Usually Academy Award nominees are announced on the Tuesday four weeks before the live ceremony, but this year that Tuesday is Inauguration Day (January 20), so the announcement will take place on Thursday January 22 instead.
The Academy Awards are film awards presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that recognize excellence in the film industry. Awards, or Oscars, are presented to directors, actors, technical professionals like sound engineers and make-up artists and writers among others.
Each year entertainment, news and celebrity magazines like Entertainment Weekly magazine, Time magazine and People magazine like to track and predict the upcoming awards, creating “Oscar buzz.” This year is no different and as films were released in the fall, magazines began the Oscar buzz.
This year there is an enormous amount of Oscar buzz surrounding the late actor Heath Ledger. Ledger died of an accidental drug overdose in January 2008; in the summer his appearance as “The Joker” in the “Batman” sequel “The Dark Knight” got critics and fans started on the Oscar buzz early. Ledger has already been given the nod for Best Supporting Actor at the 2009 Golden Globe Awards, usually an accurate indication of how Oscar voters will vote. Other awards that indicate Oscar votes are the Screen Actors Guild and the New York Critics Circle awards.
In the past other notable actors have been posthumously nominated for Oscars including James Dean. The first and only actor to actually win a posthumous Oscar was Peter Finch in 1977 for his best actor performance in “Network.”
The Oscar race for “Best Picture,” the ultimate prize, heated up again in December with the release of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” on Christmas Day. Other predictions include “Frost/Nixon,” “Milk,” “Doubt” and “The Changeling.”
While Entertainment Weekly magazine predicts “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” will live up to the hype and anticipation it has created, the entertainment magazine also predicts “Revolutionary Road” and “Last Chance Harvey,” have formidable shots at big Oscar wins.
Other buzz-worthy long shots according to Entertainment Weekly are “The Wrestler” and “Nothing But the Truth.”
For more on the Oscars, visit www.magazines.com/search/list?query=entertainment+weekly&go.x=0&go.y=0
Jessica Vandelay is a freelance writer in New York City.
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