How's this for bold predictions? People were posting '10 things' lists on AwardsDaily and this is mine...

1. Boyhood receives no more than 5 nominations and perhaps doesn’t even make the Best Pic lineup. Though arguably Linklater’s best received film his only blip on Oscar’s radar in the past has been a few screenwriting nominations, so I'm not so sure that other major nominations are a sure thing...

2. Birdman is this year’s Black Swan and will only win for the lead acting role

3. Gone Girl nabs a Best Actress nomination and a few techs but fails to make the cut for Best Pic befalling the same fate as Fincher’s last film, ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’

4. Mr. Turner turns out no better than Mike Leigh’s prior film Another Year, nom for screenplay at best

5. Foxcatcher pins a Best Picture nomination but as with Moneyball fails to land a Best Director nomination for Miller.

6. American Sniper does not break Eastwood’s current losing streak with the Academy; best actor nomination at best

7. The Grand Budapest Hotel is no more grand than Moonrise Kingdom and Wes Anderson once again fails to appeal to the Academy enough to land a Best Pic nomination

8. Unbroken or Into The Woods makes the cut not both

9. There are only 8 nominees for Best Pic this year

10. Interstellar leads the pack with 10 nominations

Best Picture Predictions:

Interstellar
Unbroken
Selma
Birdman
The Imitation Game
Whiplash
Foxcatcher
Boyhood (again I question this but ultimately it's hard to ignore that 100 Metascore...)

And if there's 9 again I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that maybe Exodus: Gods and Kings lands a Best Pic nomination, though idk is that really that much of a stretch considering Ridley Scott won for Gladiator? I think that anyone who has already struck Scott from the possible list does so foolishly...

Best Director

Chris Nolan
Alejandro G. Inarritu
Ava DuVernay
Angelina Jolie
Ridley Scott

lcbaseball22 wrote:How's this for bold predictions? People were posting '10 things' lists on AwardsDaily and this is mine...

1. Boyhood receives no more than 5 nominations and perhaps doesn’t even make the Best Pic lineup. Though arguably Linklater’s best received film his only blip on Oscar’s radar in the past has been a few screenwriting nominations, so I'm not so sure that other major nominations are a sure thing...

2. Birdman is this year’s Black Swan and will only win for the lead acting role

3. Gone Girl nabs a Best Actress nomination and a few techs but fails to make the cut for Best Pic befalling the same fate as Fincher’s last film, ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’

4. Mr. Turner turns out no better than Mike Leigh’s prior film Another Year, nom for screenplay at best

5. Foxcatcher pins a Best Picture nomination but as with Moneyball fails to land a Best Director nomination for Miller.

6. American Sniper does not break Eastwood’s current losing streak with the Academy; best actor nomination at best

7. The Grand Budapest Hotel is no more grand than Moonrise Kingdom and Wes Anderson once again fails to appeal to the Academy enough to land a Best Pic nomination

8. Unbroken or Into The Woods makes the cut not both

9. There are only 8 nominees for Best Pic this year

10. Interstellar leads the pack with 10 nominations

Best Picture Predictions:

Interstellar
Unbroken
Selma
Birdman
The Imitation Game
Whiplash
Foxcatcher
Boyhood (again I question this but ultimately it's hard to ignore that 100 Metascore...)

And if there's 9 again I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that maybe Exodus: Gods and Kings lands a Best Pic nomination, though idk is that really that much of a stretch considering Ridley Scott won for Gladiator? I think that anyone who has already struck Scott from the possible list does so foolishly...

Best Director

Chris Nolan
Alejandro G. Inarritu
Ava DuVernay
Angelina Jolie
Ridley Scott

You're probably being a tad too optimistic here (then again you said BOLD predictions, so I guess you assumed as much ha-ha) but still, I would personally love it if this is how it turned out.

Also you reminded me of all the movies I still have yet to see. Dumb college.

nightfury93 wrote: You're probably being a tad too optimistic here (then again you said BOLD predictions, so I guess you assumed as much ha-ha) but still, I would personally love it if this is how it turned out.

Also you reminded me of all the movies I still have yet to see. Dumb college.

Yes, perhaps a bit optimistic and bold...really with the exception of Nolan though I'm basing all off of the outcomes of recent years and narrowing down the possible Best Picture list by eliminating the following for the reasons stated above...

Gone Girl (though I enjoyed this film just as much as Fincher's last and had wanted that to make the cut)
American Sniper
Mr. Turner
Grand Budapest Hotel

and possibly Boyhood, based mostly on the fact that none of his wonderful 'Before' trilogy films made the cut despite excellent reviews for all of those as well. Boyhood could very well be Linklater's real breakthrough film though and I wouldn't be too upset as I quite enjoyed it, though not to quite the same extend as I enjoy his 'Before' films.

Once we've scratched those 4 or 5 the remaining pool of contenders is quite small.

It would be an inspired decision to give Nolan an Oscar nod for Interstellar, but I don't think it'll happen. Nolan's best rated work was The Dark Knight Knight, and he did not get nominated for that. For Nolan to stand any chance of getting nominated, he'll have to make a movie that's at least on par with The Dark Knight. Interstellar is not that - at least in the eyes of critics.

Interstellar has a good chance of making it into the Best Picture list, but only by virtue of that category having around 9-10 nominees. Nominations for Best Cinematography, Visual Effects, Score, and Sound Editing are all but certain.

The BFCA score is the one thing that worries me whether Interstellar is still in the hunt but I truly feel that Interstellar is Nolan's most Academy friendly film once looking past the Science Fiction facade. It's his most ambitious too, just can't see how they can overlook him for director again. Ambition is often rewarded (ie Gravity, Life of Pi, Tree of Life, Black Swan, Hugo, Avatar, etc) and if Fincher and Eastwood are out there's not much competition, as I previously noted.

lcbaseball22 wrote:The BFCA score is the one thing that worries me whether Interstellar is still in the hunt but I truly feel that Interstellar is Nolan's most Academy friendly film once looking past the Science Fiction facade. It's his most ambitious too, just can't see how they can overlook him for director again. Ambition is often rewarded (ie Gravity, Life of Pi, Tree of Life, Black Swan, Hugo, Avatar, etc) and if Fincher and Eastwood are out there's not much competition, as I previously noted.

It seems like only yesterday that the BFCA score was at 98 and everybody was wigging out. Good times

On second thought looking through the BFCA list of scores for this year maybe there will be 9 or 10 again; I forgot The Theory of Everything. Just watched the trailer and based on the emotional aspect I think that'll probably get in as well. Actually be a pretty cool companion to Interstellar considering the film features Hawking's book 'A Brief History of Time' which concerns black holes, wormholes, etc

The current rundown of feature film scores...

Boyhood - 96
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 - 95
Whiplash - 93
Birdman - 91
Guardians of the Galaxy - 91
The Imitation Game - 91
Gone Girl - 90
Inherent Vice - 90
A Most Violent Year - 90
Wild - 90
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes - 89
The Theory of Everything - 89
Captain America: The Winter Soldier - 88
Edge of Tomorrow - 88
Nightcrawler - 88
Foxcatcher - 87
The Grand Budapest Hotel - 87
How to Train Your Dragon 2 - 87
Big Hero 6 - 85
X-Men: Days of Future Past - 85

***
Fury - 83
A Most Wanted Man - 83
The Fault in Our Stars - 82
St. Vincent - 82
Interstellar - 80

Add Selma and Unbroken and we get 9

lcbaseball22 wrote:On second thought looking through the BFCA list of scores for this year maybe there will be 9 or 10 again; I forgot The Theory of Everything. Just watched the trailer and based on the emotional aspect I think that'll probably get in as well. Actually be a pretty cool companion to Interstellar considering the film features Hawking's book 'A Brief History of Time' which concerns black holes, wormholes, etc

The current rundown of feature film scores...

Boyhood - 96
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 - 95
Whiplash - 93
Birdman - 91
Guardians of the Galaxy - 91
The Imitation Game - 91
Gone Girl - 90
Inherent Vice - 90
A Most Violent Year - 90
Wild - 90
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes - 89
The Theory of Everything - 89
Captain America: The Winter Soldier - 88
Edge of Tomorrow - 88
Nightcrawler - 88
Foxcatcher - 87
The Grand Budapest Hotel - 87
How to Train Your Dragon 2 - 87
Big Hero 6 - 85
X-Men: Days of Future Past - 85

***
Fury - 83
A Most Wanted Man - 83
The Fault in Our Stars - 82
St. Vincent - 82
Interstellar - 80

Add Selma and Unbroken and we get 9

BFCA scores are very strange. I actually never knew about the BFCA scoring system online until this year when I was tracking How to Train Your Dragon 2 (much like how I was tracking Interstellar). What struck me was how some movies that people really liked got lower ratings. Dragons 2, for instance, only has an 87 though its RT score is 92%. Benjamin Button, which has Rotten Tomatoes scores similar to Interstellar, has a 91 on BFCA. St. Vincent and Fury which have lower average ratings on RT than Interstellar have higher BFCA scores.

It's strange really. Rotten Tomatoes is relatively low, BFCA is pretty darn low, and yet Metacritic is at 74 - which I've always considered to be very good. Actually, in my mind anything above a 70 on Metacritic is good.

I think as far as the Academy goes it all comes down to how much members follow these scores and let it impact their view of the film come voting time. Critics scores will be more influential during the smaller awards shows (obviously), but how impacting will it be on the Guilds, Golden Globes, and then - of course - the Oscars? We will have to wait and see.

I personally believe that Interstellar is going to age like fine wine, and in a few years people will be looking back at the scores it has gotten on various critic sites and shake their heads.

Anything 85 or higher from the BFCA is considered 4 star and is very good. Yeah there might be the occasional film that is rated lower than you see on RT but realize that they use different systems. The BFCA is a straight up average and the outcome is really going to depend on how low those who do like the film rate. For the most part though the makeup of the BFCA that I have noticed tends to like not only the usually acclaimed stuff and the Oscar potentials but also a lot of populist affair. For instance five of the Harry Potter films were deemed 4 star films with the others just on the cusp. Almost all of the scores on their site are higher than their RT % but again, different systems. RT is thumbs up or thumbs down essentially and the Tomatometer simply displays what percentage give it a thumbs up regardless of whether the approving critics rate as a 70 or a 100, the latter being more influential for BFCA score.

BTW, that score for Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 is bound to fluctuate and potentially drop like Interstellar did, that's a very early score...

Will be interesting to see how it goes for Interstellar at the Oscars. Gravity won 7 out of 10 nominations, winning it for Directing, Editing, Cinematography and Score while grabbing a nomination for Best Picture and Female Leading Role.

I think Interstellar is a much more complete and relatable film than Gravity but I fear that it being just last year that a sci-fi film won so many awards may predispose them to not give another sci-fi film so many accolades. The academy doesn't seems to be too crazy about sci-fi films either. We also know how much the academy loves Nolan and Matthew also just won an Oscar so I doubt they'll give it to him again.