On Friday, January 30, the American Cinema Editors (ACE) handed out their ACE Eddie Awards followed by the Art Directors Guild Awards and the USC Scripter Award on Saturday, helping shed a little more light on the Oscar race as final Oscar voting begins at 8 a.m. PT this Friday, February 6.
We’ll begin with the Eddie Awards as I’m sure they’ll be the most-scrutinized of the lot as editing kudos seems to be a good predictor for Best Picture. Of course, this year we’re faced with the issue of whether or not Birdman is the Best Picture front-runner over Boyhood considering Birdman wasn’t nominated for Best Film Editing. Considering a movie hasn’t won Best Picture without being nominated for a Best Editing Oscar for 35 years that would seem to be a significant stat, and ACE is attempting to help out with those matters.
While Boyhood and Birdman weren’t directly competing, Boyhood did take hom ethe Eddie for “Best Edited Dramatic Film” while Birdman lost to The Grand Budapest Hotel in the comedy category. Winning for animated feature was The Lego Movie while Citizenfour took home the award for best edited documentary.
Birdman did find some success with the Art Directors Guild, winning for Best Contemporary Film while The Grand Budapest Hotel won for best period film and Guardians of the Galaxy took home the award for best designed fantasy feature.
Finally, the USC Scripter Award was given to screenwriter Graham Moore and author Andrew Hodges for The Imitation Game (download the screenplay here). The Scripter Award honors the screenwriter of the year’s most accomplished cinematic adaptation as well as the author of the written work upon which the screenplay is based. Scripter is the only award of its kind that recognizes authors of the original work alongside the adapting screenwriters.
When it comes to Oscar Predictions, I haven’t changed anything as a result of these wins. I’m keeping The Grand Budapest Hotel at the top of my Best Film Editing predictions as well as my Production Design predictions and The Imitation Game remains my predicted winner for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Of the bunch, Boyhood is one I may move to the top spot in Best Film Editing, but I feel that with how much Grand Budapest is obviously loved, it will doesn’t have much of a chance at winning Best Picture, which tells me it’s likely to win in many other, below the line categories.
