Oscar-winner "Birdman" will soon be seen by Chinese movie enthusiasts via the upcoming Beijing International Film Festival. (Photo : Reuters)
The ballots for the 2015 Academy Awards are in, and we will learn the results on Sunday. Until late in the evening of Sep. 22, 2014, film experts will be making educated guesses about who will take home the most prestigious award of the evening: Best Picture.
It is important to note that there are now eight movies, rather than five, nominated for the award. Also, the quality of those films makes them very competitive this year.
"Birdman," the comeback film of actor Michael Keaton, has been sweeping the Best Picture award at the DGA, PGA, and SAG. So conventional wisdom says that it is the frontrunner.
Film critics have generally praised the movie for its filmmaking. It is the best in a group of very good, but not excellent films nominated hits year, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
One common criticism is that the entertainment value of the film is far inferior to the technical and artistic value. However, the latter two criteria are being judged at the Oscars.
Many experts have chosen "Boyhood" as the biggest competition for "Birdman," in the Best Picture category. It is a coming-of-age drama film that was filmed from 2002 to 2013, during the adolescence of a boy growing up in Texas.
"The Imitation Game" is generally considered to have the second-best chance at being selected over "Birdman," although it is still a distant No. 2. The movie tells the fascinating story of Alan Turing, the British mathematician who created several methods for decoding Nazi codes.
Other films that experts have generally tagged as having a long-shot chance of winning Best Picture are "American Sniper," "The Grand Budapest Hotel," and "Theory of Everything," according to Mirror.
