The 95th Oscars take place tomorrow (Sunday, 12 March) at the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood in Los Angeles. The movie industry’s showpiece awards ceremony will be broadcast live on MNet from 3:00 on Monday morning, with a rebroadcast scheduled at the more sensible time of 20:00 on MNet Movies 1.
US late night talk show veteran Jimmy Kimmel is set to host the Oscars again this year, making this his third time as the MC of the awards show.
Last year’s awards were memorable not only for the Oscars handed out (2022 Oscar Winners: Complete List) but also for “the slap that was heard around the world” - Will Smith slapping Chris Rock.
Also, the controversial decision to present eight award categories prior to the telecast and air edited versions of those speeches. New Academy CEO Bill Kramer has indicated that he would like to have all of the categories honoured during the live show this year.
There are 23 award categories being honoured at this years’ ceremony. Among the most nominated movies are:
-
Everything Everywhere All At Once, a sci-fi comedy starring Michelle Yeoh, Jamie Lee Curtis, and James Hong, which received 12 nominations, including best picture, best director, and best original screenplay.
-
The Banshees of Inisherin, a drama based on the play by John Millington Synge, which received 10 nominations, including best picture, best director, best actor for Colin Farrell, and best supporting actor for Brendan Gleeson.
-
Blonde, a biopic of Marilyn Monroe starring Ana de Armas, which received 8 nominations, including best picture, best actress, and best adapted screenplay.
-
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the sequel to the 2018 blockbuster, which received 6 nominations, including best picture, best supporting actress for Angela Bassett, and best visual effects.
-
Elvis, a biopic of Elvis Presley starring Austin Butler, which received 5 nominations, including best actor and best original song.
(The complete list of categories and nominees will go into a separate post shortly so that I can use it to mark off the winners in it and keep things tidy here.)
Some notable points from the nominees this year:
-
With Avatar: The Way of Water and Top Gun: Maverick, it is the first time the Best Picture category will feature two sequels in one ceremony, as well as the first time two films grossing over $1 billion worldwide are nominated together for Best Picture.
-
All Quiet on the Western Front’s nine nominations trailed only Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and Roma (2018) for the most nominations by a non-English-language film.
-
The Quiet Girl became the first submission from Ireland to receive a nomination for Best International Feature Film.
-
The 16 first-time Oscar nominees across the four acting categories, including all five Best Actor nominees, marks the most first-time nominees in Oscar history.
-
Michelle Yeoh became the first women who identifies as Asian nominated in the Best Actress category.
-
A record four Asian actors received acting nominations, including Michelle Yeoh, Hong Chau, Stephanie Hsu, and Ke Huy Quan.
-
With her Best Supporting Actress nomination for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Angela Bassett became the first person to receive an acting nomination for a role in a film based on Marvel Comics.
-
Judd Hirsch, nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Fabelmans, became the actor with the largest gap between two nominations, following his nomination for Ordinary People (1980).
-
At age 90, John Williams became the oldest competitive nominee in Oscar history, and with this being his 53rd nomination, he also broke his own record as the most Oscar-nominated living person, and the second-most nominated person (behind Walt Disney).
-
For Le pupille, with his nomination for Live Action Short Film, Alfonso Cuarón became the second person to be nominated in seven different Oscar categories, following Kenneth Branagh. The film also marks Disney+'s first nomination for the award.
