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| The logo for the 84th Academy Awards ceremony. |
Staff Writer
The Oscars are a much anticipated and highly coveted award in cinema. On February 26, viewers across the world will tune in to root for their favorite celebrities. This year there have been several highly-acclaimed films that are all worthy of Oscars, but of course only one can win.
Nominated for best picture are: The Artist, The Descendants, The Help, Extremely
Loud & Incredibly Close, Hugo,
Midnight in Paris, Moneyball, The Tree of Life, and War Horse.
The
Artist,
a movie that was first denied acceptance to the Sundance Film Festival, is now
a favorite among movie critics. The movie is about a young, aspiring actress
named Peppy Miller who literally and figuratively runs into George Valentin, a
famous Hollywood silent film star, and uses her newfound connection as a launching
pad for her acting career. As she rises to fame, other agencies start offering
Miller roles in talking films while Valentin objects to the entire notion of
sound.
I predict that The Artist will win best picture, and I know that it will conquer in
other categories as well, such as cinematography and directing. Jean Dujardin,
who is the lead actor in The Artist,
is nominated for best actor, but has some strong competition against him.
The other nominations for best actor
include: Demian Bicher, George Clooney, Gary Oldman and Brad Pitt
.
.
George Clooney’s performance in The Descendants was so honest that the
audience sympathizes with every agony that the character endures. When his
character, Matt, finds out that his wife, who is in a coma due to a boating
accident, was unfaithful, his world is turned upside down. Matt starts on a
difficult journey where he copes with the loss of his wife while figuring out
how he is going to raise his two daughters by himself. Clooney flawlessly delivered
this role and deserves to win the Oscar for best actor.
Nominated for best actress are: Glenn
Close, Viola Davis, Rooney Mara, Meryl Streep, and Michelle Williams.
Meryl Streep portrayed Margaret Thatcher
in such an authentic way that critics everywhere are raving about her
performance in Iron Lady. This movie
is a surprising and intimate portrait of the life of Margaret Thatcher, the
former prime minister of the United Kingdom, and focuses on the price she paid
for her power. Meryl Streep deserves to win this Oscar. Playing a well-known
figure is never easy, but Streep captured her personality in a way that only
the most talented actress in Hollywood could.
The nominees for actor in a supporting
role include: Kenneth Branagh, Jonah Hill, Nick Nolte, Christopher Plummer and
Max Von Sydow.
Having just won a Golden Globe Award for
his performance in Beginners, Christopher
Plummer will certainly win the Oscar for actor in a supporting role. Oliver is
a 38 year old graphic artist whose father, Hal, is played by Christopher
Plummer. The movie is from Oliver’s point of view, and after Hal’s death, is
told in flashbacks. Five years earlier, Hal’s wife had passed away and
afterwards he admitted to being gay.
Beginners documents Oliver’s relationship with his father during the last year of his life and his eventual acceptance of Hal’s younger love.
Beginners documents Oliver’s relationship with his father during the last year of his life and his eventual acceptance of Hal’s younger love.
Berenice Bejo, Jessica Chastain, Melissa McCarthy, Janet McTeer and Octavia Spencer are all nominated for actress in a supporting role.
Octavia Spencer, who won a Golden Globe, will win the Oscar for her performance in The Help. She plays Minny, a housemaid living in 1960s Alabama. She becomes friends with a woman named Skeeter, a writer, and soon many of the housemaids throughout the town tell their stories to Skeeter who combines all of the stories into a book called The Help.
