ACADEMY_AWARDS: мая 2009

вторник, 26 мая 2009 г.

The red carpet originated with the railroad. Conductors commonly rolled out the red carpet to direct passengers to the correct location on the train. Today it is known as a legacy of the entertainment industry. It is identified with the culture of our celebrities and the ora that surrounds them. The red carpet has a history of all of those who have been a part of the entertainment industry. It is a great way to honor those who have passed on from the red carpet to the afterlife.

The red carpet makes its first appearance on the historical stage in Aeschylus' 5th century BCE play Agamemnon.

King Agamemnon recognizes that the gods are wholly responsible for the Greek victory at Troy, and he thanks the gods for aiding him and bringing his ship back to Argos safely. He says, "We must thank the gods with grace," because he is so grateful to them.m he claims no responsibility at all himself, even though it was he who commanded the Greek army.

Clytaemnestra tries to convince Agamemnon to walk across the red carpet, insisting that he deserves special recognition for his accomplishments. However, he is afraid to offend the gods, insisting that the gods have given the Greeks victory, and he had nothing to do with it at all. The gods deserve recognition, not him. But Clytaemnestra continues to pressure him.

Clytaemnestra then murders him.

For the carpet leads him into his palace and to his own death. The carpet takes him through the palace door which Clytemnestra closes behind him. It reopens some minutes later with Clytemnestra triumphantly holding an axe aloft as Agamemnon's body lies lifeless at her feet on the blood-saturated carpet.

The Rice Museum staff notes that President James Monroe once walked the red carpet:

President James Monroe was entertained in 1821 at Prospect Hill (now Arcadia) on Waccamaw with a real red carpet rolled out to the river.

And then finally in the 20th century we get to the 20th Century Limited, the reference for the "railroad" story at the Academy History website.

Known for its style as well as for its speed, passengers walked to and from the train on a plush, crimson carpet which was rolled out in New York and Chicago and was specially designed for the 20th Century Limited, thus the "red carpet treatment" was born.

Venues

The 1st Academy Awards were presented at a banquet dinner at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood.
Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood then hosted the awards from 1944 to 1946, followed by the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles from 1947 to 1948. The 21st Academy Awards in 1949 were held at the Academy Award Theater at the Academy's then-headquarters on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood.
From 1950 to 1960, the awards were presented at Hollywood's Pantages Theatre. The Oscars then moved to the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in Santa Monica, California in 1961. By 1969, the Academy decided to move the ceremonies back to Los Angeles, this time at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in the Los Angeles Music Center.
In 2002, Hollywood's Kodak Theatre became the first permanent home of the awards. It is connected to the Hollywood & Highland Center, which contains 640,000 square feet (59,000 m²) of space including retail, restaurants, nightclubs, other establishments and a six-screen cinema.
These are the locations at which the awards were presented over the years.

The Blossom Room at Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel (1929)
The Coconut Grove at Ambassador Hotel (April 1930, 1940, 1943)
The Fiesta Room at Ambassador Hotel (November 1930, 1932, 1934)
The Sala D’Oro at Biltmore Hotel (1931)
The Biltmore Bowl at Biltmore Hotel (1935–1939, 1941, 1942)
Grauman's Chinese Theatre (1944–1946)
The Shrine Civic Auditorium (1947, 1948, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1995, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001)
The Academy Award Theater (1949)
The RKO Pantages Theatre (1950–1960)
The Santa Monica Civic Auditorium (1961–1968)
The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion (1969–1987, 1990, 1992–1994, 1996, 1999)
The Kodak Theatre (since 2002)
The awards took place from the 25th to 29th edition not only in Hollywood but also in New York:
NBC International Theatre (1953)
NBC Century Theatre (1954–1957)

Telecast of the ceremony

The major awards are presented at a live televised ceremony, most commonly in February or March following the relevant calendar year, and six weeks after the announcement of the nominees. It is the culmination of the film awards season, which usually begins during November or December of the previous year. This is an elaborate extravaganza, with the invited guests walking up the red carpet in the creations of the most prominent fashion designers of the day. Black tie dress is the most common outfit for men, although fashion may dictate not wearing a bow-tie, and musical performers sometimes do not adhere to this. (The artists who recorded the nominees for Best Original Song quite often perform those songs live at the awards ceremony, and the fact that they are performing is often used to promote the television broadcast.)
The Academy Awards is televised live across the United States (excluding Alaska and Hawaii), Canada, the United Kingdom, and gathers millions of viewers elsewhere throughout the world. The 2007 ceremony was watched by more than 40 million Americans. Other awards ceremonies (such as the Emmys, Golden Globes, and Grammys) are broadcast live in the East Coast but are on tape delay in the West Coast and might not air on the same day outside North America (if the awards are even televised). The Academy has for several years claimed that the award show has up to a billion viewers internationally, but this has so far not been confirmed by any independent sources. The usual extension of this claim is that only the Super Bowl, Olympics Opening Ceremonies, and FIFA World Cup Final draw higher viewership.
The Awards show was first televised on NBC in 1953. NBC continued to broadcast the event until 1960 when the ABC Network took over, televising the festivities through 1970, after which NBC resumed the broadcasts. ABC once again took over broadcast duties in 1976; it is under contract to do so through the year 2014.
After more than sixty years of being held in late March or early April, the ceremonies were moved up to late February or early March starting in 2004 to help disrupt and shorten the intense lobbying and ad campaigns associated with Oscar season in the film industry. Another reason was because of the growing TV ratings success of the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship, which would cut into the Academy Awards audience. The earlier date is also to the advantage of ABC, as it now usually occurs during the highly profitable and important February sweeps period. (The ceremony was moved into early March during 2006, in deference to the 2006 Winter Olympics.) Advertising is somewhat restricted, however, as traditionally no movie studios or competitors of official Academy Award sponsors may advertise during the telecast. The Awards show holds the distinction of having won the most Emmys in history, with 38 wins and 167 nominations.
On March 30, 1981, the awards ceremony was postponed for one day after the shooting of President Ronald Reagan and others in Washington, D.C.
Since 2002, celebrities have been seen arriving at the Academy Awards in hybrid vehicles; during the telecast of the 79th Academy Awards in 2007, Leonardo DiCaprio and former vice president Al Gore announced that ecologically intelligent practices had been integrated into the planning and execution of the Oscar presentation and several related events.

Nomination

Since 2004, Academy Award nomination results have been announced to the public in late January. Prior to 2004, nomination results were announced publicly in early February.

Voters
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), a professional honorary organization, maintains a voting membership of 5,835 as of 2007.
Actors constitute the largest voting bloc, numbering 1,311 members (22 percent) of the Academy's composition. Votes have been certified by the auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (and its predecessor Price Waterhouse) for the past 73 annual awards ceremonies.
All AMPAS members must be invited to join by the Board of Governors, on behalf of Academy Branch Executive Committees. Membership eligibility may be achieved by a competitive nomination or a member may submit a name based on other significant contribution to the field of motion pictures.
New membership proposals are considered annually.The Academy does not publicly disclose its membership, although as recently as 2007 press releases have announced the names of those who have been invited to join. The 2007 release also stated that it has just under 6,000 voting members. While the membership had been growing, stricter policies have kept its size steady since then.

Rules
Today, according to Rules 2 and 3 of the official Academy Awards Rules, a film must open in the previous calendar year, from midnight at the start of January 1 to midnight at the end of December 31, in Los Angeles County, California, to qualify. Rule 2 states that a film must be "feature-length", defined as a minimum of 40 minutes, except for short subject awards and it must exist either on a 35 mm or 70 mm film print or in 24 frame/s or 48 frame/s progressive scan digital cinema format with native resolution not less than 1280x720.
The members of the various branches nominate those in their respective fields while all members may submit nominees for Best Picture. The winners are then determined by a second round of voting in which all members are then allowed to vote in most categories, including Best Picture.
As of the 79th Academy Awards, 847 members (past and present) of the Screen Actors Guild have been nominated for an Oscar (in all categories).

Ceremonies

Annual Ceremony
Date of Ceremony
Year Honored
Host
Best Picture

How did the Oscar get its name?

Although officially named the Academy Award of Merit, the statuette is almost universally known as the Oscar. But where did this name come from? A number of stories have arisen over the years.The most popular story about the name’s origin involves then Academy librarian and future executive director, Margaret Herrick. The story goes that Herrick, upon seeing the statuette sitting on a table exclaimed “it looks just like my Uncle Oscar!” The name stuck and it has been called by that name ever since.

THE FIRST...

First year that members of the American Communist Party were denied their right to receive an Academy Award: 1958.
First Academy Award nomination for a black actor: 1959. Sidney Poitier for The Defiant Ones.
First actor to win an Oscar for playing an Oscar-winner: 2004. Cate Blanchet for playing Katherine Hepburn in The Aviator.
First American woman to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Director: 2003. Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation.
First male African-America to win an Academy Award for Best Actor: 2001. Denzel Washington for Training Day. If you're thinking this is a mistake, then you should know that the first black male to win a Best Actor Oscar, Sidney Poitier, was born either in the Bahamas, or on the high seas on his way to Florida, depending upon which story you believe.
First movie to be released on video before winning the Academy Award for Best Picture: 1991. Silence of the Lambs.
First Irish movie to be nominated for Best Picture: 1989. My Left Foot.
First year in which none of the nominees for Best Picture were American: 1987. (Bernardo Bertolucci, John Boorman, Lasse Hallstrom, Norman Jewison, Adrian Lyne.)
First year in which every single nominee for both Best Actor and Best Actress were from America: 1985.
First woman to ever receive and Academy Award nomination for Best Director: 1976. Lina Wertmuller for Seven Beauties.
First (and only) X-rated movie to win the Academy Award for Best Movie: 1969. Midnight Cowboy.
First movie for which the entire cast received acting nominations: 1966. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
First year in which all winners in the acting categories were non-Americans: 1964. (Rex Harrison, Julie Andrews, Peter Ustinov, and Lila Kedrova.)
First actor to receive two acting nominations after his death: James Dean.
First Best Picture winner to also win the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival: 1955. Marty.
First foreign (not foreign-language) movie to received Academy Award for Best Picture: 1948. Hamlet.
First B-movie to be nominated for Best Picture: 1947. Crossfire.
First person to received Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Screenplay: 1941. Orson Welles for, what else, Citizen Kane.
First person to ever receive an Oscar posthumously: 1939. Sidney Howard, winner of Best Screenplay for Gone with the Wind.
First foreign-language film to ever receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture: 1938. Grand Illusion.
First person to be nominated for in both acting categories in a single year: 1938. Fay Bainter.
First actor to win back to back actors: 1936-1937. Luise Rainer, winning for The Ziegfield Follies and The Good Earth.
First movie to win Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Actor, and Best Director: 1934. It Happened One Night.
First Academy Award tie: 1931. Fredric March and Wallace Beery, Best Actor. Actually, it wasn't really a tie. Fredric March should be considered the real winner for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but the rules at the time were such that a one vote differential in the voting would be counted as a tie. March had beaten Beery by exactly one vote, but Beery was also awarded a statuette nonetheless.

The First “Oscar” Ceremony

The first Academy Award ceremony was held May 16, 1929, and was much different than the star-studded, dazzling event of today. Held in the Blossom Room of the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, the program consisted of an hour of dancing, a dinner, and then the awards ceremony. The 250 or so attendees paid $5 each for the night’s entertainment. The ballroom was decorated plainly with Chinese lanterns and candles and candy replicas of the Award of Merit on each table.
Unlike the present day ceremony, there was little pre- or post publicity for the affair. There was only brief mention of it in the newspapers, before and after, and it would be another year before the awards were first broadcast, and then only by a local Los Angeles radio station.
The rules and standards for determining winners were also different. Unlike today, nominees were not chosen from films of the previous calendar year. Instead they were chosen from the period of August 1, 1927, to July 31, 1928. The award for acting was based on “total work” rather than an individual movie and there were actually two best pictures and two best directors based on different categories. There was no suspenseful “and the envelope, please” moment, all the winners having been announced some three months earlier. There were only twelve categories represented, two special awards and no acceptance speeches. In fact, the entire award ceremony, emceed by Fairbanks and assisted by DeMille, lasted only fifteen minutes.

The Making of Oscar Academy Awards

The Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars, are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS)[1] to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers. The formal ceremony at which the awards are presented is one of the most prominent film award ceremonies in the world. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences itself was conceived by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio boss Louis B. Mayer.The 1st Academy Awards ceremony was held on Thursday, May 16, 1929, at the Hotel Roosevelt in Hollywood to honor outstanding film achievements of 1927 and 1928. It was hosted by actor Douglas Fairbanks and director William C. deMille.The 81st Academy Awards honoring the best in film for 2008 was held on Sunday, February 22, 2009 at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood with actor Hugh Jackman hosting the ceremony for the first time.

пятница, 22 мая 2009 г.

The Show Must Go On

Only three times in its more than 80-year history has the Academy Awards failed to take place as scheduled. The first was in 1938, when massive flooding in Los Angeles delayed the ceremony by a week. In 1968 the Awards ceremony was postponed from April 8 to April 10 out of respect for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who had been assassinated a few days earlier, and whose funeral was held on April 9. In 1981 the Awards were once again postponed, this time for 24 hours because of the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan.
In 2003, U.S. forces invaded Iraq on the Thursday before the telecast. The show went on as scheduled, but the red carpet was limited to the area immediately in front of the theater entrance, the red carpet bleachers were eliminated and the majority of the world’s press was disinvited. The next year, the red carpet was back in full force, with all its glamour and sizzle.

More Academy Awards Milestones

• 1st Awards – Recognizing the need to honor achievements that didn’t fit into fixed categories, the Academy presented two special awards at the very first ceremony in 1929: one to Warner Bros. for producing the pioneering talking picture “The Jazz Singer,” and one to Charles Chaplin for producing, directing, writing and starring in “The Circus.”
• 2nd Awards – The number of categories was reduced from 12 to seven: two for acting and one each for Outstanding Picture, Directing, Writing, Cinematography and Art Direction. Since then, the number of awards has slowly increased.
• 7th Awards – Film Editing, Music Scoring, and Song were added to the categories honoring films released in 1934. The year also brought the first write-in campaign, seeking to nominate Bette Davis for her performance in “Of Human Bondage.” (Academy rules now prohibit write-ins on the final ballot.) Also that year, the Academy retained the accounting firm of Price Waterhouse to tabulate the ballots and ensure the secrecy of the results. The firm, now called PricewaterhouseCoopers, continues to tabulate the voting to this day.
• 9th Awards – The first Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress Academy Awards are presented, for performances in films of 1936. The honors went to Walter Brennan for “Come and Get it” and Gale Sondergaard for “Anthony Adverse.”
• 10th Awards – The Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award was presented for the first time at the ceremony held in 1938. The honor went to Darryl F. Zanuck.
• 12th Awards – Fred Sersen and E. H. Hansen of 20th Century Fox were the first winners of the Academy Award for Special Effects. They were honored for their work in the 1939 film “The Rains Came.”
• 14th Awards – In 1941, a documentary category appeared on the ballot for the first time.
• 20th Awards – The first special award to honor a foreign language motion picture was given in 1947 to the Italian film “Shoe-Sine.” Seven more special awards were presented before Foreign Language Film became an annual category in 1956.
• 21st Awards – Costume Design was added to the ballots for 1948.
• 25th Awards – For the first time, the Oscar presentation was televised. The NBC-TV and radio network carried the ceremony, honoring the films of 1952, live from Hollywood with Bob Hope as master of ceremonies, and from the NBC International Theatre in New York with Conrad Nagel as host.
• 29th Awards – The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award was established and Y. Frank Freeman was its first recipient.
• 36th Awards – The Special Effects Award was divided into Sound Effects and Special Visual Effects beginning with the honors for films released in 1963.
• 38th Awards – The Oscar ceremony in 1966 was the first to be televised in color.
• 41st Awards – The April 14, 1969, Oscar ceremony was the first major event held at the new Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Los Angeles County Music Center.
• 54th Awards – Makeup became an annual category, with Rick Baker winning for his work on the 1981 movie “An American Werewolf in London.” The Gordon E. Sawyer Award, recognizing technological contributions to the industry, was established.
• 74th Awards – The Animated Feature Film Award is added, with “Shrek” winning for 2001.

Public Interest Grows Quickly

The first presentation was the only one to escape a media audience; by the second year, enthusiasm for the Awards was such that a Los Angeles radio station produced a live one-hour broadcast of the event. The ceremony has been broadcast ever since.
The Academy continued to hand out the awards at banquets – held at the Ambassador and Biltmore hotels – until 1942, when increased attendance made these dinner ceremonies impractical. Starting with the 16th Oscar ceremony, which was held at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, the event has always been held at a theater.
In 1953, the first televised Oscar ceremony enabled millions throughout the United States and Canada to watch the proceedings. Broadcasting in color began in 1966, affording home viewers a chance to fully experience the dazzling allure of the event. Since 1969, the Oscar show has been broadcast internationally, now reaching movie fans in over 200 countries.

No Surprises

There was little suspense when the awards were presented that night: the recipients had already been announced three months earlier. That all changed the following year, however, when the Academy decided to keep the results secret until the ceremony but gave a list in advance to newspapers for publication at 11 p.m. on the night of the Awards. This policy continued until 1940 when, much to the Academy’s consternation, the Los Angeles Times broke the embargo and published the names of the winners in its evening edition – which was readily available to guests arriving for the ceremony. That prompted the Academy in 1941 to adopt the sealed-envelope system still in use today.
Fifteen statuettes were awarded at the first ceremony for cinematic achievements in 1927 and 1928. The first Best Actor winner was acclaimed German tragedian Emil Jannings, who had to return to Europe before the ceremony. The Academy granted his request to receive the trophy early, making his statuette the very first Academy Award ever presented.

Far from the eagerly anticipated and globally televised event it is today, the first Academy Awards ceremony took place out of the public eye during an Academy banquet at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Two hundred seventy people attended the May 16, 1929 dinner in the hotel’s Blossom Room; guest tickets cost $5. It was a long affair filled with speeches, but Academy President Douglas Fairbanks made quick work of handing out the statuettes.

The Oscar Statuette

Webliography:

ACADEMY_AWARDS

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вторник, 26 мая 2009 г.

Fashion on the red carpet

Red Carpet view

Red Carpet

Venues

Telecast of the ceremony

Nomination

Ceremonies

How did the Oscar get its name?

THE FIRST...

The First “Oscar” Ceremony

The Making of Oscar Academy Awards

пятница, 22 мая 2009 г.

The Show Must Go On

More Academy Awards Milestones

Public Interest Grows Quickly

No Surprises

The Oscar Statuette

Архив блога

Обо мне

вторник, 26 мая 2009 г.

пятница, 22 мая 2009 г.

вторник, 26 мая 2009 г.

пятница, 22 мая 2009 г.