He may deserve to win, but that’s not really why he will. He has by far the biggest role of his competition (virtually a co-lead), and his part allows him to swing for the bleachers. My vote would go to Hawke.
Similarly, while I think Arquette is great and deserves to win (she’s also get my vote), having a virtual lead role as well certainly doesn’t hurt. More screen time doesn’t always guarantee a victory, but it definitely puts the thumb on the scale to your advantage.
Birdman
Alejandro González Iñárritu
Reese Witherspoon
Michael Keaton
Patricia Arquette
J.K. Simmons
Today’s San Jose Mercury News was wild. The front page article was entitled : “The Award for Best Caucasian goes to. . .” and it was entirely about the “snub” of “Selma”. Went on for many paragraphs, implying racism in Hollywood. On a back page was a side article listing the actual nominees.
It would have been funny if Tom Wilkinson was nominated for best supporting actor.
I haven’t seen it yet, but who got snubbed? The director? David Oyelowo? I heard Carmen Ejogo was really good as Coretta Scott King.
Okay, you’ve convinced me. I’ll switch my pick to Arquette.
In the face of the backlash, do you figure Iñárritu becomes a more likely winner for to play look-a-noncaucasian-can-so-totally-still-win-one-of-the-major-awards-see?
Naw, I don’t think anybody will care. If it will sway voters, it will sway them to vote for Selma in the two categories in which it is nominated.
Since 2005, 3 movies featuring minorities/minority issues have won B. Picture, 2 African-Americans have won B. Actor, 4 African-Americans have won B. Supporting Actress, and 1 African-American has won B. Supporting Actor.
As far as recent nominations and wins, charges of racism are not really well-founded.
I doubt Lupita Nyong’o identifies herself as African-American.
:o
Got me on that, but the overall point remains the same.
That’s what I get by doing my research via Google pictures. 
Why? If SELMA wins Best Picture, then they have to know we’re all in for another round of It Was The Best Damn Picture, But The Actor And Director Didn’t Even Get Nominated. And we’ll hear that, almost routinely, whenever the win for SELMA gets mentioned in years to come; it’ll be as if there’s an asterisk for the rest of that sentence.
But if, say, BIRDMAN wins Best Picture, based on a consensus that Iñárritu was just a little better at directing than any of the whites or blacks who took a shot at it this year, then that point kinda sorts gets muted instead of getting resurrected.
The Lego Movie was somewhat cute at best. I didn’t think it deserved a nomination, nor does the wife.
We watched The Tale of Princess Kiguya a few days ago. Good but a little too long. Not as good as some others that have come out of that studio.
You’re reading more into my remark than I put in there. All I’m saying is that if you are going to make a protest vote, you’ll more likely make a vote for Selma than vote for another film. And given the larger number of nominees, a voting block for B. Picture can have a larger chance of affecting the outcome than a voting block for a category with only 5 nominees.
Someone on this thread opined that Hollywood was simple patting itself on the back with the Academy Awards. Actually, it is shooting itself in the foot - again.
The television audience is made up of people who go to movies, right? Combined, these movies earned $185,000,000 at the box office in 2014: The Imitation Game, Birdman, Selma, Boyhood, The Grand Budapest Hotel-- all nominated for best picture.
Not nominated: Gone Girl, Interstellar, Unbroken: Total box office in 2014: $$460,000,000 - Let’s take this one step more: Is there one person on the list of those nominated pictures that anyone is going to stay up until the wee hours rooting for? Patricia Arquette may deserve the Oscar - but since hardly anyone except the Academy voters saw Boyhood, who cares? Nobody, that’s who. Who cares what Angelina WOULD HAVE WORN? Everyone on the planet.
Shallow? Absolutely. Isn’t this what Hollywood is all about? Get real. These are MOVIES. The Academy needs to get its collective head out of its self important ass and start thinking about who brings home the bacon. If nobody else will call them out, I’ll bet their advertisers will after what is sure to be the absolute snore of the awards season.
And Transformers: Age of Extinction made $245M all by itself! Michael Fucking Bay should be getting that Lifetime Achievement award, just on the strength of that one film!
Somebody brings this up every year, and the answer is always the same. The Oscars are not about popularity. If you want to know what the most popular films are, just look at the list of the box-office winners for last year:
The Oscars are also not about the critical favorites, which you can use this list to discover:
They are always somewhere between these two extremes. They are always very middle-brow. Not low-brow like the box-office winners. Not high-brow like the critical favorites. So box-office winners like Guardians of the Galaxy, The LEGO Movie, Transformers: Age of Extinction, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, Maleficent, or Big Hero 6 might get some nominations for the various technical awards or for the animation award (which the Academy thinks of as just kid’s stuff) but seldom anything else. It’s not some of the critical favorites either. It’s not things like Under the Skin, Ida, Only Lovers Left Alive, Force Majeure, Mr. Turner, Two Days, One Night, Goodbye to Language, or The Immigrant. Those might get foreign language film nominations (which the Academy thinks of as a consolation prize to throw at the rest of the world), but otherwise they are considered too foreign, too weird, or too boring.
The Academy wants films that are in English, set in the U.S., with stars recognizable to them, with directors recognizable to them, not about arty things, without kinky sex, and about subjects that are familiar to them like American wars within memory or American political struggles within memory. They are O.K. with films that make offhand reference to things that audiences might understand like the stars of superhero films getting replaced or famous scientists who’ve appeared on Star Trek.
This is an unusual year in that the top three critical favorites are also on the Best Picture ballot. They have just enough audience-friendly elements that they can satisfy both critics and most American audiences. They have no explosions or ear-piercingly loud music and have little special effects, so the Academy can convince themselves that they aren’t nominating low-brow films.
And the Oscars are going to stay middle-brow, so don’t expect them to be otherwise.
The funny/ironic thing is, the reason the B. Picture nominations was increased from 5 to 5+ is so more popular films could compete, largely based on the “controversy” that The Dark Knight wasn’t nominated for B. Picture at all.
What has happened, however, is that more smaller films have been nominated and the big middle-brow productions like Gone Girl, Interstellar, etc have been increasingly ignored. Over the past ten years, the B. Picture winner has been among their years’s top-20 grossing films only 3 times (The Departed (15), Slumdog Millionaire (16), and The Kings Speech (18)), where in the preceding 10 years the B. Picture winners were all among the top-20 grossing films of their respective year, with three winners being the biggest film of the year (Forrest Gump, Titanic, LOTR: ROTK). From 1980-2013, 42% of winners were among the top-10 films of their respective years… but none since 2004.
Regardless, I disagree with drwo… the Oscars don’t exist to give awards to make the audience happy.
I have created this year’s Straight Dope Oscar Pool for those who are interested. The thread is here, but you can also just go to:
Name of the Pool:
Cecil Oscar Pick’em 2015
password:
cecil
So reminiscent of “Hooray for Everything” by The Young Caucasians. 
Gosh, I thought it was boring as hell. “The Lego Movie” is a terrible oversight.
“The Academy” is made up of 6000+ individuals who vote alone in their offices, or dens, or at their kitchen tables. It is easy to just say “The Academy” (I do it myself sometimes) but it’s not a monolithic entity with a hive mind. They’re people from all kinds of backgrounds and occupations, from all over the world, and they vote privately.
NOBODY votes based on box office or potential TV viewership, that would be stupid. They vote for what they like and what they think should be nominated. It’s possible a lot of them didn’t even vote in the nominating process, but will vote on the final ballot.
A lot of movies I loved or liked a lot were nominated in various categories, so it won’t be a snooze fest to me. It’s true, a lot of films/people I loved were not nominated, or under-nominated, but that happens every year. I deal, and root for the ones I do like.