Oscars 2015 Nominations Analysis Who Will Take Home the Awards
Correction appended Jan. 16, 2015, This time, the Motion Picture Academy decided, eight was enough. After five years when the Best Picture category allowed for nine or 10 nominees, the Oscars went for a svelter look this year, which it achieved by saying no to those rich meals that audiences love hit movies. No Gone Girl, Interstellar or, heaven forbid, Guardians of the Galaxy. The pure-nutrition platter the Academy provided this morning will make Oscar Night Feb. 22 just another Independent Spirit Awards. The finalists include four biopics  American Sniper, The Imitation Game, Selma and The Theory of Everything  plus the fiction films Birdman, Boyhood, The Grand Budapest Hotel and Whiplash. The leaders in nominations, with nine, were Birdman and The Grand Budapest Hotel though Budapest got none in the acting categories, followed by The Imitation Game with eight. This was an unusually schizophrenic shortlist  a reminder that some 6,000 Academy members fill out ballots and have trouble agreeing with each other or possibly themselves. American Sniper cadged nominations for Picture, Actor Bradley Cooper and Adapted Screenplay Jason Hall but not for Clint Eastwood, its legendary 84-year-old director.