Out on a limb: Oscar picks 2015

Sunday night's ceremony looks like it could feature a few big upsets (hopefully). And a new host in Neil Patrick Harris also means that the show itself will be less predictable. Apart from the acting categories, several races seem too close to call this year, which always makes the ceremony more fun to watch. My groans will be loudest if Birdman wins either film or actor, and my biggest cheer will be if anything other than Big Hero 6 wins animated feature.

I'll be watching the ceremony at the official Ampas Oscar party in London this year - it starts at 11pm and goes until 5am, shortly after Best Picture is announced. Then I can go home and take a long nap!

Here are my choices and predictions - I doubt I'll do as well as last year, when I only missed one...

PICTURE
Will/should win: Boyhood
Could win: Birdman
Dark horse: American Sniper

DIRECTING
Will win: Alejandro G Inarritu - Birdman
Could/should win: Richard Linklater - Boyhood

ACTOR
Will/should win: Eddie Redmayne - The Theory of Everything
Could win: Michael Keaton - Birdman
Dark horse: Bradley Cooper - American Sniper

ACTRESS
Will/should win: Julianne Moore - Still Alice

SUPPORTING ACTOR
Will win: J.K. Simmons - Whiplash
Should win: Mark Ruffalo - Foxcatcher

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Will/should win: Patricia Arquette - Boyhood

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
Will win: Ida
Should/could win: Leviathan

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
Will win: Big Hero 6
Could win: The Tale of the Princess Kaguya
Should win: How to Train Your Dragon 2

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Will/should win: Citizenfour
Could win: Virunga

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Will win: The Imitation Game - Graham Moore
Could win: American Sniper - Jason Hall
Should win: Inherent Vice - Paul Thomas Anderson

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Will/should win: The Grand Budapest Hotel - Wes Anderson, Hugo Guinness
Could win: Birdman - Alejandro G Inarritu, et al

PRODUCTION DESIGN / COSTUMES 
Will/should win: The Grand Budapest Hotel

MAKEUP
Will win: Foxcatcher
Could win: The Grand Budapest Hotel
Should win: Guardians of the Galaxy

ORIGINAL SCORE
Will/should win: Johann Johannsson - The Theory of Everything
Could win: Alexandre Desplat - The Grand Budapest Hotel

ORIGINAL SONG
Will win: Glory - Selma
Should win: Everything Is Awesome - The Lego Movie

CINEMATOGRAPHY
Will win: Birdman - Emmanuel Lubezki
Could win: Mr Turner - Dick Pope
Should win: Ida - Ryszard Lenczewski, Lukasz Zal

SOUND EDITING / SOUND MIXING
Will/should win: American Sniper

VISUAL EFFECTS
Will win: Interstellar
Could win: Guardians of the Galaxy
Should win: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

FILM EDITING
Will/should win: Boyhood
Could win: Whiplash
Dark horse: American Sniper

Critical Week: Bafta celebrates Boyhood

It was the biggest night in the UK film calendar, as the British Academy Film Awards were handed out at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. Richard Linklater's Boyhood emerged as the big winner, taking Film, Director and Supporting Actress. Pictured above is the movie's attending cast and crew, plus Tom Cruise, who presented Best Film. Alas, Linklater was absent due to the Directors Guild Awards the previous night in Los Angeles.

The other big winner was Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel, which took home five Baftas: Original Screenplay, Score, Production Design, Costumes and Make-up & Hair. Other triple winners were The Theory of Everything (British Film, Actor, Adapted Screenplay) and Whiplash (Supporting Actor, Editing and Sound). Pictured at the right is Best Actress winner Julianne Moore with presenters Henry Cavill and Chris Evans, and Best Actor winner Eddie Redmayne with the person he played in the film, Stephen Hawking.

Bafta is always a strange one, because the BBC refuses to broadcast it live, waiting a few hours and chopping it down to two hours to show later at night - meaning there are several "awards presented earlier" bits in the closing credits. This butchers the ceremony's flow and momentum, leaving it feeling oddly dry and dull. It doesn't help that Stephen Fry has been hosting just a bit too long - he's still timely and pithy, but offers nothing remotely new from year to year.

As for other awards, Bafta usually gets to present at least one worthy winner that Oscar ignored, and Sunday night's was The Lego Movie, which won Animated Feature. It was also great to see Ida win Foreign-Language Film and Pride's writer and producer win the Outstanding Debut award. Finally, it was no surprise that Jack O'Connell won the Rising Star Award - he's had an awesome year with Starred Up, '71, Unbroken and even 300: Rise of an Empire.

Meanwhile, Screenings this past week were all rather low-key titles, including the strikingly involving transgender comedy-drama Boy Meets Girl, the enjoyable British indie alien invasion adventure Robot Overlords, the astonishing Ukrainian deaf-gang drama The Tribe and the eye-opening narrative documentary The Man Who Saved the World. I also got a chance to see Blade Runner: The Final Cut on a big screen for the first time in advance of its re-release in a couple of months.

This coming week's collection will include the event movie Fifty Shades of Grey, Will Smith in Focus, Chris Hemsworth in Blackhat, Francois Ozon's The New Girlfriend, the Kiwi drama The Dark Horse and the acclaimed doc Dreamcatcher.

Critical Week: Take to the sky

It's been a very busy week here, as awards-contender screenings have started for the season and I'm getting ready to travel for a couple of weeks. Oscar-buzzy contenders have included Alejandro G Inarritu's astonishing Birdman, starring Michael Keaton as an actor trying to have a comeback; Paul Thomas Anderson's chaotic Inherent Vice, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Josh Brolin in a series of hilariously raucous scenes loosely connected by an impenetrable plot; and the Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything stars a seriously stunning Eddie Redmayne.

We also saw two surprisingly good British family movies: Paddington and Get Santa both benefit from their smart-witty scripts, gifted directors and up-for-it casts including Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins and the voice of Ben Whishaw, and Jim Broadbent, Rafe Spall and Warwick Davis, respectively. It's rare that two decent holiday movies arrive in such close succession.

Off the beaten path, we had: Wong Kar Wai's gorgeously shot but oddly aloof biopic The Grandmaster; the rude Aussie drug-smuggling comedy The Mule; the corny British rom-com Home for Christmas (not actually a Christmas movie); the corny American rom-com Big Gay Love; and the involving Roger Ebert doc Life Itself, which shouldn't be missed by film fans. Finally, there were two collections of queer shorts: Boys on Film 12: Confession is Peccadillo's latest line-up of gay-themed films, this time looking at youthful longings; and Travis Mathews' In Their Room intimately explores the lives of men in San Francisco, Berlin and London.

Later this week I'm flying to California for the next couple of weeks, where I plan to catch up with several more awards contenders (plus Penguins of Madagascar). But the real question is whether there will be anything showing on the plane that I haven't seen or wouldn't mind watching again. I'll be blogging as I go...