The Academy wanted to give something to 'Selma', but they didn't care about 'The LEGO Movie'. This way, they could feel okay about voting for boyhood or birdman for best picture. Glory is a good song, although I personally think everything is awesome works better within the quasi-ironic context of the film than a standalone piece, whereas Glory is intentionally a modern remix of civil rights themes. I get why it won.

 

Redmayne is actually a supremely great young actor (See: Pillars of the Earth). I suspected it was either going to be him or Snickerdoodle Picklepatch.

Also, it's probably safe to assume that his silly whisper acting in Jupiter Ascending was largely due to the Wachowski's ever-increasing lack of subtlety.

 

Rosamund Pike not winning Best Actress for her role in Gone Girl was utterly baffling.

 

Julianne Moore had three reasons for winning:

1) She's been nominated but has never won, so she's "due"
2) She portrayed an adapted book character that was about someone experiencing the horrors of early onset Alzheimer's, thus enabling her to get a lot different types of emotions on the screen and doing a very "Oscar-bait" sort of role (like Eddie Redmayne).
3) She's a great actress and had an amazing performance.

Rosamund Pike was great too (I'd say her nomination was quite deserved), but a) this is her first nomination b) it's a "popular" movie role and c) many people didn't even watch Gone Girl amongst the voters.

 

I'm glad that Ida won Best Foreign.

 

Redmayne had an easier job characterisation wise. Keaton had to build one from scratch and the first line in the stage directions is "A man sitting floating in the air". I preferred The Imitation Game in all honesty but Redmayne was excellent.