This year's prototypical Best Picture Oscar nominee, The Theory Of Everything is that solid contender whose place among the other nominees is assured but whose chances of actually winning Oscar's most cherished prize are basically zero. Premiering at this year's Toronto International Film Festival, the film tells the story of perhaps the 20th century's most important theoretical physicist, Stephen Hakwing. Hawking was tragically struck with ALS at the age of 21 while attending Cambridge and the film's primary focus is on Hawking and his wife coping with the consequences of his disability. The film received solid reviews out of Toronto, with most critics particularly praising the work of the film's two lead actors. Since then, The Theory Of Everything has been a regular member of the awards season scene. The Golden Globes, the Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards, the Screen Actors Guild Awards, the BAFTA Awards, the Producers Guild of America Awards, and pretty much every regional film critics awards in existence have cited The Theory Of Everything as one of the best films of the year. With the amount of praise being heaped on the movie, it's hard to imagine how The Theory Of Everything misses out on a Best Picture nomination. In fact, the only way James Marsh's biopic fails to receive a Best Picture nomination would be due to the Oscar's preferential balloting system. The way the system works is that it requires a film to reach a certain threshold of first place votes to be considered for a Best Picture nomination, so if the film is generally "liked but not loved", it could miss the cut. However, the chances of this actually happening are extremely slim.
A film fanatic at a very young age, starting with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies and gradually moving up to more sophisticated fare, at around the age of ten he became inexplicably obsessed with all things Oscar. With the incredibly trivial power of being able to chronologically name every Best Picture winner from memory, his lifelong goal is to see every Oscar nominated film, in every major category, in the history of the Academy Awards.
