They weigh 8.5 pounds and are 13.5 inches tall. They cannot be sold by their owners unless first offered to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for $1. Last year, 40.3 million people tuned in to watch them being handed out. Only 2,700 have been given away in 86 years, and each year the best of the best actors, directors and musicians vie for the honor of receiving the coveted prize.
It is the Academy Award, commonly called the Oscar. On March 2, the world will watch as the Awards are given to the absolute best and brightest stars of the big screen.
This year the contenders for Best Picture run the gamut from stories of slavery to accidents in space, from a story about modern piracy on the high seas to a story about the early days of the AIDS epidemic. Rounding out the nominations are stories of romance between humans and operating systems, sweepstakes “winners,” Irish Catholic nuns selling babies into adoption and even one about the disgusting excesses of disgraced Wall Street brokers round out the nominations.
A recent straw poll at the Oak Leaf headquarters revealed that, among the nominees for the Best Picture Oscar, “12 Years a Slave” was our favorite pick. It narrowly edged out other close favorites “Dallas Buyers Club” and “Gravity.”
“12 Years A Slave” tells the true story of a free black man, Solomon Northup, who was living in New York State in 1841. Northup was drugged, kidnapped and taken to toil as a slave in the deep south. His enslavement lasted 12 years as the title suggests.
This film is a little hard to watch at times, but definitely deserves its place at the top of our list. Gritty, unflinching and poignant, this film begs the question of what we would do if the same happened to us.
Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Solomon Northup and received a nomination for the Best Actor Oscar. Director Steve McQueen is nominated as well for the Best Director Oscar. The film has already taken home the Golden Globe for Best Picture.
The Academy Award for Best Achievement in Directing has been given out 85 times since 1929 and rewards innovation and technical prowess. This year’s nominees are competing at such an intense level of expertise, the Oak Leaf ended up with a three-way tie for our pick: Martin Scorsese for “The Wolf of Wall Street,” Alfonso Cuaron for “Gravity” and Steve McQueen for “12 Years a Slave.”
Scorsese won the award in 2007 for his film, “The Departed.” This year’s entry is a three-hour film about Jordan Belfort, a man who made millions selling penny stocks before the FBI and the the SEC closed down his illegal opertions. The film logged a record 506 F-bombs, the most ever in a non-documentary film. That is an astonishing 3 FPMs (f-words per minute.) If Scorsese wins, it will definitely be the cussing-est film to ever take home the honors.
Alfonso Cuaron won the Golden Globe for directing this year for his space epic starring George Clooney and Sandra Bullock. Cuaron has been nominated for an Oscar five times before, but he has yet to receive the golden statue. This may be the year he does.
Cuaron had to reinvent the processes involved in lighting and shooting an action film. The techniques he had to employ in order to imitate the micro-gravity of near-earth orbit has probably changed filmmaking forever. He spent five years making “Gravity.” We will soon know if his efforts are rewarded by the Academy.
McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave” is his third feature film and a powerhouse that won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Drama earlier this year. McQueen took great pains to make the film authentic. The bulk of the film was shot within a few miles of where Solomon Northup was actually enslaved.
There is very little pictoral evidence of how slaves were dressed, so costume designer Patricia Norris had to bring 50-plus years of experience to bear in order to maintain the authentic look of the film. “12 Years” is both brutal and beautiful.
The winners the Oak Leaf staff picked for best actor and best actress were not as divided. Leonardo DiCaprio was selected by a large margin as the favorite to win the Oscar for his role as Jordan Belfort in “The Wolf of Wall Street.” Meryl Streep was chosen for her role as Violet Weston in “August: Osage County.”
The Academy Awards ceremony will be hosted by Ellen DeGeneres and will be broadcast live on ABC from the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles on March 2 at 5:30 p.m., with red carpet coverage starting at 4.
