The 85th Academy Awards

   

     The Academy Awards are finally here! This Sunday! It'll be taking place at the Kodak theater and Seth MacFarlane is the host. I feel like MacFarlane will bring some humor to this ceremony, humor that appeals more to the younger crowd. Hip, like the young children say. *Cough.* 

     I'm excited for the Oscars, as many surely are. When you finally understand the ceremony, it has so much more meaning. Also when you think about how many people's hopes and dreams lie on this one award... whew. The whole prestige of the Oscars is what people in the industry aim for. Sure, everyone has their own definition for "making it big" but the Oscars is where those people can be acknowledged through the whole film community. However, not everyone can be 'awarded' an Oscar.

Best Picture: Argo

     We'll be discussing the dramatization of "the 1980 joint CIA-Canadian secret operation to extract six fugitive American diplomatic personnel out of revolutionary Iran." In other words, the historical thriller, Argo. The other nominees for Best Picture can be seen on the Oscars website.
     Aside from Best Picture, Argo has been nominated for six other categories - making that seven categories total that they have been nominated for in the Oscars. It is up for Best Actor, Film Editing, Music, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, and Writing for Adapted Screenplay.
   The whole plot of the movie centers around the CIA "extractor" Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck), a producer named Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin) and a makeup man named John Chambers (John Goodman). In order to save the American diplomats, Chambers and Siegel would fabricate a fake sci-fi thriller named "Argo." They would commission a screenplay, pay for storyboards, and buy a big ad in Variety and most importantly, impersonate the big people in Hollywood, which is kind of meta. The movie about the fake movie catches your attention though, and is quite fascinating.

Oscars: Best Actress

     The wonderful ladies that have been nominated for this award are Jennifer Lawrence for Silver Linings Playbook, Quvenzhane Wallis for Beasts of the Southern Wild, Naomi Watts for The Impossible, Jessica Chastain for Zero Dark Thirty, and lastly Emmanuelle Riva for Amour.
     As many now, records for the nomination have been broken. Quvenzhane Wallis has been the youngest at nine years old, to be nominated for Best Actress while Emmanuelle Riva is the oldest, at eighty-five, to be nominated. Nonetheless, these actresses both deserve the nomination. Thus, we'll be discussing Emmanuelle Riva's acting in the French drama, Amour. 
     So from IMDb, I have gathered that Riva has a good seventy-eight titles under her name but Amour is the one that she is most known for.

Oscars: Best Actor

     The ones up for Best Actor this season are Joaquin Phoenix for The Master, Denzel Washington for Flight, Bradley Cooper for Silver Linings Playbook, Hugh Jackman for Les Miserables, and Daniel Day-Lewis for Lincoln.

     Daniel Day-Lewis. Whoa. Out of all the other nominees I feel like Daniel Day-Lewis has got a really good chance of getting this award. Don't get me wrong, all the other actors did pretty well but I was blown away by Daniel Day-Lewis.

     Now, a lot of people praise Daniel Day-Lewis for his voice-- how it varied from other portrayals of Lincoln. Rather than a deep husky voice, a gentle one. He seemed like an old parent - which he was- and was the one you could rely on.