Time for the post-mortem! Quick and dirty version because it’s already Wednesday…So things break down into three possible categories as we analyze the options between Expected and Unexpected and whether the win was Good or Bad. If things went as expected, they aren’t bad, because it means I was right. If things did not go as I expected, they were either right or wrong (and don’t worry, I will tell you all about it. As though that’s a thing you would worry about.)

In the Expected category, we have most of the evening. Boyhood won for Drama and Richard Linklater won Best Director for directing it, Julianne Moore won in Actress – Drama, Michael Keaton won for Actor – Comedy/Musical, Patricia Arquette won for Supporting Actress, and JK Simmons won for Supporting Actor. Those were all chalk, and can reasonably be considered as frontrunners in their respective categories at the Oscars. At a minimum, expect them to all be nominated on Thursday.

Now let’s do the Unexpected, and we’ll go least surprising to most surprising.

Not Very Surprising:

• Eddie Redmayne won Best Actor – Drama, and yay!!! for him. I am an unabashed Eddie Redmayne partisan, so this is a happy Unexpected. This positions him as the most serious contender against Michael Keaton in the Oscar race, though his age works against him (plus Michael Keaton doing that Career Revival thing). He’s getting nominated, for sure.
• Grand Budapest Hotel won for Best Comedy or Musical, because wow, apparently that movie has crazy support. The fans have really come out of the woodwork this awards season. It’s definitely also getting nominated, but I don’t expect it to be one of the serious contenders for Best Picture against the likes of Boyhood and Selma.

An eyebrow raise:

• Amy Adams won for Actress – Comedy/Musical! Huh! In my preview piece I even said that she was the frontrunner in this category but that I expected her movie being terrible to bring her down with it. Apparently I was wrong! I still expect her to lose to Julianne Moore for the Oscar, but good for Amy Adams overcoming the evil hand of Tim Burton.

WTF:

• HOW DOES THE LEGO MOVIE NOT WIN BEST ANIMATED FEATURE? WTF, HFPA? I don’t understand. It’s supposed to be a juggernaut. People effing loved it. So baffled.

No, really, what the fuck?

• Birdman is a very fine movie and I liked it quite a lot. I’ve seen it twice in theaters. But if I were going to name the top dozen good things about it, I don’t know that screenplay would make that list. So, so lost. I’m prepared to throw this one out entirely and assume that the Oscar voters will too. Really? Screenplay? For **Birdman*???

So I went 6-5 in my picks here, which I’ll take. It could have been worse, and I didn’t even pick all the categories, eesh. Fortunately, my real strong suit is coming up veeeery soon. Oscar nomination predictions up next!