The Academy calls it just about right even if it is still predominantly male, pale and stale

THIS was the most predictable Oscars for years, for good and ill. Good that almost all the right people went home with a small golden man.

Ill in as much as the Academy showed that, in not giving the honours due to Mike Leigh’s Mr Turner, and Selma, the first feature film about Dr Martin Luther King Jr, it is still predominantly male, pale and stale.

Julianne Moore and Eddie Redmayne were both worthy winners, even if they did prove once again that the surest way to an Oscar can be via playing a character with a condition. Birdman, too, deserved its prizes for being a clever, funny, beautifully-shot piece. But being the story of a washed-up movie star seeking redemption on Broadway, this was another example of Hollywood indulging in its favourite hobby of gazing in the mirror. It worked for The Artist in 2011 after all. Kudos, too, to the Academy for awarding the best documentary Oscar to CitizenFour, a portrait of Edward Snowden (one in the eye for the White House) and the superb Holocaust drama Ida.

But where were the surprises, the putting down of markers for the business?The Oscars should be about cinema’s future as much as its present (or past). On that count, the Academy was remiss in ignoring David Oyelowo’s performance in Selma, and Ava DuVernay’s equally remarkable stint behind the camera as director.

Ditto Timothy Small’s performance in Mr Turner. Nor did the wonderful Boyhood, a genuine experiment in cinema filmed over 12 years, get the attention it deserved.

It was as if Hollywood was preparing for 2015, year of the blockbuster – Jurassic World, Bond, Star Wars Episode VII and all – by wanting to appear thoroughly grown up and seriousminded. Just not too grown up, and not too serious-minded.