Oscars
Will Leslie Odom Jr. Be the 4th Double Oscar Nominee for Acting & Songwriting in 4 Years?
The double nods for Blige, Erivo and now possibly Odom are a sign of the increased opportunities Black performers are being given in film. Moreover, if Odom becomes a double nominee, he’ll become the second actor to do so for a film in which he or she plays a real-life character. From 1934, when the Oscars introduced their best original song award, through 2016, no one ever received nominations for acting and songwriting in the same year. That’s partly due to the fact that, years ago, singing actors didn’t usually write their own material, but relied on the work of professional songwriters. Judy Garland, Bing Crosby and Doris Day are forever linked with Oscar-winning songs, but they didn’t have a hand in writing them. This started to change in the mid-’70s. Barbra Streisand has stradd...
Is the SAG Award for Outstanding Movie Cast a Good Predictor for Best Picture Oscar?
But the two awards don’t always go hand-in-hand. Of the 25 films to win the SAG Award for outstanding performance by a cast in a motion picture since the category’s inception in 1995 (the awards show’s second year), 12 have gone on to win the Oscar for best picture, 12 have gone on to be nominated for best picture (but not win), and one wasn’t even nominated for an Oscar for best picture. (That was Mike Nichols’ 1996 farce The Birdcage.) Looking at it from the other direction, of the last 25 Academy Award winners for best picture, all but three were at least nominated for the SAG cast award. The three Oscar winners for best picture that were not SAG-nominated in the cast category were Braveheart (1995), The Shape of Water (2017) and Green Book (2018). Are there any pattern...
Martin Luther King Jr. Was Assassinated 4 Days Before the 1968 Oscars: The Show Did Not Go On
The Oscars initially planned to go forward as scheduled, but it became increasingly apparent that the show simply couldn’t go on. The show was pushed back two days, to April 10, the day after the funeral. With that, these four stars agreed to appear on the show in these roles. The Oscar telecast opened, appropriately, on a serious note. Gregory Peck, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences at the time, offered some sober remarks. “This has been a fateful week in the history of our nation. We join with fellow members of our profession and men of goodwill everywhere in paying our profound respects to the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “Society has always been reflected in its art and one measure of Dr. King’s influence on the society we live in is that of t...
Academy Awards Reveal New Diversity Requirements for Best Picture Contenders
Nearly five years ago, April Reign created the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag to call the film industry out on their blatant lack of representation onscreen and off. Today the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has revealed its latest steps towards diversifying its nominees pool: new representation and inclusion standards for Oscars eligibility in the Best Picture category, the most prestigious award at the annual Academy Awards ceremony. As part of its Academy Aperture 2025 initiative, Academy governors DeVon Franklin and Jim Gianopulos headed a task force “to encourage equitable representation on and off screen in order to better reflect the diversity of the movie-going audience.” What they’ve designed with that group are four different standards for a Best Picture c...
The 2009 Emmy Awards Experiment That Reshaped Award Shows
The trend at award shows these days as far as the number of nominees in marquee categories is go big or go home. The Emmy Awards bucked 60 years of tradition when they announced the nominees for the 61st Primetime Emmy Awards on July 16, 2009. They unveiled seven nominees for each of what are widely seen as their top awards—outstanding comedy series and outstanding drama series. They had usually had five nominees in each of these categories. Six and a half months later, on Feb. 2, 2010, the Oscars took it even further when they announced the nominees for the 82nd annual Academy Awards. They unveiled 10 nominees for their flagship award, best picture, up from the usual five. They announced 10 nominees the following year as well. The Tony Awards have a much smaller field of potential nominee...
Oscars 2021 Moved to April, Eligibility Window Extended
Due to the continued uncertainty surrounding the coronavirus pandemic, the 2021 Oscars have been postponed two months. Originally set to take place on February 28th, Hollywood’s Biggest Night will now occur on April 25th, 2021. Additionally, the Academy has extended the eligibility period for nominated films by two months. The window for qualifying films now spans from January 1st 2020 to February 28th, 2021, with a general submission deadline set for January 15th 2021, according to Variety. The Academy plans to return to a standard January to December eligibility period next year. Previously, the Academy made substantial, unprecedented adjustments to the eligibility rules this past April in response to the outbreak. One of those allows for digital screenings, altering the long-standi...
The Academy Returns to 10 Best Picture Nominees, Sets Inclusion Requirements
The Oscars are making some much-needed changes. On Thursday, the board of governors behind the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences met to discuss the next phase of their ensuing equity and inclusion initiative, which began in 2015 following the much-publicized #OscarsSoWhite controversy. Today, they’ve announced Academy Aperture 2025, a renewed initiative that involves a number of new protocols and adjustments. The most integral of them all is a ruling that pairs Oscar eligibility to representation and inclusion standards, the likes of which will be developed and implemented by a new task force. That’s not all. The Oscars will once again return to a guaranteed total of 10 Best Picture nominees, there will now be a “quarterly viewing process” to ensure year-long considerations...
