It’s no secret that La La Land is the big favourite to earn major Oscars glory on Sunday. But there are other stories sure to unfold on Hollywood’s biggest night. Here are some of the things to watch for:
CLEAN SWEEP FOR LA LA LAND?
La La Land, Hollywood’s love letter to itself, heads into the Oscars with a record-tying 14 nominations.
The whimsical musical romance is favoured to win the most coveted best picture prize, beating out fellow front-runners Moonlight and Manchester by the Sea, as well as six other nominees.
The film has already nabbed many of the top honours — Golden Globes, Baftas, guild prizes — leading up to the Academy Awards.
Should 32-year-old Damien Chazelle walk away with a statuette, he would be the youngest director ever to win an Oscar.
STREEP: ANOTHER WIN ON THE CARDS?
Streep received her 20th Academy Award nod this year for her starring role in Florence Foster Jenkins, besting her own record for the most acting nominations in Oscars history.
Should she win on Sunday, the 67-year-old actress will earn her fourth Oscar, tying her with Katharine Hepburn for the most Academy Awards in the best actress — leading and supporting — categories.
Streep, whose Golden Globes speech prompted President Donald Trump to call her “overrated”, has been added as a presenter to Sunday’s Academy Awards.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Friday unveiled its final batch of presenters, including Streep.
In her speech at the Golden Globes last month, Streep drew a loud standing ovation for a speech that bluntly criticised Trump. She particularly voiced disgust for his mocking of The New York Times’ Serge Kovaleski, a disabled reporter.
Other presenters announced Friday include Ryan Gosling, Taraji P. Henson, Jennifer Aniston, Warren Beatty and Matt Damon.
OSCARS NOT SO WHITE
It has been a landmark year for diversity at the Oscars with African-American actors nominated in all the top categories.
The diverse slate of nominees will help the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences put to rest the #OscarsSoWhite controversy that has dogged the awards gala for the past two years.
However, a new Oscars hashtag — #OscarsSoMale — appears to be gaining steam, over the fact that a majority of speaking roles in films go to men.
ULTIMATE HOSTING FOR KIMMEL
Comedian and late-night host Jimmy Kimmel will preside over the Oscars for the first time, and critics will be watching to see how he pulls it off in front of a television audience of tens of millions.
Kimmel, 49, faces the stiff challenge of keeping the more than three-hour show — usually the most-watched non-sports telecast in the United States — upbeat in a year where no major surprises are expected and where the Oscars So White controversy seems to be a thing of the past.
“I’ve come to terms with the fact that someone is going to be disappointed in me at the end,” the emcee, who recently hosted the Emmys, told The New York Times in an interview published this week.
“I just don’t know who it will be yet.”
NOMINATED SYRIAN FILMMAKER BARRED FROM THE US
US immigration authorities have decided to bar entry to a 21-year-old Syrian cinematographer whose harrowing film about his nation’s civil war, The White Helmets, has been nominated for an Academy Award.
According to internal Trump administration correspondence seen by The Associated Press, the Department of Homeland Security has decided at the last minute to block Khalid Khatib from travelling to Los Angeles for the Oscars.
Khatib was scheduled to arrive Saturday in Los Angeles on a Turkish Airlines flight departing from Istanbul. But his plans have been upended after US officials reported finding “derogatory information” against Khalid.
The Department of Homeland Security declined to comment. Derogatory information is a broad category that can include everything from terror connections to passport irregularities.
WILL OSCARS BE TRUMPED?
Given the tension roiling the country since Donald Trump was elected president, it is all but sure that Sunday’s ceremony will have a tinge of politics.
The gala already took a political turn after Iranian director Asghar Farhadi — nominated for best foreign language film for The Salesman, after his A Separation won in 2012 — said he would not attend the ceremony following Trump’s controversial travel ban targeting seven mainly-Muslim countries.
The film’s lead actress has also said she would snub the event, even though the travel order is currently on ice.
Farhadi has announced two prominent Iranian Americans will be representing him and his film at the ceremony. The semi-official ISNA news agency reported that Anousheh Ansari, famed for being the first female space tourist, and Dr Firouz Naderi, director of Solar Systems Exploration at Nasa, will be Farhadi’s representatives at this year’s Academy Awards.
Farhadi is the first Iranian to win an Oscar, for A Separation.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Trump likely would not watch the Academy Awards as he will be hosting the annual governors’ ball in Washington.
That does not necessarily mean, however, that the president won’t take to Twitter to react to any “Meryl Streep moment”.
FOREIGN OSCAR CONTENDERS DENOUNCE ‘FANATICISM’ IN US
The directors of all five Oscar-nominated foreign language films on Friday denounced what they called a “climate of fanaticism and nationalism” in the United States and elsewhere, and dedicated their Academy Award to the cause of unity and free expression.
The directors from Iran, Sweden, Germany, Denmark and Australia spoke out in a statement as hundreds of people attended a rally on the eve of Oscar weekend. The rally was organised by one of Hollywood’s biggest talent agencies in support of freedom of expression and unity.
Speaking to the rally in a video from Tehran, Farhadi denounced politicians whom he said are “trying to promote hate but creating divisions between cultures, traditions and nationalities.” Farhadi was also part of the group that attacked “divisive walls,” and the divisions of “genders, colours, religions and sexualities” in current politics.
“We would like to express our unanimous and emphatic disapproval of the climate of fanaticism and nationalism we see today in the US and in so many other countries, in parts of the population and, most unfortunately of all, among leading politicians,” said the statement, issued to trade publications Variety and the Hollywood Reporter.
It was signed by Farhadi, Martin Zandvliet (Demark’s Land of Mine), Hannes Holm (Sweden’s A Man Called Ove), Maren Ade (Germany’s Toni Erdmann), and Martin Butler and Bentley Dean (Australia’s Tanna). The directors said that “regardless of who wins the Academy Award for best foreign language film on Sunday, we refuse to think in terms of borders.” “We dedicate this award to all the people, artists, journalists and activists who are working to foster unity and understanding, and who uphold freedom of expression and human dignity.” Their statement echoed speeches at the Beverly Hills rally, organised by the United Talent Agency in place of its annual Oscar party.
Actress Jodie Foster urged the crowd of about 500 people to take action to defend civil liberties and democracy.
“It’s our time to show up and demand answers. It’s our time to tell our elected officials to do their job [and] that we will not tolerate chaos, ineptitude and war mongering,” she said.
THE SHOW
The stage set at the Dolby Theatre glitters with more than 300,000 Swarovski crystals and is an homage to the sly and urbane musicals of the 1930s. Production designer Derek McLane says the sets were inspired by the Art Deco and Hollywood Regency styles that resonated in films such as The Broadway Melody and Top Hat, the 1935 musical starring Astaire and Rogers. The stage evokes the sensation of wandering in a tux and tails through a metropolis on a starry, if misty, night. The award show’s producers, Michael De Luca and Jennifer Todd, wanted a look that would summon the past with flair and elegance.
“They really felt that we ought to have something that was happy and delightful, maybe a little escapist so you could look at it and say, ‘This will be fun,’” says McLane, a trim man with a flop of hair and a scarf. He’s been the production designer on five Academy Award ceremonies. “There’s a little nostalgia, and it’s a real tribute to what’s fun about Hollywood.”
That wink to the fabled, bygone days of the film industry comes amid a nation riven by anxiousness and political acrimony. The movies of Astaire and Rogers were a salve, a bit of witty fantasy sparkling with sequins and martinis, for a land enduring the Great Depression. That sense of glamour will decorate Sunday’s ceremony, where the nominated films speak to America’s current complicated dimensions: from the whimsical La La Land to the starker racial narratives of Fences and Moonlight.
McLane, who spends much of his time designing theatre productions on Broadway and around the world, says a live show is a balancing of images and a promise of the unexpected.
“You want enough visual variety so that it stays interesting and surprising,” he says, adding that over the years he’s learnt how to design for a stage that is on view from all angles: “I hadn’t realised the extent to which the camera sees the backside of the scenery. The show is becoming more and more 360 degrees”, with ever-present roving cameras.
Pivoting LED screens were placed in the wings, he says, “so you feel there’s a continuous environment all the way around.” Much of that view is pointillist and bright. Crystal — as if a giant champagne glass has shattered — glints no matter where the cameras point: 80,000 crystals in the 80-foot-by-40-foot curtain, and 23,500 crystals gracing the theatre’s 18 opera boxes.
The other day, as stage hands worked and sets were moved about, the theatre, for a moment, fell quiet except for the hum of a vacuum cleaner moving through rows beneath the crystals. McLane’s work was nearly done. The moment the show starts, his sketches and renderings will be put aside: “I literally sit in the audience and watch and keep my fingers crossed,” he says. “By then, we’ve turned it over to the stage managers and the crew.”
Don’t miss it
The Oscars will air in the UAE on February 27 at 5.30am on OSN Movies Festival HD. But coverage will begin from 2am on E! Entertainment with its Live from the Red Carpet and Fashion Police coverage. If you can’t be bothered to stay up, the main Oscar awards show will be repeated on February 27 at 8pm and 11.30pm on OSN Movies Festival HD and OSN Play.
