History Being Made at This Year’s Academy Awards

Jacob Van Divner

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La La Land and Manchester by the Sea are looking to take this year’s Oscars with both pictures making history. The 2016 musical La La Land  will make a big impression at the 89th Academy Awards racking up a total of 14 nominations, tying the record for most Oscar nominations with both Titanic and All About Eve. Manchester by the Sea is the first streaming service movie to earn an Oscar nod.

The musical La La Land received the nominations in these categories: Ryan Gosling for best actor, Emma Stone for best actress, best picture, cinematography, costume design, Damien Chazelle for best director, film editor, music, production design, sound editing, sound mixing, and two nominations for best original song. The only movie to come close to La La Land’s 14 nominations is Arrival with an impressive 8 nominations.

When asked about his thoughts on the number of nominations the picture received, senior and avid moviegoer, Dustin Schimansky said, “It’s kind of crazy to think one movie can get so many nominations, but it must be good.”

A new first at this year’s Academy Awards is the first ever Oscar nomination to a streaming service being received by Amazon and its independent film Manchester by the Sea. “With them getting an Oscar nod this could really change the way that streaming services deal with the release of their movies” says senior Emma Frank.

According to Wired, Amazon went about purchasing all rights to the independent film at last year’s Sundance film festival, paying almost $11 million for the movie being headed by seasoned director, Kenneth Lonergan. The streaming service also picked up five other smaller movies and have said they will all be coming with a theatrical release before moving to Amazon Prime. The aggressive marketing style for the is what’s really putting Amazon over the competitors, mainly top rival Netflix.

What put Amazon above Netflix is the company’s more lax approach to the release of movies. While Amazon is fine with streaming the movie past the theatrical release, Netflix has to have it in conjunction with the time it goes live on the service. This willingness to work is what seemed to put Amazon in the driver’s seat of the competition.

The Academy Awards are scheduled for February 26, 2017.