The Envelope: The Envy Award winners, because little things can mean a lot

In award season, prizes and nominations flow like Champagne — usually directed merely at talented actors, directors, writers, producers and a slew of below-the-line experts. But we maintain there are worthy winners of awards who will never get the honor they are due, much less a nomination. So we’ve fixed that: Here are The Envelope’s Envy Awards, prizes that represent the best of ignored moments from the last year in film. The envelope, please …

FULL COVERAGE: Oscars 2015

Top Drawer Use of a Bow Tie in an Irish Drama

Killian Scott, “Calvary”

Playing a lonely man with violent impulses, Scott’s snug neckwear was the perfect accompaniment for his too-tightly-wound personality. Plus, says star Brendan Gleeson, “he sported those bow ties with flair and intelligence.”

Most Overlooked Costar

Lorelei Linklater, “Boyhood”

From the start we know Richard Linklater’s movie is not about a girl, but casting his daughter in the role of Samantha, the often-obnoxious, ultimately sympathetic sister to title boy Mason, meant we got to watch her grow up on camera as well — a fact that’s largely gone unremarked upon in discussions of the film.

Most Surprising Seafood Cameo

“Exodus: Gods and Kings”

In one scene, Ramses is shown chowing down on some massive crab legs (along with the rest of his feast). It’s a nice placement to show decadence, but it’s unlikely any crabs crossed the Pharaoh’s tables. “On the Red Sea coast of Egypt, [there are] plenty of crabs today but no evidence that they were used as food in ancient Egypt,” says Rita Lucarelli, assistant professor of Egyptology at UC Berkeley. (Moses wouldn’t have touched them anyway; crab is tref, forbidden by Jewish dietary law.)

Best Surprise Use of “Doctor Who” References

Eddie Redmayne, “The Theory of Everything”

A new wheelchair gives Redmayne’s Stephen Hawking a fresh chance at mobility, so he spends part of it in a homemade costume, chasing his kids around the house shouting “Exterminate! Exterminate!” — the battle cry of Doctor Who nemeses the Daleks.

Most Creative Use of a Haystack

Adam Stockhausen, “The Grand Budapest Hotel”

Moving haystacks play a key role in a scene from the film, where characters are in a telephone booth in the center of a snow-covered field. Art director Stockhausen created haystacks that up to seven men could climb inside and move around, all at the (walkie-talkie) instruction of director Wes Anderson.

Canniest Use of a Rooftop

“Birdman”

The Michael Keaton film is constantly in motion, with long unbroken takes, but some of its strongest moments come from Edward Norton and Emma Stone’s intense conversations, held on the roof of the theater. There the camera stops weaving around objects and lets the actors take over the screen, and their magnetism is remarkable.

Most Menacing Gym Clothes

The outfits of Steve Carell, “Foxcatcher”

Carell’s socially maladroit John du Pont could have just looked ridiculous in his blue and gold warmup suits, but their very banality made his nasal, strained sentences and coiled-anger aggressiveness that much more frightening. If you can be a killer while wearing a track suit, surely anything is possible.

Least Advisable Footwear

The women of “Selma”

The marches that forced civil and voting rights for African Americans in the 1960s were heroic, as was the man leading them, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. But “Selma” reminds us that the female marchers who walked 54 miles over paved asphalt from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 had to do it in high heels. Talk about heroine-ism.