2014
The winner is listed first, in CAPITAL letters.
Actor:
EDDIE REDMAYNE in "The Theory of Everything, " Steve Carell in "Foxcatcher, " Bradley Cooper in "American Sniper, " Benedict Cumberbatch in "The Imitation Game, " Michael Keaton in "Birdman"
Actress:
JULIANNE MOORE in "Still Alice, " Marion Cotillard in "Two Days, One Night, " Felicity Jones in "The Theory of Everything, " Rosamund Pike in "Gone Girl, " Reese Witherspoon in "Wild"
Supporting Actor:
J.K. SIMMONS in "Whiplash, " Robert Duvall in "The Judge, " Ethan Hawke in "Boyhood, " Edward Norton in "Birdman, " Mark Ruffalo in "Foxcatcher, "
Supporting Actress:
PATRICIA ARQUETTE in "Boyhood, " Laura Dern in "Wild, " Emma Stone in "Birdman, " Keira Knightley in "The Imitation Game, " Meryl Streep in "Into the Woods"
Director:
ALEJANDRO GONZALES INARRITU for "Birdman, " Richard Linklater for "Boyhood, " Bennett Miller for "Foxcatcher, " Wes Anderson for "The Grand Budapest Hotel, " Morten Tyldum for "The Imitation Game"
This year marked the first time that the Best Picture category had only eight nominees. Ever since 2009 when the Best Picture field could be between 5 and 10, there had always been nine contenders. For Oscar predictors, every Best Picture winner in the past 60 years has also been nominated in a screenplay category - except for and Titanic (1997). In this year, the winning Best Picture won in both categories.
For the most part, the Academy bypassed a large number of this year's sci-fi films, fantasy epics, action movies, and lots of other independent films. Some of the major hit movies of the year were virtually ignored in the Academy's voting, with only a few nominations in secondary, more technical categories, and only one win among them:
- Un-nominated: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1, Transformers: Age of Extinction, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Godzilla
- One nomination: the animated The LEGO Movie, Gone Girl, Maleficent, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
- Two nominations: Guardians of the Galaxy
- Five nominations: Interstellar (with one win, Best Visual Effects)
Up to the time of the nominations, the eight nominees grossed only $205.2 million collectively - the lowest since 2009 (the previous low was in the year 2011, at $519 million). This was the first time since 2007 that no Best Picture-nominated film collected $100 million domestically by the time nominations were announced. Most of the films were underperforming, art-house independent films. The Grand Budapest Hotel was the top grossing Best Picture nominee (at $59.1 million domestically), mostly because it was released in March of 2014.
At the time of the awards, the only major Hollywood mainstream film, Warner Bros.' American Sniper (with six nominations - and only one Oscar win) was the top grossing film at $316.2 million. It had a tremendous boost of over $300 million from the time of the nominations.
Half of the eight finalists for Best Picture were biopics - they were mostly tales of lone-heroes (some Great Men) who were on journeys searching or striving for something seemingly unreachable.
The awards were fairly evenly spread out between the top three Best Picture contenders (two had four wins, and one had 3 wins). This marked the first year since the academy expanded the Best Picture field in 2009 that every nominee won at least one Oscar.
The winner of Best Picture was:
- director/writer Alejandro González Iñárritu's unconventional Broadway drama Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (with 9 nominations and 4 wins - also Best Director, Best Cinematography, and Best Original Screenplay). It featured Michael Keaton's comeback title role as a fading star questing for redemption. [Note: Fox Searchlight Pictures, which won Best Picture last year with 12 Years a Slave (2013), represented the film. Birdman was the third film in four years to win Best Picture with its story about show business (and backstage).]
The other two closest films were:
- director Wes Anderson's off-beat historical comic drama The Grand Budapest Hotel (with 9 nominations and 4 wins, including Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, and Best Original Score). It was also represented by Fox Searchlight Pictures. It was the Best Motion Picture (musical or comedy) at the Golden Globes, although it had no acting Oscar nominations.
- director/writer Damien Chazelle's (and Sony Classics) directorial debut film, the musical drama Whiplash (with 5 nominations and 3 wins, including Best Supporting Actor, Best Film Editing, and Best Sound Mixing). It told about a domineering music conservatory teacher (Oscar winner J.K. Simmons) and his torturous relationship with one aspiring student (a jazz drummer).
The remaining five nominees all had only one win:
- director Morten Tyldum's (and the Weinstein Company's) biopic about British code-breaking cryptographer Alan Turing during WWII, The Imitation Game (with 8 nominations and only one win, for Best Adapted Screenplay (based upon Andrew Hodges' 1983/2000 biography)).
- director/writer Richard Linklater's innovative coming-of-age indie film Boyhood (with 6 nominations and only one win, Best Supporting Actress). It was filmed over 12 years about a boy's (Ellar Coltrane) journey to adulthood.
- director Clint Eastwood's Navy SEAL war drama about a deadly sniper, American Sniper (with 6 nominations and only one win, Best Sound Editing). It was based upon the 2012 best-selling autobiographical memoirs of real-life lethal US Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle who went on four tours. This was the first time that one of Eastwood's directorial efforts had been nominated for Best Picture but not also for Best Director.
- director James Marsh's and Focus Features' biopic The Theory of Everything (with 5 nominations and only one win, Best Actor), about Stephen Hawking (based upon wife Jane Hawking's 2008 memoir Travelling to Infinity: My Life With Stephen).
- director Ava DuVernay’s Selma (with only two nominations and only one win, Best Original Song, "Glory"), distributed by Paramount Pictures. It was a biopic about the famed voting rights march (seen over a 3-month period) led by civil rights leader Dr. MLK (David Oyelowo) from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965 which spurred President Lyndon B. Johnson (portrayed by Tom Wilkinson) to pressure Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
