The Other Oscars: our third annual Alternative Academy Awards

• 

• 

  Worst Choice of Life Partners: Patricia Arquette in Boyhood. Richard Linklater’s award-Hoovering chronicling of childhood and adolescence was indeed a masterful work of cinematic art, a subtle and patient coming-of-age drama like no other. It was also a stark warning for women everywhere to think twice before selecting their life partners, with Patricia Arquette’s increasingly miserable single mother going from one bad boyfriend, whose persona soon switched from Mr Flirty Nice Guy to Mr Shouty Smashy Alcoholic, to another in a just a few years. Courtesy Matt Lankes

• 

  Most Wooden Actress: Sienna Miller, American Sniper and Foxcatcher. Anyone still doubting Sienna Miller’s uncanny ability to suck celluloid dry of all screen charisma is invited to observe her impressive 2014 double-hander. The British actress manages to turn in a pair of distinctly two-star performances in two very four-star films, although in both cases she was playing a leading man’s better half. Let’s see how many of her forthcoming five films Miller is able to taint with her unique gift of opacity. Sony Pictures Classics, Scott Garfield / AP photos

• 

  Best Use of Animated Cows: The Wanted 18. Films about the first Palestinian intifada can be fun – that’s perhaps the best lesson to be learnt from first-time director Amer Shomali’s insightful documentary about events that took place during the late 1980s in his hometown, Beit Sahour. In a bid to control milk production the town bought its own cows – 18 to be precise – only to have them outlawed by the occupiers as a “threat to security”. Huge chunks of the film are told from the cows’ perspective – hilariously, and impartially – with each animal boasting his animated personality and perspective. Courtesy: National Film Board of Canada)

• 

  Biggest Hypocrite: Liam Neeson promoting Taken 3 in Dubai. Liam Neeson seems like a lovely guy. Everyone was very excited to have him in Dubai recently for a regional premiere of a big Hollywood film and yes, we hope he gets his wish and is invited back in December for the Dubai International Film Festival. However, gun control is a no-brainer cause for any left-leaning celebrity to champion – just not when said celebrity is brandishing a 9mm in the film’s promotional posters, which are plastered all over town. 20th Century Fox, Sam Urdank / AP photo

• 

  Best Pill Popping: Jennifer Aniston in Cake. Normal people put pills – even bad pills – in their mouths, take a sip of water, and are done with it. That’s why it’s even more of a crime that Aniston isn’t up for a Best Actress Oscar for her understated but compelling turn as a car accident victim in the lovely little Cake, considering Meryl Streep’s whiplash-inducing pill-popping scenes in 2013’s August, Osage County earned her a ­nomination. Cinelou Films / AP photo

• 

  The Political Expedience Award for Misrepresentation by Global Media: Leviathan. Andrey Zyagintsev’s drama about a helpless unemployed Russian to hold onto his family home in the face of a corrupt bureaucracy was quickly heralded by western observers as a masterful allegory of life in Vladimir Putin’s kleptocracy. The catch? The film is actually based on the real-life story of Marvin Heemeyer, who famously went on a 2004 bulldozer rampage in Granby, Colorado, following a zoning dispute with the local mayor. Zyagintsev originally intended to make the film in the US, but costs and the availability of government grants to make it in Russia changed his mind. Sony Pictures Classics, Anna Matveeva / AP photo

• 

  Filmmakers Most Unlikely to Make it Out of the Airport on Their Way to the Ceremony: Citizenfour. The closing section of the Bafta-winning, Oscar-nominated Edward Snowden documentary features an email exchange between its director Laura Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald in which they concede that it is unlikely they will be able to return to the United States following the movie’s release. Greenwald was at this time exiled in Brazil and Poitras in Berlin. Charles Sykes / Invision / AP photo

• 

  Best Batman of All Time: The Lego Movie. Forget the subterranean grunts of Bale, the Burton-led kookiness of Keaton, the dubious grey tights of West and, well, just about everything of Kilmer. Last year saw the greatest Batman on screen ever; one with painted-on muscles, stunted square legs and a somewhat immobile hand grip that would struggle to maintain control of a sandwich, let alone the array of heavily armed machinery lurking in the Batcave garage. The Lego Movie’s Will Arnett-voiced version of Bruce Wayne was also a comically arrogant, macho jock wallowing in his own darkness. He was so good, he is getting his own spin-off film, due for release in 2017. Fingers crossed Ben Affleck has been taking notes. Warner Bros Pictures / AP photo

• 

  Best Opening Dance Scene: Guardians of the Galaxy. When you see Chris Pratt switching on his 1980s Sony Walkman and dancing to Come and Get Your Love by Redbone at the start of Guardians of the Galaxy you can’t help but smile. It isn’t that often that an adult male looks so genuinely content shaking his thing. If you weren’t already a Pratt fan from his work in Parks and Recreation, Moneyball or Her, from that moment you would be. Jay Maidment / Marvel

• 

  Most Terrifying Performance in a Black T-Shirt: Whiplash. As everyone knows, jazz cats are notoriously smooth, laid-back types – black coffee-loving musos far too relaxed under the thick haze of smoke from the underground bar and syncopated grooves from the stage to worry about any ash from their caramel-­flavoured cigarillos spilling on their tight, black T-shirts. That is, unless the black T-shirt in question is being worn by J K Simmons’s psychotic music teacher from Whiplash, more Full Metal Jacket drill sergeant than Mr Holland of Opus fame. Where once the jet-black tee was a mark of chilled vibes, it has now – thanks to this edge-of-the-seat “jazz thriller” – become a symbol of ­cymbal-tossing terror. Sony Pictures Classics, Daniel McFadden / AP photo

• 

  Worst Landscaping in a Comedy: St Vincent. The only thing more parched and slovenly than Bill Murray in St Vincent was his brown dusty dirt patch of a back garden — a truly epic no man’s land of turf abuse as has ever seen the light of day in a Hollywood hit. The Weinstein Company, Atsushi Nishijima / AP photo

• 

  Best Too-Tight Mask / Dubious Mode of Transport : Salman Khan in Kick. Salman Khan plays a disguised crusader called Devil in the action drama Kick – and it would have worked, but for the black leather mask he wore. So tight that it cuts into his thick jowls, the mask makes every close-up hideous to behold. Also of note: in his role as a vigilante citizen who steals from the rich to feed poor kids, his transport of choice is a bicycle, with which he is able to evade the police and fight dozens of baddies – all without taking his hands off the handlebars. Devil has thus gone down in history as the lamest superhero Bollywood has ever produced, after Krrish (Hrithik Roshan) in the three-movie franchise of that name, and the utterly laughable G.One (Shah Rukh Khan) in the sci-fi drama Ra.One. Courtesy Nadiadwala Grandson Entertainment

• 

  Most Impressive Blink-And-You’ll-Miss-Them Ensemble Cast: The Grand Budapest Hotel. Was that Harvey Keitel as a bald, tattooed convict? Hang on, is that Tilda Swinton behind the ancient granny make-up (pictured)? Wait, Bill Murray? Aside from its incredible feat of being officially the most Wes Anderson of Wes Anderson’s films to date, The Grand Budapest’s most astonishing achievement was in the array of A-listers it managed to cram into its hour and 40 minutes, some appearing on screen for a matter of milliseconds. Watch it again and see if you can spot Tom Cruise, David Hasselhoff, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Whoopi Goldberg as a wandering mariachi band. Fox Searchlight / AP photo

• 

  Best Marketing Assist from a Ruthless Dictator: The Interview. Kim Jong-un, supreme leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, did his part to get the sabres rattling big-time for Sony Entertainment, it seems, for this so-so movie starring James Franco and Seth Rogen, who send the “glorious leader” on an all-expenses-paid helicopter ride to die for. Money can’t buy that kind of media buzz. Columbia Pictures - Sony, Ed Araquel / AP photo

• 

  Best Depiction of the Making of a Grilled-Cheese Sandwich: Jon Favreau in Chef. What to say about a scene that sparked cravings lasting for months? One whose star in 50 seconds manages to encapsulate the hero’s journey better than most feature films? There was so, so, so much to love about this scene, which had all the twists and turns of a thriller: the squiggle of olive oil on the flat grill (prompting traditionalists to wonder, “no butter”?), the open-face method and the multiple layers of cheese, so, so, so much cheese. A brief respite, close-ups of Favreau’s tattooed fingers and a tender lift of the spatula to check on the bread’s progress before, wait – out of nowhere – he is buttering it! He’s buttering on top of the oil? And ­double-grilling? Oh no, the viewer wonders, not even aware they are edge-of-their-seating a sandwich: the thing is going to fall apart! The crunch as Favreau cuts this gorgeous thing in half seems at once a miracle of sound and an utter relief. The sandwich is finished – and it is very, very good. iStockphoto.com

• 

  Most Self-Indulgent Celebrity Documentary: Nick Cave, 20,000 Days on Earth. Musicians exposing the extent of their narcissism on screen is nothing new, but the Alternative Academy was impressed by the new depths of vanity the Australian singer-songwriter ploughed here. Edited as if a documentary but shot as a scripted drama, viewers get to watch Cave exploring his childhood traumas with a psycho-analyst, ponderously scour his archives and drive around Brighton aimlessly, with Ray Winstone and Kylie Minogue in the back seat while Cave pontificates wildly. Courtesy Corniche Pictures

• 

  Best Self-Parody: Amitabh Bachchan in Shamitabh. The filmmaker R Balki, who seems to have an unhealthy obsession with Big B, is to blame for the box-office failure of Shamitabh, a self-indulgent, two-hour ode to Bollywood’s biggest superstar and his wonderful voice. Bachchan – without the slightest trace of irony or embarrassment – clumsily references some of the roles he is best known for, including the indomitable Anthony in Amar Akbar Anthony (1977). But it gets worse: in Shamitabh, he tells whoever will listen (in this case millions of fans across India and the world) that he has the best baritone, ever. In fact, so fantastic is his voice that it would sound good even coming from a dog. Shocked? Don’t be – it’s a sample of the awful dialogue that Big B spews in the film. Courtesy Yash Raj Films

An entire year of films comes down to this: the Academy Awards on Sunday night in Los Angeles, when the most coveted gongs in the industry are handed out to some of the world’s most beautiful people. Yet there are so many other outstanding cinematic moments – whether silly, unintentionally hilarious or just striking in their simplicity – that don’t qualify, so we’ve made an annual event out of commemorating them. Here are Arts&Life’s third annual Alternative Academy Awards – also affectionately known as The Other Oscars.