We asked none other than The New School’s very own screen studies majors and cinephiles for their thoughts on who should take home the Oscar’s top honors. Here are the results:
“I think it’s going to be ‘Boyhood.’ That’s my hunch. I think it’s because of the unconventional nature of Richard Linklater film, shooting over 12 years and by managing to show a life story of something very particular and also very universal.” – Noah Isenberg, Professor and Chair of the Culture and Media department.
“I think ‘Boyhood’ is probably the safest pick at this point. It’s long production history gives it a nice metatextual reason for the academy to honor it, and it’s been one of the most talked about films of the award season, which is extra impressive considering it was released over the summer, far before most of the traditional Oscar contenders are released. In addition, Richard Linklater is a director with a long history in the industry, and this could be seen as the academy honoring not just this one film, but also his entire career.” – Peter Donohue, a senior Screen Studies major at Lang.
“I’m not quite sure if I can bet on which film will win best picture this year because I didn’t see all of them. In fact, I only saw two. I have heard from other people that ‘Whiplash’ will win it all. Personally, I thought ‘Whiplash’ was a bit contrived and it lacked the complexity of the minimalist narrative it was going for.” – Elle Brosh, a senior Screen Studies major at Lang.
“I think that ‘Selma’ will win (perhaps) because the academy may feel that, in light of recent events at the end of 2014 (i.e. the killing of Mike Brown, Eric Garner, etc), the release of ‘Selma’ was quite topical and clearly the topic of the film still resonates heavily today. I would be quite happy if ‘Selma’ won, also because it would give a female director a chance to win best picture.” – Allegra Isenberg, a senior Screen Studies major at Lang.
“I would love to see ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ win. It’s the dark horse of the category. I enjoyed it more than ‘Boyhood’ but I know it’s not going to win.” – Noah Isenberg
“I liked ‘Boyhood’ a lot, but personally I think that ‘Selma’ deserves the award. It’s truly a film of the moment, commenting on our country’s problems with race relations and the activist organizing effort that goes into creating these big demonstrations in order to put pressure on the people in power. After a year like this, with the Ferguson protests and the black lives matter movement, it would be nice to see the academy show solidarity. Unfortunately, despite it’s nomination for best picture, neither director Ava DuVerney nor David Oyelowo’s performance as Martin Luther King Jr. got nods in their respective categories, so it’s unlikely it’ll take home the prize.” – Donohue
“Even though I didn’t see the other films, I can safely say that ‘Birdman’ was fucking genius. Iñárritu is brilliant for making this movie and It only made me like it more when I started to hear people say that it was ‘too much!’ It was a beautiful, successful attempt at utilizing magical realism to make connections between the artifice of cinema and the ‘performance’ of human connections. The way in which the film blurred the visual and conceptual boundaries between realism, absurdity, and comedy was provocative and masterful. The actors were amazing and the cinematography never stopped making me drool. Emma Stone is a bit of a bore, but hopefully her momentary trendiness will have a good impact on the Hollywood Foreign Press.” – Brosh
“I’d like to see ‘Birdman’ win because, cinematically, I found it to be highly evocative and playful in its execution. I think that all of the components of the film were actualized to their fullest potential and the end result is a film which plays with Brechtian conventions and a slew of self-reflexive devices.” – Allegra Isenberg
What are your best picture predictions? We want to know!
Sydney is a current Junior studying Journalism & Design at Eugene Lang and the Co-Editor-In-Chief of The New School Free Press. She spends a questionable amount of time responding to emails, remembering coffee orders for her various internships, producing films & frolicking around the Lower East Side where she’s living her New York dream of occupying a bedroom with a brick wall.
