“This morning’s message simply says, ‘Eight nominations. Love you guys. Take THAT, Selma. XOXOXO Harvey’.”

World War II dramas win awards. Biopics win awards. Unhappy endings win awards. Films released by the Weinstein Company win awards. Films with Benedict Cumberbatch in them get nominations, and maybe the occasional award for the people around him. For now. So why not toss all those ingredients into a moviemaking mixer and watch the resulting casserole win the big awards bake-off?

Thus did my annual Oscarquest continue with The Imitation Game, in which The Cumberbatch takes a break from playing licensed characters to try out a historical figure instead, as he did in The Fifth Estate except farther from the present and without changing hair color this time. If this pays off and kicks off a lifetime of nonstop peer recognition, maybe someday he’ll have half as many nominations as Meryl Streep does. The internet can dream!

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