Oscar 2015 - ... what's left to say ...

M. Gustave: The beginning of the end of the end of the beginning has begun. A sad finale played off-key on a broken-down saloon piano in the outskirts of a forgotten ghost town. I'd rather not bear witness to such blasphemy.
Zero: Me neither.
("The Grand Budapest Hotel" - Wes Anderson, Hugo Guinness)

I've decided to write an extra entry this year, just before the awards, while thinking if it's not a better idea to get to bed instead of watching live if I get any predictions right. Unfortunately I have other work to do = the decision lies in the end between keeping the TV turned on or not (what do you think we'll be the choice ?). So, I thought it might not be a bad idea to point out some sections I generally avoid (especially since I'm really thinking on not doing another round of this next February). For instance, writing. Where we have the original category: "Boyhood", "Birdman", "Foxcatcher", "The Grand Budapest Hotel", and "Nightcrawler". Here's quite hard to choose to be frank (even "Boyhood" has a decent script), but I guess the winner is the one including the quote above. If it doesn't get at least that ...

The adapted writing section is also hard to choose from. The reasons are completely opposite though = I don't know who's the less weak among the worse roundup I've seen in years: "American Sniper", "Inherent Vice", "The Imitation Game", "The Theory of Everything" and "Whiplash". Cliche, cryptic, classic, dry, and tiring. I'll pick the middle choice, "The Imitation Game":

Joan Clarke: Sometimes it is the people who no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.
("The Imitation Game" - Graham Moore)

Another section I'm writing about quite rarely is ... make-up. "Guardians of the Galaxy" unfortunately doesn't have any chance, not even here. Everybody gives "The Grand Budapest Hotel" as winner. I would point out "Foxcatcher" though, as the first movie after a series of constant failures in transforming the main character, culminating probably with "J. Edgar".
And if I talked about makeup, let's talk about costumes too. More nominations: "The Grand Budapest Hotel", "Inherent Vice", "Into the Woods", "Maleficent", "Mr. Turner", but easier to predict. I'll go along the general opinion:
If on what's above I usually avoid talking because I'm not really able to tell a lot based only on what I see in a movie, on actors I avoid writing because I'm too subjective. I wouldn't do it this year as well, but I can't help making an exception. For leading actore we have as nominees Steve Carell, Benedict Cumberbatch, Bradley Cooper, Michael Keaton and Eddie Redmayne. All the predictions indicate as winner the last one in this list for the role of Stephen Hawking, who I do not deny requiring a consistent effort. I would point out though as much more complicated to perform the transformation I've seen on Steve Carell in a total atypical role, in "Foxcatcher":
I decided to write this entry also because I thought I ended way too acid this year. However ... :) yet again ... I don't think I've ever seen a list of nominees + the most probable winners (of whom I hope that many won't coincide with my prediction) so ... f***ed up as this year. Culminating I guess with animation, where I won't even bother to enumerate the nominees, out of whom the most probable winner is a sequel (should be easy to pick it out). For me though, it's something else:
which ... is not among the nominees :) But in the end, who cares about who's there & who wins, right ? ;)