14 DAY TRIAL // For a few years now, in the days leading up to the Academy Awards (or the Oscars, as they’re officially called now), The Hollywood Reporter has been running interviews with various voters who, under the condition of anonymity, dish all the dirt on the award season’s favorites and even reveal their own choices.
This year is no different, and their latest is with a female voter from the public relations branch, which probably means she’s a publicist for a major movie studio or movie executive. We should note that THR also talks to voters from the directors or actors’ branch.
Snubs and how Aniston had no place in the Oscar race
One of the topics that this voter is very passionate about is this year’s big snubs, particularly “Selma” and “Cake.” The 2015 edition of the Oscars will be the whitest yet, with many angry voices online pointing out that voters shut out completely “Selma” from all the major categories, even though it deserved to have at least a nomination, if not to actually win.
“Selma” didn’t deserve nominations, the voter says. This isn’t about racism and / or making it impossible for African-American actors and filmmakers in Hollywood, this was about “Selma” not being artsy enough to deserve to be considered for the Oscar race.
You can’t expect nominations just because the entire cast is black, the voter says, in more or less these words. Yet this is what everyone expected, so when it didn’t happen, they went crazy and turned this into a racial issue - when it was never that.
And speaking of movies that deserved nominations, one that didn’t was “Cake,” no doubt about it. This particular voter is amused that Jennifer Aniston was even mentioned in the Oscar conversation, when it was clear from the start that the film that was meant to be her vehicle was sub-par at best.
“I’m not sorry that Jennifer Aniston isn’t nominated; she was fine, but I thought her movie [Cake] was ridiculous…The minute I saw Still Alice, I remember thinking, ‘This [best actress race] is over. Four other women are going to have to get dressed and go to 5,000 dinners knowing they have no chance’,” the voter says.
She’s not alone in thinking that: many industry insiders consider Julianne Moore a sure winner as Best Actress, for her impeccable work in “Still Alice.”
The Oscars 2015 predictions
The same goes for “The Imitation Game” for Best Movie, Michael Keaton for Best Actor, J.K. Simmons for Best Supporting Actor and Patricia Arquette for Best Supporting Actress, the voter says. She believes Best Director will go to Richard Linklater for his work on “Boyhood,” a movie that he shot over the course of 12 years with the same cast.
That alone should bag him the much coveted statuette, the voter smiles.
If you’ve been keeping an eye on the award season, you know that what she’s saying isn’t far from what everyone else is saying too. So far, the names mentioned above have won all the major awards, with only one exception: “The Imitation Game” was shut out in favor of “The Theory of Everything” for the big prize.
Some still believe Eddie Redmayne might do a big upset and win Best Actor, right before the film scoops Best Picture.
We’ll see: the Oscars take place this Sunday, February 22, 2015.