by Evan Goodrich.
While February means Valentine’s Day and the Grammys, it also means the annual Academy Awards. The Academy Awards, founded in 1927, recognize the best in film from the past year, from Best Director, to Cinematography, to Best Picture, the biggest award of the night. This year marks the 84th Academy Awards. The Academy Awards, also known as the Oscars, are set to be held Feb. 26 and will air at 8PM Central Time.
As always, entertainment news outlets are creating predictions of how the night will turn out. And, as always, competition is tough. The films that have racked up the most nominations are “The Descendants” and “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” with 5, “Moneyball” and “War Horse” with 6, “The Artist” with 10 and “Hugo” with a whopping 11 nominations, atypical for a family film.
The nominees for Best Actor are Demián Bichir for “A Better Life”, George Clooney for “The Descendants”, Jean Dujardin for “The Artist”, Gary Oldman for “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” and Brad Pitt for “Moneyball, and the nominees for Best Actress are Glenn Close for “Albert Nobbs”, Viola Davis for “The Help”, Rooney Mara for “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”, Meryl Streep for “The Iron Lady” and Michelle Williams for “My Week With Marilyn.” Anyone who has seen any of these actors’ performances understands the competition.
The nominees for the award for Best Director are Woody Allen for “Midnight in Paris”, Michael Hazanavicius for “The Artist”, Terrence Malick for “The Tree of Life”, Alexander Payne for “The Descendants” and Martin Scorsese for “Hugo.”
The nominees for the big prize, Best Picture, are “The Artist”, “The Descendants”, “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”, “The Help”, “Hugo”, “Midnight In Paris”, “Moneyball”, “The Tree of Life” and “War Horse.” This is the largest amount of nominees for this category to date.
The biggest winners of the night are sure to be “The Artist” and “Hugo”, both of which have nominations in several of the same categories, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Score, Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design and Best Film Editing.
