I’m a big fan of the Oscars or also called The Academy Awards as they are commonly known. This award ceremony celebrates the best in cinema through each calendar year. The ceremony is usually held around late February or early March the next year. The Academy Awards usually have 5 nominees in each of the 24 categories. This awards ceremony is up to its 87th year in existence. Many of the awards in the show have been given out ever since the beginning. The number of nominees have been the same as well. During that time the number of film that have came out during a given year more then tripled. In 2009 the nominees of the Best Picture category were raised from five to ten nominees. This was largely in turn because quite a few people were upset that The Dark Knight, the second film in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, didn’t get nominated for Best Picture the year before. Heath Ledger would win the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his riveting portrayal of the sadistic,psychotic arch nemesis of Batman,The Joker.
I’m just gonna use the last two years as an example of why I believe that the acting nominees in the Best Acting categories should be raised to six or more nominees. Last year the nominees in the Best acting category were Steve Carell for Foxcatcher, Bradley Cooper for American Sniper, Benedict Cumberbatch for The Imitation Game, Michael Keaton for Birdman and Eddie Redmayne for The Theory of Everything. Eddie Redmayne won the award. I believe two of these nominees shouldn’t have been nominated. They are Bradley Cooper for American Sniper and Steve Carell for Foxcatcher. In my opinion David Oyelowo should have been nominated for his portrayal of Dr. Martin Luther King in Selma. Steve Carell was more of a supporting role as John Dupont in Foxcatcher. He didn’t need to be in the Best Actor category. Last year there could have been up to eight nominees in my opinion. Ralph Fiennes definitely should have been nominated for his role in The Grand Budapest Hotel.
This year we have already had at least three or four actors who probably deserve a Best Actor nominee. Johnny Depp as Whitey Bulger in Black Mass, Matt Damon as Mark Watney in The Martian, Joeseph Gordon-Levitt as Phillipe Petit in The Walk and Michael Fassbender as Steve Jobs in Steve Jobs. A fifth nominee could easy be chosen from from any of the performances coming out in the next three months or from Jake Gyllenhaal from South Paw or Tobey Maguire from Pawn Sacrifice. If you do the math before the end of the year there are easily five more legitimate performances that could or should be nominated. Leonardo DiCaprio for The Revenant, Bryan Cranston for Trumbo, Tom Hanks for Bridge of Spies or Tom Hardy for Legend.
Just using the last two years is enough to see that there are just to many films and to many actors who deserve nominations. These awards have been around for to long and as time goes bye things change and the Academy Awards should be able to change with the times. If they can add five nominees to the Best Picture category then they should def add one of more nominee to the Best Actor or another acting category. If one category has a lot of great performances that year then make that category more that year and other categories less that particular year.
Dan Skip Allen
From the Fourth Row! 