2015 Awards Season: Oscar Winners... And the Oscar Goes to Spotlight for Best Picture

February 28, 2016

It’s Oscar day and, if all goes to plan, I will be live-blogging the ceremony tonight. Here is the list of nominees marked according to predictions from our readers, and my personal wishes. Nominees in Bold are the ones predicted to win by our readers (we’ll have a full rundown of the predictions at noon, after the contest ends). If I am predicting a different film, those are in Italics. Meanwhile, the nominees I want to win, but don’t think will win, are Underlined. There are a few categories where the film I really think deserves the award was not even nominated, plus a few I don’t have a real opinion on.

Notes and Reactions

So our readers got 17 of 24 categories correct, while I was one up at 18 correct predictions. That's a great score for both of us.

The night ends with an upset, as Spotlight tops both my personal favorite, The Martian, and the overwhelming favorite, The Revenant. I'm fine with this selection.

I wonder how many people turned off the TV and went to bed after Leonardo DiCaprio won? I bet a lot of people stayed up late just to see if he would finally win.

Leonardo DiCaprio finally wins his Oscar for The Revenant. He should have won more than 20 years ago for What's Eating Gilbert Grape.

Brie Larson wins Best Actress for Room. She absolutely deserved the win and it is the third Oscar win for A24 tonight. That's amazing for such a new distributor.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu wins his second Best Directing Oscar in as many years, this time for The Revenant. I don't think this is the right choice, because George Miller deserved it more for Mad Max: Fury Road.

"Writing's on the Wall" won Best Original Song? Over "Til It Happens to You" from The Hunting Ground. This is very likely the biggest outrage of the night, especially after Lady Gaga's performance. On a side note, I had "Writing's on the Wall" winning, but switched at the last minute, because "Til It Happens to You" is just a much more powerful song.

About damn time. Ennio Morricone finally wins an Oscar taking home the prize for his score for The Hateful Eight.

Son of Saul won for Best Foreign-Language Film. I wanted Mustang to win, but this is neither a shock nor really an issue. Both deserved to be recognized.

Stutterer won for Best Live Action Short Film over our readers' choice, Ave Maria, and my choice, Shok. These categories are notoriously hard to predict, but this year was especially troublesome.

I've changed the picture to Mad Max: Fury Road, because it has won the most Oscars tonight.

Amy won Best Feature-Length Documentary, which wasn't a surprise. On a side note, this is the second Oscar win for A24 and they should pick up their third later on.

A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness earned the Oscar for Best Documentary Short, topping out readers' choice, Body Team 12. This is the first time I beat our readers this night and there's only a few times neither of us have been correct.

Mark Rylance won Best Supporting Actor for hist performance in Bridge of Spies. Sylvester Stallone was the favorite to win.

Inside Out won for Best Animated Feature. Had it not won, I would have rage quit live-blogging.

Bear Story won for Best Animated Short, beating out both our readers' choice, Sanjay's Super Team, and my choice, World of Tomorrow. Like we say every year, this is a hard category to pick. My guess is the older voters liked that it was Foreign-Language, and therefore "more prestigious".

We have our first upset, as Ex Machina beat Star Wars: The Force Awakens for Best Visual Effects. 60% of our readers predicted The Force Awakens would win.

And with that, Mad Max: Fury Road will earn the most Oscars, even if it doesn't earn the most prestigious ones.

Mad Max: Fury Road picks up its sixth Oscar with Chris Jenkins, Gregg Rudloff, and Ben Osmo getting top prize for Sound Mixing.

Mad Max: Fury Road will be the biggest winner of the night after Mark Mangini and David White picked up the Oscar for Best Sound Editing. The Revenant could still tie it, and would be considered the bigger winner, due to winning the higher prestige categories.

And Mad Max: Fury Road returns to the stage, as Margaret Sixel wins for Best Editing. This might be the last Oscar the film wins, although it is favored for two more. The two Sound categories could go to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, because that's a bigger movie.

The Revenant breaks the streak as Emmanuel Lubezki wins for Best Cinematography.

Three in a row for Mad Max: Fury Road. This time its for Makeup and Hairstyling and its Lesley Vanderwalt, Elka Wardega, and Damian Martin who get the Oscars.

Mad Max: Fury Road picks up another Oscar, this time for Production Design with Colin Gibson and Lisa Thompson winning.

Jenny Beavan won an Oscar for Best Costume Design for Mad Max: Fury Road. This is just the first of likely many Oscars for that film.

Alicia Vikander won for her performance in The Danish Girl. Personally, I thought she was better in Ex Machina, while I thought Jennifer Jason Leigh should have won out of the performances nomination.

The Big Short won for Best Adapted Screenplay and like the previous award, this is no surprise.

We have the first disappointment of the night, as Spotlight beat Inside Out for Best Original Screenplay. It is a disappointment, but it isn't a shock. The average age of an Oscar voter is 63 years old, which is older than the average age of a CNN viewer, and they tend to not take animated films seriously.

One observation on our readers predictions… We agree on all but three categories: the short films. These are historically the hardest to predict, so it is no surprise that there is some disagreement here. Agreeing on everything else is impressive though.

The categories and winners are...

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