Oscar 2024: how to watch them and who is nominated

The biggest night on the entertainment calendar is finally here: the 96th Oscars.

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which has 13 nominations, is expected to sweep the ceremony later.

Many moviegoers will also cheer for Barbie, last year’s biggest box office hit, which has eight nominations.

American television host Jimmy Kimmel will present the awards from Los Angeles, and the show will begin at 4:00 p.m. (PT), 7:00 p.m. (ET) and midnight (GMT).

Here are all the hot talking points and things to keep in mind at the ceremony (we’ve already bet Margot Robbie will wear pink).

Known more formally as the Academy Awards, the Oscars have recognized big screen talent since 1929.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, based in Los Angeles, nominates and votes annually in more than 20 categories, including best picture, best actor and best actress.

While film awards ceremonies, including the Golden Globes and Baftas, attract a lot of attention, the Oscars are the pinnacle of achievement on the awards season calendar. The awards are voted on by the members of the Academy.

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, about the life of the man who helped develop the atomic bomb, leads the list with 13 nominations, including best picture, best actor (Cillian Murphy) and best supporting actress (Emily Blunt).

Titanic, Ben Hur and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King jointly hold the record for most wins at 11, so could Oppenheimer match it or even do better?

Its British-born filmmaker, Nolan, is the big favorite for the best director award. While his films have won Oscars before, the man behind films like Interstellar, Inception and The Dark Knight Rises has never won this prestigious category.

In fact, despite his pedigree, he has only been nominated for best director once before (Dunkirk in 2018). This is surely his year.

Four out of five directors nominated this year are European (Nolan has dual American and British citizenship, but he was born and raised here, so we’re claiming him).

If, as expected, Oppenheimer’s Robert Downey Jr takes home the award for best supporting actor, it will also be his first Oscar.

Chasing Oppenheimer with 11 nods is Yorgos Lanthimos’ brilliantly strange Poor Things. Her star, Emma Stone, is a favorite in the best actress race alongside Lily Gladstone of Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. If Gladstone triumphs, and it’s hard to say at this point, she will be the first Native American to win the award.

Killers of the Flower Moon, about the murder of members of the Osage Indian tribe by white settlers seeking their oil, earned 10 total nominations.

Scorsese has been nominated for the Best Director Oscar ten times, making him the most nominated living director in Academy Awards history. He is also the oldest best director nominee at 81 years old.

Her longtime collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker is the most nominated editor in history with nine nominations, and this could be a record fourth win for her (she currently holds the joint record with three wins).

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock since Christmas (and we’ve all felt like doing that in this weather), Barbie director Greta Gerwig and the film’s star Margot Robbie both missed out on individual nominations when they were announced in January.

However, Barbie earned eight nominations in total, with America Ferrara and Ryan Gosling recognized in the best supporting actress and supporting actor categories respectively. But it’s still not enough for some.

All of the films mentioned above are competing for the coveted best picture award, and they are joined by the French courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall, the romantic drama Past Lives, the Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro, the incisive satire American Fiction, the warm comedy The Holdovers and the chilling Nazi drama The Zone of Interest.

The Barbenheimer giant that sparked a thousand memes has done no harm to the Oscars this year; The commercial success of these two films, which have captivated fans and critics, may attract new audiences to this year’s edition.

While some categories seem to have it all figured out (The Holdovers’ Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Oppenheimer’s Robert Downey Jr have taken nearly every pre-Oscar film award), there could still be some surprises in store. .

The best actress race between Stone and Gladstone is too close, but could Gladstone’s recent Screen Actors Guild (SAG) win help her get over the line? That’s what happened with Michelle Yeoh last year.

However, Stone has the most striking role as Poor Things’ charming protagonist Bella Baxter, while Gladstone’s dignified and resilient Molly Kyle in Flower Moon is a more low-key role that enjoys much less screen time. It’s an intriguing contest.

The best actor award is also up in the air with Paul Giamatti (The Holdovers) and Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer) in a two-horse race, although Murphy appears to have the advantage following his recent wins at Bafta and SAG. If he wins, he will be the first Irish-born actor to succeed, although Daniel Day-Lewis, who has British and Irish citizenship, has won three best actor Oscars previously.

In best picture, could The Holdovers win an Argo, winning best picture for a movie in which the director (Alexander Payne) is not nominated for best director? It will take some effort to overhaul Oppenheimer’s steamroller, but stranger things have happened.

A bit in the realm of fantasy now, but if Rustin’s Colman Domingo also pulls off a big upset by winning the best actor Oscar for playing gay civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, he will be the first Afro-Latino actor to win the award. And there are people of color in all acting categories.

Jodie Foster was nominated for best supporting actress for her portrayal of gay swim coach Bonnie Stoll in Nyad. It is the first time that two gay actors have been nominated for playing two gay characters in the same year.

There is progress elsewhere too. But it is slow progress. Anatomy of a Fall’s Justine Triet is only the eighth woman nominated for best director (the Oscars’ directorial field is 75% men). However, three films directed by women – Triet, Gerwig and Celine Song (Lives Past) – compete for the best film category (out of a total of 10 possible).

Other categories are also worth paying attention to: the short film and animated short film categories are suffering from stardust pressure this year.

Both shortlists are worth checking out in their own right, but some names you may recognize include Wes Anderson, who directed The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, a Roald Dahl adaptation starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Ralph Fiennes and Dev Patel.

Meanwhile, David Olewoyo stars in Misan Harriman’s The After, which addresses grief.

And Robbie Robertson could win a posthumous Oscar for best score for Killers of the Flower Moon. He sadly died aged 80 in August last year.

Dave Mullins, who worked at Pixar for 20 years, wrote and directed the animated short War is Over! Inspired by the music of John and Yoko. The famous couple’s son, Sean Lennon, is the executive producer.

Anyone who is anyone will be there, is the short answer. Most of the nominees will grace the red carpet (we think it’s red anyway, last year they switched to a champagne color but it got dirty very quickly).

Presenters include Zendaya, Al Pacino, Lupita Nyong’o, Bad Bunny, Dwayne Johson, Regina King, Matthew McConaughey, Mahershala Ali, Ke Huy Quan, Brendan Fraser and Michelle Pfeiffer.

Never mind the A-listers, here’s hoping Anatomy of a Fall’s dog Messi makes another star appearance.

All the best song nominees will perform, including Ryan Gosling of Barbie and Mark Ronson of I’m Just Ken. Gosling gave a hilarious reaction until the song’s win at the Critics’ Choice Awards earlier this year, bewildered and almost suspicious.

Billie Eilish will also sing her song Barbie, the favorite to win, What Was I Made For?

American late-night host Jimmy Kimmel returns to hosting duties this year; It will be the fourth time, including his time at the helm last year, which marked a smooth return after the chaos of the 2022 ceremony when Will Smith slapped one of the awards presenters. Chris Rock.

Kimmel joked. when his return was announced: “I always dreamed of hosting the Oscars exactly four times.” However, we bet it won’t be the last.

The 2024 Oscars will air live on Sunday, March 10, from the Dolby Theater in Hollywood, where the ceremony has been held since 2002.

The show can be seen in the US on ABC and on various streaming services. It is also broadcast worldwide in over 200 territories.

In the UK, you might be able to stay up to see it this year. The awards start an hour early and clocks in Los Angeles (PST) go ahead one hour on Oscar Sunday. The show starts at 16:00 (PT), 19:00 (ET) and midnight (GMT). UK viewers can watch it on ITV and ITVX from 10.30pm.

In addition to Nolan, other Brits in the running are Emily Blunt (Oppenheimer), Carey Mulligan (Maestro), Jonathan Glazer (director, The Zone of Interest), Jacqueline Durran (costume design, Barbie) and Holly Waddington (costume design, Poor Things).

And this for an effort? Special effects genius Neil Corbould (who already has two Oscars under his belt) is nominated for three this year in the visual effects category for The Creator, Napoleon and Mission: Impossible-Dead Reckoning Part One.

Meanwhile, if Sandra Huller wins the award for best actress (Anatomy of a Fall), she will be the first German to do so in 60 years.

It is also the first time that two international films not in English have been nominated for best picture in the same year (Anatomy of a Fall and Hot Spot).

Read more about some of the films in this year’s Oscar race: