The Oscars (and other awards)

Snowpericer was over-rated.

It had an interesting concept, but was executed terribly

Snowpiercer probably deserved to get in for Art Direction, but otherwise I can't say it was snubbed. Tilda Swinton is awful in that movie.

In hindsight, it's not that great. It's entertaining conceptually, but the execution is manic and goofy.

I didn't think about it before. Michael Keaton is the only Best Actor nominee this year who played a fictional character. That raises the question: why did the Oscars have a hard-on for biopics this year? Jake Gyllenhaal and Ralph Fiennes should have been nominated. And replace Benedict Cumberbatch with the guy who played MLK in Selma. That would have been a much more diverse list.

This year's Oscars have no imagination when you think about it. They went for the laziest and most bland options.

I'll step up to bat for Snowpiercer; it's a pretty awesome movie. It creates a very well-realized environment and society, features a very rare strong performance from Chris Evans (Tilda Swinton's pretty good, too), has some excellent action sequences and some interesting ideas at play near the end. I re-watched it on Blu Ray a few weeks ago and my opinion of it still holds up.

Indeed.

He put on a funny nose and did a weird voice. It's obvious he's trying to mimic someone. That's very different from Michael Keaton, Jake Gyllenhaal and Ralph Fiennes who had to create original characters from scratch. I'm not discrediting actors who play real people. That takes skill too. I'm just saying that the Oscars went over-board with biopics this year. There should be more of a balance.

That's a hell of a coup, the PGA is the only of the guild awards that uses the Academy's preferential ballot system. They've matched up with the Oscar choice every year since 2007 (although there was a tie last year so that could have easily blown their streak).

Anyway I think the SAG awards will tell us a lot. If Boyhood wins, game over, that means the actors branch loves it so much that they were willing to overlook the fact that there were only four people in the cast and two of the were non-professionals. If The Imitation Game wins, game over, it means the acting branch loves the movie despite some largely average work by the supporting actors. If Birdman wins, that will be a huge boost in its momentum but not necessarily a game over, that's definitely an "actor's movie" and sag's support might not necessarily speak to a larger respect within the academy and may have been entirely responding to the fact that it had an impressive set of stars spitting banter. If The Grand Budapest Hotel wins (which it may out of the sheer size of the cast and the number of stars in it), then look out because this race is wide open. Oh and if The Theory of Everything wins then... this will officially be a strange year.

Birdman won Best Cast

Bye-Bye Boyhood.

Dracula

Eddie Redmayne

You always vote Batman. Always.