planet, "gravity".

The movie is essentially a celebration of life, in its deepest roots. The message might be seen as "too obvious" or "too cliché" by certain cynics, but as an optimist at heart, I think the film's ageless message is very profound and resonating and it is presented to us in a breath-takingly beautiful and tasteful manner.

Dogmatically calling it a mindless action picture seems very narrow-minded to me.

The script is not poor at all and I don't really understand your criticisms regarding the characters. They felt very natural to me.

Do you play video games?

Gravity is more of a spectacle than its actually film. A nice joy ride at the carnival but nothing more than that imo.

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Planet of the Apes will win all the Oscars for special effects.

Not regularly. I'm not sure if you fully understood what I was saying, because the experience I had is not really comparable to playing a video game.

Oh well, I don't care if people solely saw the film as merely a cool "attraction" and nothing more. I thought it was more meaningful than just that. People can take it or leave it.

Supporting Actor Winner: Steve Carrell- Foxcatcher
Nom: Neil Patrick Harris- Gone Girl

BEST ACTOR NOMS:
Brad Pitt- Fury
Ben Affleck- Gone Girl
Christophe Waltz- Big Eyes
Michael Keaton- Birdman
Channing Tatum- Foxcatcher
possibly replacing one Philip Seymour Hoffman- A Most Wanted Man

Best Actress Noms:
Reese Witherspoon- Wild
Rosemund Pike- Gone Girl
JULIANNE MOORE- MAPS TO THE STARS I HOPEEEE
Amy Adams- Big Eyes
Jessica Chastain: a most violent year

Supporting Actress:
Laura Dern- Wild
Carrie Coon- Gone Girl
Patricia Arquette- Boyhood

Director:
Bennett Miller- Foxcatcher
David Fincher- Gone Girl
Richard Linklater- Boyhood
Angelina Jolie- Unbroken
Tim Burton- Big Eyes

Original Soundtrack
Mica Levy- Under The Skin ( a boy can dream right?)
Interstellar
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross- Gone Girl
Danny Elfman- Big Eyes
Fury

Best Makeup
Foxcatcher
Big Eyes
Fury
Unbroken
Grand Budapest Hotel

Best Picture:
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Foxcatcher
Gone Girl
Fury
Boyhood
Big Eyes
(depending on critics response) Unbroken
Interstellar
Wild

i can't think of others too tired

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Recent Viewings (rewatches noted with an *)
Barbarian- (4/5)
Nope- (4.5/5)
Jurassic Park Dominion- 0.5/5
What Josiah Saw- (4.5/5)

I asked because the aesthetics of the film seem very derivative of video games set in space. The long takes (digitally created) match up with this because in video games you can't really cut when in first or third person because that would disrupt the player's input (can be broken though, like in video games' version Breathless, Thirty Flights of Loving). In addition to the roving long takes in space that feel more like moving than watching (which is why, I assume, you felt immersion), we also have pretty direct rips such as the first person shots of Sandra Bullock moving throughout the ship, complete with a HUD that's a big staple (and crutch) of the medium.

Nah, sorry, I didn't see any resemblances with video games. Passive cinema and active gaming are two totally different things for me. The experiences are nothing alike. I very much prefer the former, personally.