5 Things BAFTA Got Right That The Oscars Won’t (And 5 Things Oscar'll Do Better)

2. A Screenplay Win For Birdman Over The Grand Budapest Hotel

The Grand Budapest Hotel took the most BAFTA prizes home this year - five, in total - including richly deserved nods for Best Original Music, Best Production Design and Best Costume Design. It's the lavish detail in Wes Anderson's latest that stands out, as it almost always does, even beyond the performances of its exceptional cast. With that said, the film's screenplay would have undoubtedly had a lesser impact if it had been directed by any other filmmaker - the Grand Budapest script by Anderson and Hugo Guiness is a template via which Anderson can apply the decoration and craft the environment, but it's by no means a masterpiece of screenwriting. The immense and thematically dense screenplay for Birdman, in contrast, seems like it would have worked in any director's hands. Superior to the Birdman screenplay still is Dan Gilroy's script for Nightcrawler, but seeing as that doesn't stand much chance of winning, Birdman is the next best of the bunch up for Best Original Screenplay this year. It'd be a worthy winner, and it seems likely that Oscar will dish out the prize accordingly.