Meanwhile A-list stars relaxed before the biggest event of the movie year by mocking themselves on TV. The films that are up for the Best Picture award this year are The Big Short; Bridge of Spies; Brooklyn; Mad Max: Fury Road; The Martian; The Revenant; Room and Spotlight.
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The lack of diversity of the nominees at Sunday’s 88th Annual Academy Awards has, in part, forced Hollywood to address the problem of inclusion in film. The producers declined interview requests from The Associated Press, as did Rock and film academy representatives.
The #OscarsSoWhite controversy has been raging on for weeks, with Rock largely staying quiet on the subject until he posted a cryptic tweet just days before the awards show that just said “See you Sunday…”
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, he said: “I just can imagine Chris Rock’s opening remarks”. He’s expected to kick off the festivities with a monologue addressing the “Oscars So White” controversy that erupted in January after the nominees were announced and no minorities made the cut in the four acting categories.
McKay, who once toiled as an usher at the Ritz Theaters and who has until now been known for the knuckleheaded Anchorman comedies, for Talladega Nights and Step Brothers, adapted Michael Lewis’ financial-crisis best-seller The Big Short.
Motion Picture Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs said she expected nothing less from him this year. The Academy Awards, more commonly referred to as the Oscars, began in 1929 at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, California.
The Oscars ceremony will be broadcast live Sunday, Feb. 28 at 8:30 p.m. EST/5:30 p.m. PT on ABC.
Oscar victor Eddie Redmayne has backed his rival Leonardo DiCaprio to take home this year’s best actor prize. “I went out and never thought I’d be back here, and I am because of so many of you who are here tonight”. McKay also directed the rightly acclaimed cautionary tale (message: It can happen again!), which is likewise one of the eight titles vying for best picture.
For most categories, nominees are chosen by the members of the corresponding branch – so actors nominate actors, film editors nominate film editors, and so on. The Weeknd, coming off his Grammy wins, and Sam Smith, who won a Golden Globe last month, will both perform their Oscar nominated songs, “Earned It” from “Fifty Shades of Grey” and “Writing’s on the Wall” from the Bond film “Spectre”, respectively. So we asked our movie crew, and some other local experts, to each choose a contender and make the case for why it should win.
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But the Annenberg researchers do actually make some recommendations for the industry – even if they sound like the kind of things you tell bankers who are anxious about diversity in the workplace.
