On February 26, the annual American awards ceremony honoring cinematic achievements in the film industry will be held at Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California. Now on its 89th year, it is the oldest entertainment awards ceremony in the United States.
During the ceremony, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) will present Academy Awards in 24 categories. The winners are awarded a copy of a statuette, officially called the Academy Award of Merit, which has become commonly known by its nickname “Oscar.”
Actually, the trophy is 13-and-a-half inches high and weighs 8-and-a-half pounds. It is cast in solid Britannia metal electroplated with 28-karat gold. The name Oscar was reportedly conceived by director Margaret Herrick, who observed that the little statues reminded her of her uncle Oscar.
In the past, only five films were nominated for Best Picture. But in recent years, more films were included. This year, nine movies are competing against each other. These are: Arrival, Fences, Hacksaw Ridge, Hell or High Water, Hidden Figures, La La Land, Lion, Manchester by the Sea and Moonlight.
The most likely winner: La La Land, a romantic musical comedy-drama film starring Ryan Gosling (as a musician) and Emma Stone (an aspiring actress) who meet and fall in love in Los Angeles. The film’s title refers both to the city of Los Angeles and to the idiom for being out of touch with reality.
After all, it received the most nominations with a record-tying fourteen (1950’s All About Eve and 1997’s Titanic also achieved this distinction). At the Golden Globe, touted to be the pre-cursor of the Oscars, La La Land won all seven awards for which it had been nominated, becoming the most successful film in Golden Globe Awards history.
Moonlight, a groundbreaking piece of cinema that reverberates with deep compassion and universal truths, is the other film that may get the Best Picture Oscar. It received eight nominations (tied with Arrival). One critic wrote: “Anchored by extraordinary performances from a tremendous ensemble cast, Barry Jenkins’s staggering, singular vision is profoundly moving in its portrayal of the moments, people, and unknowable forces that shape our lives and make us who we are.”
Moonlight almost a dozen awards from various film critics circle, including Chicago, New York (Online), Phoenix, and San Francisco. It was also cited by the Toronto Film Critics Association.
In the Best Director category, Damien Chazelle is the person to beat. He has received more than a dozen awards already, including the Golden Globe, for directing La La Land. He was also the man behind the Oscar-nominated Whiplash. Should he win, he will be the youngest to win the award at 32.
Barry Jenkins (Moonlight) is also in the contention. He also won several awards from various film critics circle, including from the Los Angeles, San Francisco, Utah and New York.
The three other nominees are: Denis Villeneuve for Arrival, Mel Gibson for Hacksaw Ridge, and Kenneth Lonergan for Manchester by Sea. Gibson now has the longest gap between a directing win (1995’s Braveheart) and a follow-up nomination: 21 years.
In the Best Actor category, the five nominees are: Casey Affleck for his role as Lee Chandler in Manchester by the Sea, Andrew Garfield as Desmond T. Doss in Hacksaw Ridge, Ryan Gosling as Sebastian Wilder in La La Land, Viggo Mortensen as Ben Cash in Captain Fantastic and Denzel Washington as Troy Maxon in Fences.
Affleck already won various acting awards for his performance, including the Golden Globe, as a handyman trying to comfort his teenage nephew while coping with a tragedy from his own past and his grief over his brother’s death. He was previously nominated for Best Supporting Actor (in 2008 for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford).
Should he win, he and Oscar-winning big brother Ben Affleck will become the 16th Oscar-winning sibling pair in the history of the Academy. Ben won two Oscars: for Best Screenplay (with his friend, Matt Damon) for 1997’s Good Will Hunting and for Best Director for 2013’s Argo.
With eight nominations now, Washington is the most nominated African-American actor in Academy Award history. He already won two Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actor for the historical war drama film Glory (1989) and Best Actor for his role as a corrupt cop in the crime thriller Training Day (2001).
Speaking of Best Supporting Actor, Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Nocturnal Animals) is the first Golden Globe Supporting Actor winner to not be nominated for the Oscar since Richard Benjamin (The Sunshine Boys) in 1976. Interestingly enough, just like The Sunshine Boys, his co-star, Michael Shannon as Detective Bobby Andes, was nominated instead.
The other four nominees are: Mahershala Ali for Moonlight as Juan, Jeff Bridges for Hell or High Water as Marcus Hamilton, Lucas Hedges for Manchester by the Sea as Patrick Chandler, and Dev Patel for Lion as Saroo Brierley.
Ali, who portrays a Cuban-born drug dealer living in Miami who becomes a surrogate father to a bullied youngster and tries to instill confidence in him, is most likely to emerge the winner; he has harvested several acting awards for his performance including those from the New York Film Critics Circle, San Francisco Film Critics Circle, Vancouver Film Critics Circle, and Los Angeles Film Critics Circle.
Of the five nominees, only Bridges has won the award before – for Best Actor for his role as Otis “Bad” Blake in the 2009 film Crazy Heart. He also earned nominations for his roles in The Last Picture Show (1971), Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974), Starman (1984), The Contender (2000), and True Grit (2010).
In the Best Actress category, three are nominated for playing real-life characters: Ruth Negga as Mildred Loving in Loving, Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy in Jackie, and Meryl Streep as Florence Foster Jenkins in Florence Foster Jenkins. The two other nominees are Isabelle Huppert as Michele LeBlanc in Elle and Emma Stone as Mia Dolan in La La Land.
Negga becomes the first black European (Irish) and African (born in Ethiopia) actress to be nominated in a lead acting category. Huppert holds the record as the first Trifecta winner to be Oscar-nominated for a foreign language film role.
With already 20 nominations, Streep has more nominations than any other actor or actress; she won Best Supporting Actress for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), and Best Actress for Sophie’s Choice(1982) and The Iron Lady (2011). Her other nominated roles are The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981), Silkwood (1983), Out of Africa (1985), Ironweed (1987), Evil Angels (1988), Postcards from the Edge (1990), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), One True Thing (1998), Music of the Heart (1999), Adaptation (2002), The Devil Wears Prada (2006), Doubt (2008), Julie & Julia(2009), August: Orange County (2013), and Into the Woods (2014).
Stone, however, is the most likely to win the coveted award. She was previously nominated for Best Supporting Actress for the role of a recovering drug addict in the black comedy-drama Birdman(2014).
Film critic Caroline Framke said it all when she wrote of Stone’s performance in the film: “Stone is an extraordinary actor. She uses every square inch of her expressive face, letting even the smallest of twitches tell an entire interior story — an especially valuable skill when she’s working with a script like La La Land’s, which sketches Mia as charming and talented but lets the actor fill in the rest.”
For the first time in in Academy Awards history, three black actresses were nominated in a single category (Supporting Actress) in the same year: Viola Davis as Rose Lee Maxson in Fences, Naomie Harris as Paula in Moonlight and Octavia Spencer as Dorothy Vaughan in Hidden Figures.
The most likely winner: Davis. Tony Hicks, of The Mercury News, wrote of her performance: “She threw herself into the role of Rose Maxon with everything she had, and she was brilliant.”
The two other nominees are Nicole Kidman as Sue Brierley in Lion and Michelle Williams as Randi in Manchester by the Sea. Kidman was a previous winner – as Best Actress for her performance as Virginia Woolf in the drama film The Hours (2002).
The following are nominated for Best Original Screenplay: Mike Mills for 20th Century Women, Taylor Sheridan for Hell or High Water, Damien Chazelle for La La Land, Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou for The Lobster, and Kenneth Lonergan for Manchester by the Sea.
The likely winner: Chazelle.
In the Best Adapted Screenplay, the following are nominated: Eric Heisserer for Arrival from “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang; August Wilson for Fences from Fences by August Wilson (posthumous nomination); Allison Schroeder and Theodore Melfi for Hidden Figures from Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly; Luke Davies for Lion from “A Long Way Home” by Saroo Brierley and Larry Buttrose; and Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney for Moonlight from “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue” by Tarell Alvin McCraney.
Jenkins and McCraney are the duo most likely to win the award.
At least two songs from La La Land made a cut for Best Original Song: “Audition (The Fools Who Dream)” and “City of Stars” (one of the two will emerge the winner). The other nominees are “Can’t Stop the Feeling” from Trolls, “The Empty Chair” from Jim: The James Foley Story, and “How Far I’ll Go” from Moana.
The envelope, please! –
