[imagesource: Michael Kovac/Getty Images for AFI]

Hollywood awards season is about to reach its crescendo at the Oscars this Sunday evening.

Despite its many faults and controversies, the gears are in motion for this year’s Acadamy Awards, with nominees that brought the world back to the big screen after a series of lockdown difficulties.

As BBC notes, Hollywood has been through a lot this year, summing it up with the facts that “Spider-Man rescued the box office, Scarlett Johansson sued Disney, Daniel Craig bade farewell to Bond and everybody talked about Bruno”.

All in all, it should be an interesting awards ceremony for sure.

As the nominees get ready to become winners and losers, and we get ready to clap along, here are a few fun Oscars facts, anecdotes, and possible record-breakers to consider:

Jane Campion and Steven Spielberg are going head-to-head again:

No, you’re not imagining it – the best director matchup (see image above) at the Academy Awards next Sunday looks familiar.

That’s because Campion and Spielberg, who are nominated this year for The Power of the Dog and West Side Story respectively, have been head-to-head before.

In 1994, Campion lost for The Piano to Spielberg for Schindler’s List – but at least this has made Campion the first woman to be nominated for best director twice.

If she wins this year, and she truly has a fighting chance, it will also mark the first time a woman has won best director in two consecutive years.

Chloé Zhao triumphed last year for Nomadland, remember?

West Side Story could break a few records:

Spielberg looks to have quite the winning streak:

Spielberg’s adaptation could become the first ever remake of a previous best picture winner to win best picture. No remake of a previous best picture winner has even been nominated before.

A best picture win would also make West Side Story the first musical to win in nearly two decades – the last was 2003’s Chicago.

Nope, La La Land didn’t win in 2017, Moonlight did.

Andrew Garfield almost choking to death on a steak turned into a lesson:

Garfield is up for best actor for his role as the late Jonathan Larson in Tick Tick… Boom! 

If that performance wasn’t enough to get him an Oscar, his commitment to acting should be.

Here he is talking about that time he nearly choked on a steak in 2018:

“There were three levels of consciousness going on,” he recalled to Vanity Fair. “One was, I want to enjoy my steak. The second level was, holy [moly], I think I might be in danger of actually asphyxiating myself here.”

But his third reaction proved his dedication to acting: “I thought, be aware of your behaviour, what you’re doing, how you’re feeling, the heat through your body, remember the smells – because you’re going to maybe have to choke on screen or on stage at some point. It was that level of insanity of, if you survive this, you can use it in a performance.”

This year there seems to have been a harkening back to the olden days when movies didn’t have colour:

Amazingly, four films in this year’s awards season race are in black-and-white: Belfast, Passing, C’Mon C’Mon and The Tragedy of Macbeth.

And those are just the ones that have been nominated.

There was also a black-and-white version of Nightmare Alley, even though the colour version is being nominated for best picture.

Something about deeper tones, aesthetically and emotionally, I bet.

Will Smith anxiously waited for Venus and Serena Williams’ approval:

Smith might just win his first Oscar for his performance in King Richard, acting as a dedicated father who coached his two young daughters to become tennis legends.

It would have been a blow if Venus and Serena Williams didn’t approve the movie as a biopic, an aspect that elevated the film completely:

“I went to the family and said, ‘I want to tell this story,'” Smith told BBC chat show host Graham Norton. “And Venus and Serena said, ‘OK, we’ll see you through the process, but we’re going to have to see the movie before we decide whether or not we put our names on it.'”

Their trepidation was understandable, given Hollywood’s tendency to annoy or upset the real-life subjects of biopics.

“So I get the call that Venus and Serena were going into the theatre, and they went in and saw the movie, and it was literally the worst two hours of my life waiting until they came out,” Smith recalled. Fortunately, they “loved the film”, he said.

Cate Blanchett is like an Oscars good luck charm:

Blanchett has made a name for herself as an actress with the most performances in best picture-nominated films.

She has starred in nine nominated films before, including Elizabeth, Babel, The Aviator, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and three Lord of the Rings films.

This year she is in two best picture contenders, Don’t Look Up and Nightmare Alley.

Well, Blanchett, we’ll see you on Sunday.

[source:bbc]