By Joshua Robison / The Jambar
The 98th Academy Awards ceremony, commonly known as the Oscars, will take place March 15 at the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood in Los Angeles.
The Oscars consists of 24 categories and include notable standouts for on-screen performances, such as best leading actor, supporting actor, leading actress and supporting actress. The remaining categories cover animated films, casting, cinematography, costume design, directing, documentaries, visual effects and more.
Music and writing also play an important part of the awards with categories for best original score and song and best adapted and original screenplay.
The Oscars are a time where the best films, filmmakers and actors are honored and praised for their quality work of the year prior. Like many other Academy Award ceremonies, this year’s films, actors and filmmakers have had much to offer the judges.
The categories that receive the most attention are best lead and supporting actor and actress, best picture and both screenplay categories — and rightfully so, as these categories are highly competitive.
The best leading actor category might be the most impressive with nominees Timmothée Chalamet for his role in “Marty Supreme,” Leonardo DiCaprio for “One Battle After Another,” Ethan Hawke for “Blue Moon,” Michael B. Jordan for “Sinners” and Wagner Moura for “The Secret Agent.”
Jordan, Hawke and Moura are all in the running for best leading actor for the first time while this will be Chalamet’s third appearance in the category and DiCaprio’s eighth appearance.
The leading actress category is also quite impressive with Jessie Buckley nominated for “Hamnet,” Rose Byrne for “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” Kate Hudson for “Song Sung Blue,” Renate Reinsve for “Sentimental Value” and Emma Stone for “Bugonia.”
Buckley, Rose, Hudson and Reinsve are all in this category for the first time. However, this year will mark Stone’s fifth time in the best actress category with the possibility of a third win. Her previous best actress awards came from “Poor Things” in 2024 and “La La Land” in 2017.
The best picture category is by far the largest category with ten nominees in the race. The films nominated for best picture are “Bugonia,” “F1:,” “Frankenstein,” “Hamnet,” “Marty Supreme,” “One Battle After Another,” “The Secret Agent,” “Sentimental Value,” “Sinners” and “Train Dreams.”
Each of these films are more than capable of winning the award, however like every chain it has its weakest links. “F1:” is by far the weakest in terms of plot and character development. This contrasts “Sinners,” which had a very original plot and elements of both African American folklore and culture.
The 98th Academy Awards is looking very bright this year with many exemplary selections all across the board. For more information about the upcoming awards or categories, those interested can visit Oscars.org.