The Oscars

It's that time of year for every movie lover to get excited and prepare themselves for the Oscars! The 84th Academy Awards will be held on the 26th of February at the Kodak Theater, or the Highland Center due to Kodaks recent bankruptcy in Hollywood California. As  most of you would probably know, there are 24 awards on this night of nights, spanning from best picture, to actors, cinematography and visual effects. I don't really know a heck of a lot about the Academy Awards but as I find out to write this post we are all learning! Heres what i've discovered so far...

- The most nominated actor/actress EVER is Meryl Streep, gaining her 17th nomination this year with  "The Iron Lady"

- John Williams has a total of 47 nominations including two this year.

- Walt Disney had the record for the most nominations and most awards with a huge 59 Nominations and 22 Awards received.

- "Silence is Golden" well, The Artist, could actually could win the golden Oscar for best picture, if it does win it will be the first black and white film in over 80 years.

- Each Oscar statue costs around $800 to make and weighs around 8.5 pounds (3.8 kilograms). They are made of gold platen britannium an have a black metal base.

- The Ceremony is a huge cost in itself. With over $42,000 spent on champagne, $25,000 on just the truffles for the food and get this, the morning after the show, win or lose, and LA Marketing company is sending each nominee a "gift bag" filled with vouchers and things totalling up to $75,000! Some of the more notable presents you could find in a bag would be a holiday to the maldives and six month gym membership.

- The red carpet for the Oscars is 500 feet long (154m) which turns out to be 5,000 square meters!

OK now putting aside my little facts there is one huge trojan horse slipping into the Oscars this year in the form of a small orphan boy living in a train station in Paris. Thats right, Hugo, that has only pulled in $66 Million in the American box office over seven weeks, has been nominated for 11 awards! Hugo will be going up against some of the other biggest movies of the year for the awards for; Best Picture, Cinematography, Art Direction, Costume Design, Directing, Film Editing, Music, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Visual Effects and Writing. I am confident that Hugo will win quite a few Oscars at tomorrows ceremony and it will really surprise you, like being surprised by a big model horse filled with soldiers. Hugo really was a great movie, even if it wasn't bright enough for kids, wasn't romantic enough for a valentines day movie and wasn't quite epic enough to be a huge blockbuster.

Every year at the Oscars the award for visual effects is discussed and lots of opinions are different as to who the award will go to. I think out of the five nominees, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, Real Steel, Hugo, Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Transformers Dark of the Moon, it will come down to Hugo and Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the other movies were great with there VFX but they just the emotion and how realistic the apes were in Rise of the Plannet of the Apes was a class above the other nominees. I give an honorable mention the the scene in Transformers: Dark of the Moon when the Deceptacon, Shockwave, tore down the building that the main characters were on. Those VFX were amazingly well done and that was one of the best sequences of effects I saw last year.

I am sure that the Oscars will be very interesting tomorrow, I am sure there will be no disappointments, as all of the nominees are great films and great actors, unlike back in 1994 when Babe stole the Oscar for best picture off Apollo 13, but leaving that in the past I can't wait to see how the ceremony goes. For all the oscar nominees click here, you can like us on Facebook by clicking the logo on the right. Check back in for movie rumours, reviews on new titles, reviews on old classics and games.