And the Oscar Went To …
BY KARIMA RAGAB
The Academy Awards ceremony, the most important and prestigious night in Hollywood, honoured the best films of 2014, but not without a few surprises.
Held on Sunday night (yes, most of us stayed up till dawn in Cairo to watch this extravaganza), the ceremony was hosted by actor Neil Patrick Harris.
The How I met Your Mother star started the night off with a monologue, cracking the whole audience up. then showed up half-naked on stage, attempting to mimic the role of Michael Keaton, in multiple Oscar nominated feature film, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
In the February 22 print edition of The Caravan, we predicted that the tightest races would be in the top four categories: best motion picture, best director, best actor and best actress.
How did we fare?
The Caravan predicted that Richard Linklater, director of Boyhood, would take home the gold, but it was a second win for Alejandro González Iñárritu, the director of Birdman that won the night.
Birdman also took home the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
When it came to the Best Actor category, the competition was fierce.
The best actor nominations this year included some of the most stellar performances of those nominated.
From Steve Carrell’s unlikely portrayal of multimillionaire and convicted murderer John Du Pont in Foxcatcher, to Eddie Redmayne’s incredibly physically demanding role as the famous theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking – these actors were in it to win it.
What’s most notable for these best actor nominees is that four out of five of them portray real life characters, which in some ways can be slightly more demanding than portraying a fictional character built entirely from scratch.
That being said, although Michael Keaton was the only nominee who plays a fictional character, he was still a frontrunner in this category – along with Eddie Redmayne.
This would undoubtedly be due to his unapologetically truthful portrayal of his character Riggan, who seems to be somehow eerily real.
Cate Blanchett, last year’s Best Actress winner, presented the award for Best Actor to Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything, just as we predicted.
On the other side, Mathew McConaughey, last year’s Best Actor winner, announced winner Julianne Moore from Still Alice for the Best Actress category.
She then stated that “there is no such thing as best actress” referring to how exquisite her fellow nominees were in their performances. Once again, The Caravan’s predictions were in place.
Academy award winner Sean Penn was the one to present the most anticipated award of the night: Best Motion Picture.
Although eight great films were nominated in this category, it was clear from the beginning that the main competition was between Boyhood and Birdman; both greatly innovative films.
Boyhood tells the story of a boy (played by Ellar Coltrane) and his family and how they’ve grown and evolved over the years. The story is simply told, yet the events that unfold – as well as the characters – seem genuine and almost familiar.
The most innovative part of Boyhood, however, is undoubtedly the fact that the film was created over a 12-year time span.
Birdman is a film about a washed up actor (played by Michael Keaton) who was once known for playing the iconic superhero, Birdman.
The film follows the actor as he tries to get his career up and running once more with a Broadway production. The actor, however, is tormented by his past throughout the process of putting this play together.
“It’s about the power of storytelling and their ideas,” said Penn before he announced the winner.
The Caravan again nailed the prediction that it would be Birdman.
The category for Best Supporting Actress included some of the most exquisite actresses like Keira Knightly in The Imitation Game, Emma Stone in Birdman and Meryl Streep, described by last year’s Supporting Actor winner Jared Leto as the “American State law” for her performance in Into the Woods. Nonetheless, it was Patricia Arquette who took home the Oscar for her performance in Boyhood.
The nominees for the Best Visual Effects award, last year won by Gravity, this year included Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Guardians of the Galaxy, Interstellar and X-Men: Days of Future Past but it was Interstellar which took home the gold.
When it came to Best Animated Feature, “Hollywood’s most successful genre” according to actor and this year’s presenter Dwayne Johnson also known as “The Rock” it was Big Hero 6 which won the Oscar beating high grossing sequel movie How to Train Your Dragon 2.
Best Original Song went to John Legend and Common’s performance of “Glory”, featured in the Oscar nominee film Selma.
With additional reporting by MARY ARAVANIS
