An interesting illustration is that in 40 years of Academy Awards (up to 2013), the director of all but one Best Picture winners (“Driving Miss Daisy”) was nominated for an Oscar, and 83 percent of these nominated directors won. But we also need to remember that there were wonderful performances by people not of color that were also not recognized. And the process benefits plenty of smaller, riskier films that don’t get nominated for an award but still get made because, you know, they might. Likewise, this weekend’s likely victor is just as peculiar: The Revenant could be compared in scale to The English Patient and in bleakness to No Country for Old Men.
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For best picture, it looks like “The Revenant” will take the big prize.
The Oscars may be about pageantry, tedium and – oh, yeah – honoring the best cinematic efforts of the year, but this season, there’s been an addition to the usual niceties: #OscarsSoWhite.
Don’t forget that there used to be an huge range of mid-budget films that came out throughout the year and that consisted of dramas, romances, even medium-concept comedies starring people other than veterans of “Saturday Night Live”.
I don’t know about you, but when it was announced back in October of 2015 that Chris Rock would be returning to host the 88th Academy Awards show (which goes down this Sunday), I was ecstatic.
Motion Picture Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs said she expected nothing less from him this year.
“That opening Chris Rock monologue is going to be key to how the overall telecast is perceived”, said Dave Karger, chief correspondent for Fandango.com.
Movie trilogies often suffer in their third installment, but in the case of LOTR, it just might be the strongest effort. If Iñárritu wins for best director, it’ll be the third time a director has won in consecutive years; it last happened when Joseph L. Mankiewicz won for 1949’s “A Letter to Three Wives” and 1950’s “All About Eve”. For best supporting actress, newcomer Alicia Vikander is the category leader for her performance in “The Danish Girl”.
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Or at least until “Revenant” star Leonardo DiCaprio wins his inevitable best actor trophy, leading his fans to swoon and then turn in for the night. The red carpet begins at 7 p.m. ET, with the show to follow at 8:30.
