Oscar nominations are in, and Cinema Capitol wants to be your awards season destination
Happy Oscar season to all who celebrate.
The lead-up to March 10’s Academy Awards ceremony began in earnest Tuesday morning with the announcement of the 2023 Oscar nominees.
In what has become an annual tradition, Rome's Cinema Capitol screened the nomination announcements, distributing ballots for attendees to fill out with their best nomination predictions.
Capitol Arts Complex administrative assistant and de facto host of the screening party A.J. Parker said Cinema Capitol strives to be the Oscars destination for local cinephiles.
“I really feel passionately that Cinema Capitol is the place to go for awards season,” Parker said.
Oscar tradition
The Cinema Capitol staff started the tradition of screening the Oscar nominations on a whim in 2019. On a bitterly cold January day, they opened the doors of the cinema to film fans.
“They had very pessimistic expectations, thinking, ‘We’re opening the doors for nothing,’” Parker said. “But a fair amount of people came in because they were passionate about film, and they're passionate about the awards, and they just were interested.”
Predictions and surprises
On Tuesday morning, around a dozen people filed into the cinema’s cozy 40-seat screening room to watch actors Jack Quaid (“The Boys”) and Zazie Beetz (“Atlanta”) read off the nominations from Beverly Hills.
View the full list of nominees here.
Fortified by coffee from Superofficial and pastries from Always Sonny Baked Goods, the audience clutched their ballot predictions. The room was alive with excited chatter, alternately punctuated by whoops or groans as Quaid and Beetz made the announcements.
Parker has been an amateur Oscars prognosticator since 2018, and he and other Capitol staffers come up with the cinema’s official predictions for nominations and wins. This tradition was his idea, as was the distribution of ballots for attendees to make their own predictions.
Each category lists the five most likely nominees, a couple of wild cards, and a blank line where guests can write in their own guesses. Prizes are awarded for the most accurate predictions.
At Cinema Capitol, those outside guesses are known as “chaos picks.”
“That's just an example of the fun that can happen, because people get very passionate about some of their picks,” Parker said. “And we at the cinema like to support that passion and that love for cinema.”
For the love of film
Jakob Sanchez of Oneida won the chaos pick award last year. The aspiring film critic was right again this year when he guessed that Annette Bening would garner a surprise Best Actress nomination for “Nyad.”
Sanchez and his friend Anna-Rae Martin of Waterville are passionate movie buffs who love to follow the Oscars and see films at Cinema Capitol.
“Every year I like to do this, because I just love movies, and I love getting to see everything that gets nominated,” Sanchez said. “Because it's fun, and it increases my own knowledge of movies. Watching this every year, it’s basically my Super Bowl.”
Martin’s love of film stems from her family – growing up, her father would hold weekly screenings of classics from the ‘80s and ‘90s that he called “movie Sundays.” She appreciates the intimate setting of Cinema Capitol and its independent film selections.
“Here, it’s a very comfortable environment,” Martin said. “It’s a bigger screen, and you’re going to get some great reactions.”
More awards season excitement
Cinema Capitol will host an Oscar screening at 7 p.m. on Sunday, March 10. Parker said while they haven’t worked out all the details yet, the event will feature another round of ballots for audiences to predict the winners.
Like in years past, the cinema plans to screen as many Oscar-nominated films as possible between now and the ceremony, although showtimes for most are to be determined. “The Holdovers,” a prickly but touching dramedy, is playing through Jan. 29.
The movie picked up four nominations, including Best Picture and a Best Actor nod for star Paul Giamatti.
Parker said Cinema Capitol strives to show independent or less mainstream films year-round, and that the next month and a half’s schedule will create opportunities for curious filmgoers to catch nominees they might have missed the first time around.
“We’re going to do our best to deliver consistent high-quality stuff, all the way up to the Oscars,” Parker said. “We’re basically lining up the stuff that we haven't shown yet. We're really going to do our best to show as much as we can that gets nominated, because that's really our bread and butter for the next few months.”
Like Martin, Sanchez greatly enjoys Cinema Capitol’s environment and film selections.
“I love what the Capitol does,” he said. “I love that they try to showcase independent films, or even films that would not have a home otherwise.”
Sanchez was one of the most animated audience members Tuesday morning, and his passion was evident when he spoke about what makes movies magical.
“I just think it’s an escape,” he said. “I just love the analysis, and finding out why something speaks to me. I’ve heard arguments about the Oscars – and in some cases I do agree with this – maybe it just reduces it to, like, a sports betting competition. But I do think there’s something about if something gets nominated, and is able to get to a lot more people. And there is something about watching movies – what I love most about movies is again, the escape, and being able to see a bunch of people work together to create something truly amazing.”
This article originally appeared on Observer-Dispatch: Academy Award nominations: Rome's Cinema Capitol continues tradition
