Oscars: Campaigning Still Going Strong As Academy Has One Week Left To Make A Decision

Academy online voting officially started Friday, though members who requested paper ballots have had them for a week now. Whichever way

 are voting, they are due in by 5 PM Pacific on Tuesday, February 17, but snail mailers should make sure ballots are posted by Saturday at the latest since Monday the 16th is Presidents Day, a postal holiday. Advertising for the big contenders still seems pretty fierce as now with BAFTA and all the major guilds having weighed in — with the exception of WGA, holding off until Valentine’s Day — the race for Best Picture appears as wide open as it has been all season. With Birdman taking key honors at SAG, DGA and PGA (it is ineligible at WGA) vs Boyhood’s critical love and wins at the Golden Globes and especially yesterday at BAFTA, these two could fight it out to a photo finish, with neither getting enough votes on the first round of counting the Academy’s preferential ballot. The reliable precursors definitely have offered up a split decision. That could leave an opening for another film (are you listening, American Sniper?), which is why there is considerably more tension

For what it’s worth, I just got off the phone with one longtime Academy voter who said he caught up with the last two Picture nominees over the weekend, and that included Boyhood, which has been in theaters since July. Although he said he wondered what it would be like without the gimmick of using the same actors over the course of a 12-year shoot, he is inclined to vote for Linklater for Best Direction but conceivably could split and turn to American Sniper for Picture (“So powerful — the audience just sat there afterwards”, he said). Eddie Redmaynebcoopmanilow_zpse642a864 is his choice for Actor (“He had to do most of it without dialogue. That’s so remarkable”, he said). On the other hand, he had definite negative opinions on a couple of other Best Picture candidates. This kind of conversation is going on everywhere now, which is why the studios and distributors are not giving up until they have to call it quits.

the air this year, even more than usual, as it is clear we will be walking into the Dolby Theatre in a couple of weeks without really knowing what name could be pulled out of that Best Picture envelope. And even though Alejandro G. Inarritu took the all-important and Oscar-predictive DGA prize Saturday, an argument for Boyhood’s BAFTA directorial winner Richard Linklater is entirely plausible. The races for Best Actor, Original and Adapted Screenplay and several below-the-line categories also are up for grabs. These all could be decided by a relatively few number of votes. so the messaging, final Q&As, TV appearances and ad blitz is all-important as I am detecting a large number of voters might be waiting right upBoyhood until the last minute. There is still a lot to see, and the Academy only just a week ago mailed their nicely designed package featuring DVDs of all the nominees for Documentary Feature, Foreign Language Film, Live Action, Docu and Animated shorts.

 Watch Oscars Awards 2015 Live Stream | Academy Awards Online.


Source: http://deadline.com/2015/02/oscars-campaigning-still-going-strong-as-academy-has-one-week-left-to-make-a-decision-1201370017/