An Oscars ceremony unlike any other will play out Sunday night, with history on the line in major categories and a telecast that has been completely retooled for the pandemic.
The 93rd Academy Awards will begin at 8 p.m. EDT on ABC. There will be no host, no audience, nor face masks for nominees attending the ceremony at Los Angeles’ Union Station — this year’s hub for a show usually broadcast from the Dolby Theatre. In contrast with the largely virtual Golden Globes, Zoom boxes have been closed out — though international hubs and satellite feeds will connect nominees unable to travel.
The red carpet was back Sunday, minus the throngs of onlookers and with socially distanced interviews. Only a handful of media outlets were allowed on site, behind a velvet rope and some distance from the nominees.
Casual wear, the academy warned nominees early on, was a no-no. During the Oscar preshow, nominees gathered at an outdoor set at Union Station that resembled an open-air cocktail lounge.
Leslie Odom Jr., a supporting acting nominee for “One Night in Miami,” was especially appropriately dress in a shiny all-gold suit that could match an Oscar statuette. Speaking to ABC, he praised a strong year for Black stories.
“It feels like there’s been a major conversation, a conversation happening in between these projects,” said Odom citing films like “One Night in Miami,” “Judas and the Black Messiah,” “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and “The Forty-Year-Old Version.” “It’s a special time, these movies about Black life.”
Show producers are hoping to return some of the traditional glamour to the Oscars, even in a pandemic year. The pre-show included pre-taped performances of the five Oscar-nominated songs. The first, “Husavik (My Hometown)” from “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga.,” was shot in the Iceland town’s harbor. Other performances were made from the top of the film academy’s new $500 million museum.
The ceremony is available to stream on Hulu Live TV, YouTubeTV, AT&T TV, FuboTV and on ABC.com with provider authentication.
Pulling the musical interludes (though not the in memoriam segment) from the three-hour broadcast — and drastically cutting down the time it will take winners to reach the podium — will free up a lot of time in the ceremony. And producers, led by filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, are promising a reinvented telecast.
From the preshow, it was clear this year’s Oscars would try to rekindle excitement in moviegoing after a pandemic year nearly eliminated it. A glossy montage of upcoming movies introduced by Matthew McConaughey declared” “The big screen is back.” Some movies, like Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story” were planning to premiere ads during the telecast.
The Oscars will look more like a movie, Soderbergh has said. The show will be shot in 24 frames-per-second (as opposed to 30), appear more widescreen and the presenters — including Brad Pitt, Halle Berry, Reese Witherspoon, Harrison Ford, Rita Moreno and Zendaya — are considered “cast members.” The telecast’s first 90 seconds, Soderbergh has claimed, will “announce our intention immediately.”
But even a great show may not be enough to save the Oscars from an expected ratings slide. Award show ratings have cratered during the pandemic, and this year’s nominees — many of them smaller, lower-budget dramas — won’t come close to the drawing power of past Oscar heavyweights like “Titanic” or “Black Panther.” Last year’s Oscars, when Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite” became the first non-English language film to win best picture, was watched by 23.6 million, an all-time low.
Netflix dominated this year with 36 nominations, including the lead-nominee “Mank,” David Fincher’s black-and-white drama about “Citizen Kane” co-writer Herman J. Mankiewicz. The streamer is still pursuing its first best-picture win; this year, its best shot may be Aaron Sorkin’s “The Trial of the Chicago 7.”
But the night’s top prize, best picture, is widely expected to go to Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland,” a contemplative character study about an itinerant woman (Frances McDormand) in the American West. Should it be victorious, it will be one of the lowest budget best-picture winners ever. Zhao’s film, populated by nonprofessional actors, was made for less than $5 million. (Her next film, Marvel’s “Eternals,” has a budget of at least $200 million.)
Zhao is also the frontrunner for best director, a category that has two female filmmakers nominated for the first time. Also nominated is Emerald Fennell for the scathing revenge drama “Promising Young Woman.” Zhao would be just the second woman to win best director in the academy’s 93 years (following Kathryn Bigelow for “The Hurt Locker”), and the first woman of color.
History is also possible in the acting categories. If the winners from the Screen Actors Guild Awards hold — “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’s” Chadwick Boseman for best actor, Viola Davis for best actress; Yuh-Jung Youn (“Minari”) for best supporting actress; and Daniel Kaluuya (“Judas and the Black Messiah”) for best supporting actor — it would the first time nonwhite actors swept the acting categories — and a dramatic reversal from recent “OscarsSoWhite” years.
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