With just days prior to the star studded 87th Academy Awards event that will be held on Feb. 22, several predictions on the film award giving body's results from different sources have started to appear online. It seems like the battle for this year's Oscar Best Picture award will be between Richard Linklater's "Boyhood" and Alejandro González Iñárritu's "Birdman."
According to IndieWire, this year's Oscar Best Picture prediction could be considered as one of the most tentative in the past decade. "Boyhood" was an easy shoo-in at first, after the coming-of-age drama movie starring Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette, Lorelei Linklater, and Ethan Hawke won almost all the recent Best Film awards from different award giving bodies like the Golden Globe.
However, the Screen Actors Guild and PGA chose to give the best movie award to "Birdman," the black comedy film featuring Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, Zach Galifianakis, Emma Stone, Amy Ryan, and Naomi Watts.
It means that the two films will battle head to head for the Oscars. However, other nominees like Clint Eastwood's "American Sniper," Wes Anderson's "The Grand Budapest Hotel," Ava DuVernay's "Selma," Morten Tyldum's "The Imitation Game," Damien Chazelle's "Whiplash," as well as James Marsh's "The Theory of Everything" can still be declared this year's winner.
Meanwhile, this year's Best Supporting Actor category seems to have a runaway winner. Almost all the major award giving bodies prior to the Oscars lauded J.K Simmons' performance as the strict and abusive jazz band conductor Terrence Fletcher in the movie "Whiplash."
This is Simmons' first nomination at the Academy Awards. His portrayal in the film made a mark on most film critics in the country, which is why the SAG, the Golden Globe, and Critics' Choice picked him to win this year's Best Supporting Actor recognition. It will not be a surprise if he beats Robert Duvall for "The Judge," Ethan Hawke for "Boyhood," Edward Norton for "Birdman," and Mark Ruffalo for "Foxcatcher" in the said category.
