Oscar Date Trivia Attack. But Another Long Phase Two? Noooooo
Tuesday, March 26, 2013 at 11:18AM 
By now you've undoubtedly heard that AMPAS has opted to bypass the February Winter Olympics in 2014 not by attacking the Globes & SAG in their comfy January berths but by waiting it out patiently until March. Sunday, March 2nd 2014 to be precise.
ESSENTIAL TRIVIA: Only one Oscar ceremony has ever been held on a March 2nd. That night the Oscar went to... Casablanca (1942) so that's good company for the upcoming winner to be in.
March is of course the most common month for Oscars to be held (with April and February taking silver and bronze). The most common night for the Oscars to be held is a tie between March 25th (From Here to Eternity, Amadeus, Dances With Wolves, Braveheart and Gladiator) and March 29th (All About Eve, Cuckoo's Nest, Chariots of Fire, Rain Man, Unforgiven) ...so if you were born on either of those days, Oscar loves you most u cute liddle adorable golden-baby!
March 2nd is a week later as shows go for his year but so are the nominations (January 16th, 2014). Which means that the 2013 Oscar race will be nearly exactly like the one we just experienced in terms of timing. What we probably won't see is all the OMG-WTF-IS-HAPPENING drama because those kind of curveballs we were thrown (Bigelow & Affleck, Les Miz's ecstatic premiere to sharp drop, Lincoln's weird frontrunner to "anything but!" trajectory, Ang Lee's second Oscar without a noisy campaign, etc...) are mighty rare.
All of which is a long way of saying that once again the time period between Nominations and Hollywood's High Holy Night will be much longer than anyone can deal with*. I've updated the embeddable widget should you love the countdown to nominations as much as I...
but if you'd already had it on your page you know that I change it each year so that the countdown never ends.
It can't because the Oscars are eternal!
P.S. Somewhat curiously they've also announced the Oscar ceremoney date for 2015 as if to remind all of us that they have no intention of returning to March in the future. It'll be held on February 22nd, 2015 which is only 698 days from now. Set your watches. (The only other previous February 22nd Oscars went to Slumdog Millionaire. Uh oh)
*I much prefer a long Phase One, short Phase Two but what'cha gonna do?
Reader Comments (4)
Only one the've been held on my birthday and Ordinary People won...
Anyway, I think they should have done it on January instead.
The same night Casablanca won Best Picture, Jennifer Jones won Best Actress on her 25th birthday for her radiant performance in The Song of Bernadette. She was presented the award by Greer Garson. What a night.
Unfortunately, there's never been an Oscar ceremony on my birthday (June 27). The closest one was the first ceremony on May 16th, 1929 when Wings/Sunrise won.
People wanting OMG upsets! will have to look further than next year. If the date were set at the end of March, maybe, but I don't see what one extra week is going to do to shift momentum to such a degree that we get upset winners. And contrary to what so many Oscar prognosticators think, upset wins are not always good ones. Frontrunners aren't always "boring."