Monday, January 18, 2016

Now We've Got a Race

Award season is in full swing for Hollywood. At the end of the month my personal favorite, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) award show will take place. After that it’s straight to the mecca… The Oscars! Last week the nominations were announced for what will be the 88th Academy Awards taking place on February 28th. The nominations were read by directors Guillermo del Toro and Ang Lee, the Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs, and actor John Krasinski. The nomination announcement is rarely watched by the public but media from all outlets cover the event. So what happens during the event?

While most of us are in our beds sleeping, the nomination announcement takes place. The nominations are announced from the west coast and extremely early in the morning. Most celebrities are usually asleep and get woken up with the call that they have been nominated or worse snubbed. The nomination reader’s stand at a podium reads the categories and announces the nominees. Once their name is announced they show a photo of the actor/actress portraying that role and move on to the next.
 
This year’s Academy Award Nominations run the spectrum of well-known names to break out stars. Heavy hitters crowd the main categories like Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress. At the Oscars there are never any guarantees because anything can happen with the voting. This year's biggest upset is the lack of diversity in the nominees. The popular hashtag following the announcement of the nominees has been #Oscarsaresowhite. Highly suspected of being nominated Straight Out of Compton was snubbed by the Academy.

So who gets to vote? Members of the Academy! There is different branches into the Academy voting. The main categories I mentioned above are voted on by the Actors branch and consists of 1,176 voting members. The Directors vote for Best Director categories and so on. So while main stream America is sitting at home and rooting for their favorites we have to hope that the voting members chose our favorites. From now until the Awards show you'll see the nominated celebrities out working the media. They'll have ads in the trade magazines like Variety, they'll be promoting their films on late night shows and giving anyone and everyone interviews. They want the members to vote, vote, vote!

A part from the voting, the Academy also sets a theme for each year's award ceremony. This year's theme is We All Dream In Gold.
 
This years host is none other than comedian Chris Rock. This will be his second time hosting the awards show after and eleven year absence. He's hoping to improve last years ratings that were down 16 percent. The Oscars typically run long so be prepared to have your DVR set to go over the normal time limit. Plus you don't want to miss all of the pre-show events like the red carpet and after events like the Governor's Ball! That's when all of the stars stop feeling the pressure and let loose. I'll be crossing my fingers for Leo to finally win that long awaited Oscar! Don't forget to set your DVR or tune in on February 28th!

1 comments:

Nicole Escat said...

Wow. Hoping that I could watch these and I'm surely watch this. Thanks for sharing