By Nell Geraets
It has been a busy few months for Hollywood’s brightest stars, many of whom have strutted several red carpets since the Golden Globes in January. Now, they’re preparing for the piece de resistance: the Oscars.
The 96th Academy Awards will wrap up this year’s award season (other than the annual Writers Guild Awards, delayed until April due to the strike), offering heavy-hitters like Oppenheimer, Barbie and Poor Things a final chance to go head-to-head.
It has been a competitive season so far, one that has already generated headlines over apparent snubs and category controversies.
Follow this guide to ensure you don’t miss any of the action, including where to watch the ceremony, who will be hosting it, and what our critics think of some of the key nominees.
When will the Oscars take place?
Australian viewers will be able to watch the Oscars on Monday, March 11 (AEDT). A 30-minute pre-show, including red carpet coverage, will commence at 9.30am.
The official ceremony will kick off at 10am and will run for approximately three hours.
The award show will be broadcast by US network ABC from the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood in Los Angeles.
Where can I watch the ceremony?
Australians will be able to tune into the Oscars’ red carpet coverage, which will be broadcast by E!Live in the US, on 7Bravo at 9.30am (AEDT).
The main ceremony will then air live on Channel 7 and 7Plus from 10am onwards. There will also be an encore screening at 8.45pm.
Plus, you’ll be able to follow all the excitement via the live blog helmed by reporters at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, which will begin at 8am.
Who is hosting?
Late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel will lead the festivities for the fourth time. The comedian, who hosts Jimmy Kimmel Live!, quipped that he “always dreamed of hosting the Oscars exactly four times” following the announcement.
Jimmy Kimmel poked fun at Hollywood during his opening monologue at the 2023 Oscars.Credit: Getty
He previously hosted the 2023, 2018 and 2017 ceremonies, the latter of which went down in history for including the notorious La La Land and Moonlight best picture mix-up. After Monday’s show, Kimmel will have hosted as many Oscars ceremonies as Whoopi Goldberg and Jack Lemmon, though he will still be a ways away from Bob Hope, who holds the record with 11 hosting gigs.
There will also be performances to honour the music featured in some of the nominated films, such as by Jon Batiste, who will sing It Never Went Away from American Symphony. Ryan Gosling and Mark Ronson will perform I’m Just Ken and Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell will perform What Was I Made For?, both songs from Barbie. Becky G will sing The Fire Inside from Flamin’ Hot, and Scott George and the Osage Singers will perform Wahzhazhe (A Song For My People) from Killers of the Flower Moon.
Who made it, and who missed out on a nomination?
Following great success at the Golden Globes and the Critics’ Choice Awards, Christopher Nolan’s three-hour historical epic Oppenheimer is expected to sweep the Oscars. It received 13 nominations out of 23 categories, including best director and best picture.
The commercially successful Barbie has not resonated as much with Oscar voters as Oppenheimer.Credit: Getty Images
Yorgos Lanthimos’ fantastical feminist take on Frankenstein, Poor Things, is also expected to do well, having earned 11 nominations. Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, another three-hour epic, is close behind with 10 nominations.
Given their previous gongs earlier in the awards season, Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer) is a favourite for best actor and Emma Stone (Poor Things) for best actress. Robert Downey Jr (Oppenheimer) is also favoured for the best supporting actor category.
A few Australians are hoping to bring an academy trophy home, including screenwriter Tony McNamara, who was nominated in adapted screenplay for Poor Things. Australians Sara McFarlane, who produced Red, White and Blue, and Nicky Bentham the producer of The After are also nominated for best live action short.
Australia’s Margot Robbie is nominated in the best picture category as a producer on Barbie; however, she missed out on best lead actress. The film’s director, Greta Gerwig, also missed out on nomination for best directing.
Both of these apparent snubs attracted criticism from fans and parts of the Barbie cast – namely Ryan Gosling and America Ferrera (both of whom are nominated in the supporting actor/actress categories).
Elsewhere, Leonardo DiCaprio, who starred in Killers of the Flower Moon, was omitted from the best actor list, and Saltburn, which scored two Golden Globes nominations and four Critics’ Choice nominations, failed to earn any nods at the Oscars.
For the first time in Academy Award history, three of the films nominated for best picture – Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Celine Song’s Past Lives – were directed by women. However, only Triet was nominated in the best director category (every other director in that category is male).
Have there been any changes?
In May, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced changes to its campaigning rules following a series of controversies before last year’s show. The new regulations state members cannot use social media to “encourage or discourage members to vote for any motion picture, performance, or achievement”. Voters can also no longer speak anonymously to the media about their voting choices, and studios can only put on four screenings hosted by a celebrity during the pre-nomination period.
These changes followed criticism of Andrea Riseborough’s (To Leslie) controversial nomination in the best actress category in 2023. Her nomination was largely considered a result of an aggressive social media campaign, which some suggested led to the exclusion of certain black actors. Top Gun: Maverick’s producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, was also criticised for hosting a private party at his Los Angeles home, to which several Oscars voters were invited.
The Academy has also updated its representation and inclusion standards. It now states films vying for best picture nominations must meet two of a number of requirements: at least one lead character in the movie must be from an “an underrepresented racial or ethnic group”; at least 30 per cent of the ensemble cast must be from at least two underrepresented groups (women, LGBTQ+ people, ethnic minorities or people with disabilities), or the film’s subject must focus on one of these groups.
What have our film critics said about the best picture nominees?
American Fiction: ★★★½
“It’s heavy-handed but very funny, both about the pitfalls of the publishing industry and the everyday microaggressions that have transmuted in the era of political correctness … [Cord] Jefferson asks questions with no clear-cut answers, but it’s a fun ride figuring it out.” – Read Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen’s review here.
Anatomy of a Fall: ★★★★
“The director, Justine Triet, and her co-writer, Arthur Harari, pick apart the story behind this mystery with a diligent attention to detail matched by a refusal to be rushed into the revelations they have to impart.” – Read Sandra Hall’s review here.
Barbie: ★★★
“Ultimately, Barbie the film suffers from the same problem as Barbie the character: it ends up flat-footed. The film is buoyed by jokes, yet heavy with speeches, bright with fantastical dazzle, but dulled by its real-world sequences, which, in comparison with Barbieland, look and feel perfunctory.” – Read Anwen Crawford’s review here.
The Holdovers: ★★★★
“This [film] makes no pretence about being anything other than a feel-good film, but it’s laced with enough wit and sarcasm to keep you in touch with the fact that nobody here is perfect.” – Read Sandra Hall’s review here.
Killers of the Flower Moon: ★★★½
“It might have been more honest and made for a more suspenseful film, had some aspect of that cruel-to-be-kind attitude been sincerely embodied by [the] characters.” – Read Anwen Crawford’s full review here.
Maestro: ★★★
“[Bradley] Cooper does better in the long, fraught dialogue scenes designed as duets for him and [Carey] Mulligan, often filmed from afar in the manner of an impossibly lush vérité documentary. But under the circumstances, there’s something weirdly askew about centring the film on Bernstein and Montealegre as a couple, while Bernstein’s male lovers remain on the sidelines.” – Read Jake Wilson’s full review here.
Oppenheimer: ★★★½
“A grand spectacle inspired by some of the grimmest events in human history, and itself an invention meant to blow us all away.” – Read Jake Wilson’s full review here.
Poor Things: ★★★★
“[Bella] is an extraordinary character in an extraordinary film made by a director so at ease with the language of cinema that he can produce wonders with it.” – Read Sandra Hall’s full review here.
Past Lives: ★★★★
“The film’s greatest trick is that the romance is actually not its most compelling point. Past Lives is much more convincing and moving as a metaphor for diasporic longing.” – Read Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen’s full review here.
The Zone of Interest: ★★★★
“[Jonathan] Glazer takes a meticulously forensic approach to the pair, but it could never be said he’s putting them under a microscope. Far from it. He’s determined to keep them at a distance, perhaps afraid that a single close-up might taint the whole exercise.” – Read Sandra Hall’s review here.
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