Oscar watchers prepare for a drama filled award night
Courtesy of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Oscar nominees gather for a group photo at a luncheon.
February 22, 2019
The drama of awards night will be on display on Feb. 24, when the 91st Academy Awards airs.
For example, this will be the first Oscar awards ceremony without a host after Kevin Hart stepped down from the gig because of a controversy involving old homophobic tweets. Even without a host, the Academy Awards will go on as viewers wait to find out who will be named tops in the movie biz.
Roma, The Favorite, A Star is Born, and Black Panther dominated the nominations in all the categories. Roma and The Favorite received 10 nods apiece, while A Star is Born received eight, and Black Panther received seven. Black Panther already made cinematic history as the first Superhero movie to nominated for Best Picture. It’s also Spike Lee’s, director of BlacKkKlansman, first-ever best director nomination. With the announcement of the Oscars’ nominations comes the annual game of trying to predict who’s going to win. One good strategy to predict winners is to review the winners of the previous award shows like the Golden Globes, and the Critics’ Choice Awards.
Roma, directed by Alfonso Cuaron, is a favorite for Best Picture. It’s based on the life of a maid in Mexico City in the early 1970s. Cuaron is mostly known for his larger than life stories like Children of Men and Gravity. For this most recent work, Roma takes him back to his Mexican roots. This film is one of the highest rated movies this year and winning many awards across various award shows.
Typically when movies win Best Picture, the director of the film wins the Best Director award. Alfonso Cuaron also has won best director in both the Golden Globes and the Critics’ Choice Awards, giving him a good chance to pick up an Oscar this year. Cuaron didn’t just write and direct Roma he also did the cinematography. This proves that he’s a master in his craft and that he potentially has a strong chance at winning Best Cinematography, as well.
Glenn Close, a veteran actress who has racked up seven Oscar nominations in her career has yet to actually win one. This year may be different. The Oscars has a weird way of showing appreciation to past nominees that may have been snubbed. Years prior, Leonardo Dicaprio won Best Actor for the Revenant, a film that many say he shouldn’t have won it for and that he only won because he was snubbed in the past. Close has also been winning all of the award shows for Best Actress in all the awards shows this year. Like Close, Christian Bale has been winning all of the award shows for Best Actor and many people feel it’s Bale’s turn to win an Oscar.
Another interesting category to watch will be Best Animated Film. In the past, the contest has almost always been a fight between Pixar or Walt Disney Animations. However, this year Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was a surprise hit, putting Sony Pictures Animation on the map as a force to be reckoned with. Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse has been dominating some of the other award shows, and I doubt it will be any different for the Oscars.
