We predict the 87th annual Mackademy Awards

Here’s what we’d see if the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was composed of one lonely guy in a Georgia Straight cubicle instead of 6000 Hollywood maids and whoever Gwyneth Paltrow’s dating at the moment. Welcome to the 87th annual Mackademy Awards. 

Best picture
As the sole voting member of the Mackademy, let me be clear: my heart says Boyhood.  

It’s a film so widely praised that any slam is like a hard but welcome challenge to your fundamental belief system (Hey, maybe you’re right, Mr. Kenneth Turan of the LA Times, when you say its “animating idea is more interesting than its actual satisfactions.” I agreed with your unimpressed critiques of Titanic, Pulp Fiction, and Fight Club, too.)

On the other hand, with the exception of a screening of Lucio Fulci’s The New York Ripper at the Fox, no other movie this year had me sitting in a theatre, weeping like a child or possibly an emotionally unstable middle-aged man at the sheer majesty of human artistic achievement.

The maids might go for Selma, just to keep Hollywood’s liberal cred airborne for another year, although it’s hard to imagine anything seeming more than puny compared to Boyhood’s towering mojo.

As for the rest:

Theory of Everything and The Imitation Game belong on an entirely different list (“Films that are utter shit”); The Grand Budapest Hotel is—ahem—more animating ideas than actual satisfactions; Birdman is a high concept, low-yield disappointment; Whiplash falls apart once you walk away from it; and American Sniper has a fucking plastic baby in it, for fuck’s sake.

Academy: Boyhood
Mackademy: Boyhood

Best director
In any other year, I’d expect the maids to go for the Mexican guy.

But as technically impressive as it is, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s work on Birdman, or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) is as self-satisfied as that stupid title. More to the point, this is Boyhood’s year, and a 12 year gamble that went so beautifully right when it should have gone so disastrously wrong definitely trumps a CGI’d “single take.”

Bennett Miller is the dark horse, assuming Academy members know anything about cinema. While inexplicably missing from the best picture category, Foxcatcher is a masterpiece of minute tonal control, and it’s politically right-on to boot.

Morten Tyldum’s nomination for The Imitation Game is like the big-time version of seat-filling.

Academy: Richard Linklater, Boyhood
Mackademy: Richard Linklater, Boyhood

Best actor
It’s an overpraised dog of a movie, but Michael Keaton is extraordinary in Birdman, displaying a depth and subtlety that wouldn’t survive his dust-up with Edward Norton—something that I suspect was also going on behind the scenes and beneath the surface, and not just in front of the camera—if it came from anyone less brilliant.

The maids could conceivably vote for Theory of Everything's Lord Eddie of Redmayne because Brit actors going “full retard” (Hey, Robert Downey Jr, said it!) is like Valium to those people, regardless of how useless the film might be.

Bradley Cooper doesn’t stand a chance, partly because the baby makes him look like a complete twit, and partly because American Sniper has been felled by the Zero Dark Thirty backlash effect. Too much controversy. Too many plastic babies.

Foxcatcher's Steve Carrell stands even less of a chance because comedians should know their place, according to 87 crazy-making years of obstinate Oscar bullshit.

Academy: Michael Keaton, Birdman (It’s his legacy prize)
Mackademy: Michael Keaton, Birdman (He's better than the movie, basically)

Best actress
Julianne Moore, all the way.

Along with Joaquin Phoenix, she’s currently the best actor working in American film.

Reese Witherspoon (Wild), Felicity Jones (Theory of Whateverything) and Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl? Please) are all window dressing, and Marion Cotillard (Two Days, One Night) is French and she hates your freedom.

If, however, Patricia Arquette had been nominated here instead of in the best supporting actress category, then we’d have a problem.

Julianne Moore goes full retard and pees her pants in Still Alice, which is Oscar gold, but she didn’t do it once a year for 12 years while maintaining an entirely credible character arc and then topping it off with a climactic scene of such astounding honesty and truth that OH GOD I’M TEARING UP AGAIN!

Academy: Julianne Moore, Still Alice
Mackademy: Julianne Moore, Still Alice

Best supporting actor
This is where Linklater’s juggernaut takes its first knock.

It’s a small thing, but when he sings Guy Clark’s “L.A. Freeway” in Boyhood, Ethan Hawke signals to nerdlingers like me that he really, really gets that character. Same goes for the ridiculous chino/dress shirt combo at the end. It’s a wonderful performance.

But then again: JK Simmons.

But then again, again: Mark Ruffalo

Academy: JK Simmons, Whiplash
Mackademy: Mark Ruffalo, Foxcatcher

Best supporting actress
Eliminate Meryl Streep from the running (Into the Woods), which is a feasible thing to do for once, and you’re left with three ho-hum performances in three forgettable movies—Laura Dern (Wild), Keira Knightley (The Imitation Game), Emma Stone (Birdman)—and Patricia Arquette’s quietly dazzling turn in Boyhood. It’s no competition.

Academy:  Patricia Arquette, Boyhood
Mackademy: Patricia Arquette, Boyhood

And the rest:

Best original screenplay
Academy: Alejandro González Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Jr. and Armando Bo, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) 
Mackademy: E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman, Foxcatcher 

Best adapted screenplay
Academy: Jason Hall, from American Sniper by Chris Kyle, Scott McEwen and Jim DeFelice (because of some horseshit about its sensitive and many-hued take on the horrors of war, assuming you’re American)
Mackademy: Paul Thomas Anderson, from Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon (Ten years from now you’ll be calling it your favourite movie.)

Best animated feature
Academy: The Tale of the Princess Kaguya
Mackademy: Song of the Sea

Best foreign language film
Academy: Ida (Poland)
Mackademy: Wild Tales (Argentina)

Best documentary:
Academy: Last Days in Vietnam
Mackademy: Citizenfour

Best film editing
Academy: Sandra Adair, Boyhood
Mackademy: Sandra Adair, Boyhood

Best production design
Academy: Adam Stockhausen and Anna Pinnock, Grand Budapest Hotel
Mackademy: Adam Stockhausen and Anna Pinnock, Grand Budapest Hotel

Best cinematography
Academy: Emmanuel Lubezki, Birdman
Mackademy: Dick Pope, Mr. Turner

Best original song
Academy: "Grateful" from Beyond the Lights, music and lyric by Diane Warren
Mackademy: Nothing, they’re all fucking terrible, especially “Everything Is Awesome”

Find out what the maids and Gwynnie's boy-toy think when the Oscars is broadcast on Sunday (February 22)