The Oscar or the Academy Award of Merit is the last honor in a string of prizes, statuettes and trophies given to professionals in the entertainment industry every year. Other awards include the English BAFTAs, the French Césars and the Golden Globes.
In the American film industry the Oscar Award Ceremony is considered the pinnacle of the awards season and winning the coveted statuette can boost the amount of money movies, actors and directors make by several thousands or millions of dollars.
The Academy Awards started handing out the statuette they nicknamed Oscars in 1929, and the ceremony was televised for the first time in 1953. The award is given to each category (best actor, best director, best movie, etc.) based on the number of votes it gets from the members of the Academy of Motion Pictures. There are as many as 5,783 voters from several different branches of the movie industry deciding who “the Oscar goes to” each year.
Getting the Oscar for best movie doesn’t always mean that it was, in fact, the favorite film of that year, and the members of the Academy have been known to give out prizes that history sometimes tend to scoff at. For example, in 1978 it rewarded Kramer Versus Kramer, directed by Robert Benton instead of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, and in 1990 Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves won what the most moviegoers thought should have gone to Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas. Of course, what is the best movie of the year is subjective and Members of the Academy will sometimes take into consideration things like high grossing box-office, sociological trends and amendments to past oversights.
Martin Scorsese
The ceremony can be long-winded and the host changes from time to time in an attempt to lure the attention of younger audiences. Past hosts have included David Letterman, Whoopi Goldberg, Steve Martin, Chris Rock, Jon Stewart and Ellen Degeneres, this year for a second time.
The 2014 Oscar for best motion picture went to 12 Years a Slave, although it did not win the prize for best director, which went to Alfonso Cuaron, the director the 3-D blockbuster Gravity. If you haven’t seen it, click the link below and have fun watching some clips of the 2014 show. Watch movie stars parade on the red carpet while you make a list of your favorite actors and celebrities. Write a sentence to explain why you like them or their outfits to practice your English!
http://oscar.go.com/video
You can also learn new vocabulary related to movies from our Advanced English course at the Language Lab.
