Oscars

ABDOURAHMAN AVDUYEV

Group: A6

THE OSCARS

Today I will talk about the Academy Awards which is called too “Oscars”. I have chosen this theme because I think I’m not the only one who knows this academy awards and who is interested in. The last Oscars ceremony took place exactly two weeks ago in Los Angeles and we all know which actors and movies won this award this year. The best actor was Leonardo DiCaprio for the film “The revenant” and best picture was “Spotlight”. Honestly, DiCaprio is my favorite actor in the cinema world and I never understood why he didn’t win this award for his previous roles. Because his performances in movies like “The Wolf of Wall Street”, “Inception”, “Shutter Island”, “Blood Diamond”,” Body of Lies” or “Titanic”  were amazing(stunning). So, after than he won his Oscar I asked myself: “What is the value of this award? What it gives to the actor or to the movie? Why all actors and directors want to get this award, what its value is, except the title “best”? In general, from who is composed the commission which decides which actor/actress will get the Oscar? How it is organized?  So, in this work I will explain you all that you have to know about “Oscars”.

(History) So, firstly, I will give some information about this award. "Oscars" or Academy awards, is an annual American awards ceremony organized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. This award was invented in 1929  by an American very famous film studio “Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer” and attributed every years to the people who taking part of the cinematographic world, for their contribution for making movies. The ceremony take place every year in Los Angeles in “Dolby theatre” and shown on the television in dozen countries around the world.

Rules of awarding and principles of voting have changed many times. The winners selecting rules have been criticized several times and Academy members were accused of corruption many times. Despite this, Oscar is still the most prestigious film award in USA and one of the most important in the world. As said Emanuel Levy who is an American film critic and professor at Columbia University:  «Winning the Oscar Award is considered to be the ultimate achievement in the film world, the epitome of professional success».

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(Big Winners) Some actors or actresses have received this award several times for different movies. They are only six: Katharine Hepburn is the only one who received this award four times, Daniel Day-Lewis, Meryl Streep, Ingrid Bergman, Walter Brennan and one of the best and famous actors of our time Jack Nicholson they all have received 3 Oscars. Also, we know that movies receive too this award, and there are three movies which received 11 Oscars at the same time: “Ben-Hur” (1959), “Titanic” (1997) and “The lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” (2003). Some movies received an Oscar for best picture, best director, best actor, best actress and best screenplay at the same time and this is what they called the “Big Five” (It means wining all five of these major awards). In cinema world history they are 42 films which were nominated in all five of these award categories and only three films have won this “Big Five” and this lucky trio is: “It happened one night” in 1934, “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest” in 1975 and “The silence of the lambs” in 1991. As I’m a very curious young man, I searched for the films which failed to win any of the five major awards after being nominated in each category and I found that there were eight. The last film which was nominated in each category and failed in this was “American Hustle” in 2013.

(Vote and Commission) I turned around the problematic to keep you informed about Oscars, now I will talk about the rules and votes. Academy of motion picture arts and sciences (AMPAS) is an organization which is destined to contribute (promoting) to the cinema. So, AMPAS includes more than 6000 film industry professionals. At the moment, the total number of members of the Academy with voting right is 6028. The average age of Academy members is 63 years; they are actors, directors, producers, compositors, scenarists, video specialists etc. The academy has 15 guilds or units with voting rights and each unit has a headman (chief, chairman) for example the actors unit has Annette Bening and the directors unit has Kathryn Bigelow. The largest unit is the actors unit which includes 1311 actors with voting right, 22% of votes. Each of the 15 units selects the 5 nominees in their sphere. For example, actors select nominees in four acting categories (actors select the best actor and actress in a leading role, and the best actor and actress in a supporting role). Without exception, all academics (all units) vote for the nominees in the “Best Film” category. This explains the differences in the categories “Best Film” and “Best Director” and this is why sometimes we have different winners, for example, this year the Oscar for the “Best Film” was attributed to “Spotlight” and the “Best Director” to Alejandro G. Inarritu for “The Revenant”. To be nominated in the category “Best Film”, you need to win more than 5% of the vote; it’s more than 300 votes. The number of nominations in each categories can vary from 5 to 10, for example, this year there were eight nominations in the category “Best Film” :  “The Big Short”, “Bridge of Spies”, “Brooklyn”, “Mad Max: Fury Road”, “The Martian”, “The Revenant”, “Room” and “Spotlight”. To get the nomination in the actor categories you need to have more than 100 votes and for the other categories the limit is not fixed. The Academy creates specials groups of people who are not members of the Academy to select the nominees and winners in the categories of “Best Documentary Film”, “Best Foreign Language Film”, ”Best Makeup”, “Best Short Film”, “Best Sound Editing and “Best Specials Effects”.  After than all 15 units voted , the Academy send the votes to “PricewaterhouseCoopers” which is the largest professional services firm in the world and one of the big auditors. So, this company counts the votes, it uses a complex system of calculation which excludes fraud and any technical error.

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(About the famous red carpet) The red carpet has a ceremonial character, the stars are invented to the ceremony and they demonstrate their different dresses and jewelry "haute couture". Its length is 150 meters, width about 10 meters and its overall weight is five tons. The carpet has several rolls, each rolls weighing 135kg and the carpet is delivered to the theater four days before the ceremony in two trucks.

(Critics) Despite the fame of the “Oscar” in the cinema world, its policies and choices have been criticized. Experts note that the level of requirements for the nominees is declining and that the financial performance of the film (film distribution) influences votes of the Academy members. When a film receives an Oscar, usually, it brings profits. The Academy choice is very important for the box-office and to the futures sales on DVD/Blu-ray of the film. Victory can mean the difference between profit and bankruptcy. When the movie “Artist” receive an Oscar in 2012, after receiving the award, the number of tickets sold increased for 41%. The price of winning the nomination “Best Film” is approximately $14 million of additional profits by CBS (“Columbia Broadcast System” - an American commercial broadcast television network). After the Oscar won the film “Shakespeare in Love”, its box office increased for another $ 100 million. Also, experts know that the indicator of success in the fight for the “Oscar” is the “Golden Globe” – it’s an award that takes place some weeks before the Oscars ceremony. So, experts want to say that when a movie, an actress/actor, director… win a Golden Globe it means that they have more chances to win the Oscar nomination. An influential American film critic Roger Ebert said about Oscar: “The entire selection process is biased toward a kind of applause for success. A box-office loser will very rarely get nominated and will never win. I lost faith in the Oscars the first year I was a movie critic — the year that Bonnie and Clyde didn't win”. This year we meet another type of critics, the Academy was criticized. When the AMPAS announced its nominees, only white actresses and actors were among the top four categories, for the second year in a row. Some black actresses and actors like Will Smith, Chris Rock, Spike Lee, Michael Moore… began to boycott the Oscars and share their opinion on social networks, media. For example, the social media hashtag #OscarsSoWhite. Chris Rock comes out at the Oscars ceremony and talked about diversity in Hollywood. Will Smith, two times Oscar nominee, told to ABC news late two weeks ago: “The nominations reflect the Academy. The Academy reflects the industry and then the industry reflects America”.