Then again, what might have happened if Colin had been nominated together with a physical performance like Eddie's...? I just had a look at the actors he was nominated with, and I think none of those roles were as obviously physical as Eddie's. James Franco's role in "127 Hours" was a bit physical, but not even close to Eddie's Hawking. Jeff Briges - no, Jesse Eisenberg - no.
And interesting: Take a look at the Supporting Actor category in the same year. Christian Bale won for "The Fighter" - he lost a lot of weight for that role, so: very physical, at least in the eyes of a lot of people. I don't know about John Hawkes, but the other three nominees (Mark Ruffalo, Jeremy Renner, Geoffrey Rush) had comparably non-physical roles to play.

tonnaree wrote:

I also take comfort in the fact that I am certain this will not be Benedict's only Oscar nomination.

In fact, if I feel kind of sad just know, it is not so much for Benedict himself, but rather for the film, getting all these nominations and than going from the awards empty handed again and again. I didn't expect it to win "everything", but it doesn't deserved to be as completely snubbed as it has been so far.
 

I know this is highly subjective and completely unfair but by now I really have lost all motivation to watch "Birdman". 

Birdman is a very funny and well done film, I enjoyed it quite a lot. The direction is impressive and the all actors excellent. Keaton is excellent, as well, far more complex performance than Redmayne, for example. It is surely oscar-worthy performance, I have seen actors win for far less interesting ones.

That said, the film is not a masterpiece and doesn't quite manage to be a really great film, either, IMO. It could have been, but I had a distinct impression that it lost its way in the final act. It starts as a hilarious satire of actors' world, but then steers towards a not-so-funny and not-so-original psychodrama of aging actor (Keaton). So the focus shifts completely on him and other characters, such as Norton or Emma Stone's, who in the beginning seem to go somewhere, get abandonend and almost disappear, their subplots going nowhere.
Also, I did roll my eyes at the dialogue in some points, being fed with bits like "I wasn't a good father", "you are not a great actor, you are just a celebrity" etc. As often happens in American films (no offence to Americans present here) it is as if the director/writers didn't trust the audience to understand some elementary things about the characters, preffering to explain everything verbally as well as visually.

Yes, I think the direction and the performances are the two strongest points about the movie. The idea of one-long-shoot direction is not new, of course, goes back as far as Hitchcock's Rope, but is still very effective, as were some visual effects.
In fact, the cleverness of direction in a sense hide the fact that the story itself is quite trivial and does not discover any truths which wouldn't be universally known (successfull actors dream about being "great" actors ?- sure; critics hate mass culture as opposed to great art? - sure; actors are vain and competitive? - who would guess! scandal and sensation get more attention that true art? - it's enough to see what happened to Benedict with c-gate to know it).
I also agree about Keaton: he is very good but he didn't blow me off. There are definitely some mannerisms in his performance that made me think "This is Keaton playing  his alter-ego). Norton was fantastic and I would root for him to get Oscar, if I only wouldn't be rooting for Simmons. I was disappointed that after an impressive presence in the first part of the film his character suddenly was almost no more there.