UB students weigh in on the Oscars

It’s almost here: The night movie buffs and DiCaprio fans have been waiting for.

This Sunday marks the 88th Academy Awards and for the past month, the media has been trying to answer the question, “Who is going to win?” “The Revenant” is up for best picture, DiCaprio is up for Best Actor and Brie Larson is in the running for Best Actress.

Many UB students believe that Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance in “The Revenant” should be the winner.

“He deserves it after making all those great films. He keeps getting one-upped each year and this year I think he deserves it,” said Sean Smith, a sophomore chemical engineering major.

Partho Bhattacharya, a junior math major, said he also thought that DiCaprio was the standout actor this year.

“Forgetting his past performances and just based on his performance in ‘The Revenant,’ I think he deserves the award,” Bhattacharya said.

Taking DiCaprio’s past performances into account, Erin Borovitcky, a junior exercise science major, said it’s surprising he hasn’t won anything before now.

Besides Best Actor, the Best Picture category is another category still up in the air.

Bhattacharya has seen “The Revenant,” but doesn’t think it’s going to win.

“I think ‘Mad Max’ deserves it out of the movies that I have seen,” Bhattacharya said.

Jocelyn Ruhland, a junior mathematic major, said of all the nominated films, she has only seen “The Big Short.”

“It was a good movie, but it was nothing spectacular,” Ruhland said.

Most full-time students don’t have time to sit down and watch the 15 films nominated just in the top four categories. In fact, most people don’t have that kind of time.

A lot of this controversy about who should and shouldn’t be nominated for Oscars is relative. What one person thinks is the best movie of the year, another might think was the worst film they have ever seen.

The Academy Awards are for the films and the people involved, not the fans. It’s nice to see a favorite film win best picture, or actor win an Oscar, but that doesn’t change the fact that you enjoy the movie.

It doesn’t mean that your favorite movie is now not your favorite. There are plenty of Star Wars fans that think “The Force Awakens” should win every award on Sunday.

This can be said about any of these award shows.

During the 2016 Golden Globes, Jim Carrey poked fun at winning an award. He said that winning an award like this is meaningless because it doesn’t change who or what someone is or has done.

Watching the Oscars is a lot like watching the Super Bowl and not being a fan of either team.

You have seen a couple of the films nominated, but you haven’t seen them all. You kind of want the film you saw to win, but if it doesn’t you don’t really care and you forget about it in a few days.

Evan Grisley is an arts staff writer. Arts desk can be reached at arts@ubspectrum.com.