Photo taken on Feb. 23, 2019 shows a staff member at the Oscars red carpet interview area in California, the United States, where the Academy Awards ceremony, or Oscars, will take place the next day. (Xinhua/Li Ying)
LOS ANGELES, Feb. 24 (Xinhua) -- Another long awards season is about to come to an end. The 91st Academy Awards will be held here Sunday, with "Roma" and "The Favorite" so far leading the race, each scoring ten nominations, followed by "A Star is Born" and "Vice."
As an audience of thousands at the Dolby Theatre will join Hollywood's biggest, star-studded night, the Oscars is also to be televised live in more than 225 countries and territories, according to ABC news.
Last year, Oscar TV ratings slid to an all-time low. Changes ensued. The Academy's board in August announced a more compressed timeline for the Oscars, a shorter runtime of its telecast, and a new category: Best Popular Picture. It then decided to hand out four awards during commercial breaks.
Some of these plans, however, saw backlashes. Before long they got postponed or just canceled.
Now, guess who will bring home an Oscar? A younger and more ethnically-balanced Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, with more than 7,900 members, has the say. The final round of voting closed on Feb. 19.
Vying for the Best Picture award, a hotly contested category, are "Roma," "Black Panther," "BlacKkKlansman," "Bohemian Rhapsody," "The Favourite," "Green Book," "A Star Is Born," and "Vice."
Directed by Alfonso Cuaron, "Roma," a Spanish-language autobiographical drama, follows the life of a live-in housekeeper to an upper-middle class family in Colonia Roma, a neighborhood in the City of Mexico, in the 1970s.
"Green Book," directed by Peter Farrelly and set in the 1960s, follows African-American classical and jazz pianist Don Shirley and Tony Vallelonga, an Italian-American bouncer who serves as Shirley's driver and bodyguard, on a tour through the racially-divided South.
Music biopic "Bohemian Rhapsody," directed by Bryan Singer, traces the meteoric rise of the British rock band Queen through their iconic songs and revolutionary sound.
"Black Panther," featuring a virtually all-black cast, is the first superhero film to earn a Best Picture nomination in the history of the Oscars.
Earlier awards sometimes, though not always, are great predictors for the Academy Awards.
At the 25th Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards in January, the cast of "Black Panther" won for outstanding performance by an ensemble in a motion picture. It got much attention, partly because there's some overlap between SAG members and Oscar voters.
Alfonso Cuaron won the award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film at the 71st Directors Guild of America Award in February, which was decided by the directors' union.
This year the show will have no formal host for the first time in 30 years. A list of musical performers, nevertheless, will take the stage, including Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson, Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga, and special guest Bette Midler, according to ABC news.
