I so disliked Boyhood, a bad Yankee ripoff of 7UP, no plot or script to speak of ("that's because boys' lives are so uninteresting") - and I was pleased it won very few Oscars. I haven't yet seen Birdman (is it me or are cinemas losing the screening plot?) or Whiplash, both of which I want to see and will. Still boggled that Mr Turner hasn't been honoured. Am I wrong about it?

great fan of Patricia Arquette but I found Boyhood tedious..and 7-Up was exciting by comparison.

## what I did like is that all the winners are independent films rather than big studio films and this indicates that the future is very rosy for indie films.

Personally I think Birdman is the most overrated movie of the year. It's a very interesting story poorly told. You hear one person after another parrot the same platitudes about the long uninterrupted takes, as if it had just been invented (go and look at Orson Welles' Touch of Evil for how it was done), but little about the narrative. Keaton acts really well, but the director is so insular he doesn't know what needs to be told and when it needs telling, so much of the potential impact just isn't there. Take, for example, the notion of a formerly huge star now struggling to deal with his illustrious past. A decent storyteller would make sure you first have a sense of how big he used to be, and why, before contrasting it with the current day obscurity. This director doesn't - he starts with the contrast, so it isn't a contrast, unless you daydream whilst watching to create the contrast yourself.