Simon Dillon gives his opinion
Continued from page 1
Best Editing: Alfonso Cuaron, Mark Sanger (Gravity) - A no-brainer.

Best Production Design: Cathering Martin, Beverly Dunn (The Great Gatsby) - Actually, I'd have given this to The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. But Gatsby looked great too, and it's great that the most unfairly critically mauled mainstream film of last year actually won something.
Best Sound Editing: Glenn Freemantle (Gravity) - A no-brainer (although All is Lost was another very worthy contender).
Best Sound Mixing: Skip Lievsay, Christopher Benstead, Niv Adiri, Chris Munro (Gravity) - See above really.
Best Visual Effects: Tim Webber, Chris Lawrence, David Shirk, Neil Corbould, Nikki Penny (Gravity) - Yet another Gravity no-brainer. In fact, the most no-brainer no-brainer of all the awards Gravity won.

Best Foreign Film: The Great Beauty (Italy) - A decent win from a slightly odd selection of nominees (Denmark's The Hunt was released later in the US than in the UK, hence why it was nominated).
Best Documentary Feature: 20 Feet From Stardom - I've not seen this, but I'm very surprised The Act of Killing did not win.
One last quibble: Generally I was pleased the good but overrated American Hustle went away empty handed, but it should have won at least one award: Make-up and Hairstyling, as it contained the most monumental, landmark comb-over in cinema history. Shockingly it wasn't even nominated in that category, but I suppose since the Academy got so much else right this year, I'll add my congratulations to Adruitha Lee and Robin Matthews who won for Dallas Buyers Club.
Overall, I expect this year to be a blip in the Academy's long and
proud record of outright injustices. I look forward to a far more
vitriolic rant next year, when I expect business as usual at the
Oscars.
A quick postscript: I realise Cate Blanchett won an Oscar for The Aviator, but that was a supporting role. What I meant by what I said above was I had been waiting for the Best Actress win since I saw the film last autumn. Should have worded it better really...