With the start of the New Year comes one of the most watched television events nationwide, the Academy Awards. The Academy Awards are also known as The Oscars. The 88th annual Academy Awards is set to premiere live on Feb. 28, 2016, and will be hosted by the irritatingly humorous Chris Rock. As this exciting award show approaches, every movie buff (including myself) will crawl out of their darkened rooms and comfy movie theater seats and make their predictions about the potential winners of the award show based off of the announced nominees.
When analyzing the potential winners, you begin to see a pattern about the types of films that have been nominated. All of the movies are usually deep, intricately plotted films with a controversial and hard-hitting message, and if not that, you can always count on a lot of violence to throw a film to the front runner position of the nominees. For example, "Dallas Buyer's Club" explored an extremely tender world about those HIV and AIDS positive, as well as a peak into transgenderism, a topic still sensitive to many. The film earned both Jared Leto and Matthew McConaughey their Oscars last year. But in the shadow of all their much earned success, there is a figure in the background that has consecutively gone unrewarded and unrecognized at the Oscars, even though he has one of the most impressive filmographies in the business: Leonardo DiCaprio.
DiCaprio has been nominated for five Academy Awards, all of which were either for Best Actor or Best Supporting Actor. DiCaprio has been in the business quite a long time, with a filmography to rival several other Oscar-winners. DiCaprio’s filmography includes many history-making films, such as: "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" (1993), "Romeo & Juliet" 1996), "Titanic" (1997), "The Man in the IronMask" (1998), "The Beach" (2000), "Gangs of New York" (2002), "The Aviator" (2004), "The Departed" (2006), "Blood Diamond" (2006), "Shutter Island" (2010), "J. Edgar" (2011), "Inception" (2010), "The Great Gatsby" (2013), "Django Unchained" (2012) and "The Wolf of Wall Street" (2013). These films are only a portion of DiCaprio’s impressive filmography. All of these movies caused at least a few dozen fans to cry, “He HAS to get an Oscar for that! Right?” Which begs the question on so many minds: Where the hell is Leo’s Academy Award?
Sadly, Leonardo DiCaprio has now become increasingly famous for his lack of an Academy Award. The fact that he’s going unappreciated is making the public like him more, which is funny in an odd way. DiCaprio was the only person that starred in the film "Titanic" to have not won an Oscar for it. Titanic took the Best Picture award that year and Kate Winslet was nominated for Best Actress for her portrayal of Rose DeWitt Bukater in the film. But what about Jack Dawson? What about Leo? Why didn’t he get an Oscar? HE FROZE TO DEATH IN THE OCEAN SO ROSE COULD LIVE AND RIDE A HORSE LIKE A MAN! WHERE IS HIS OSCAR?! (OK sorry, I’m calm now.)
In the Academy Awards next month, DiCaprio is nominated for Best Actor in his new film "The Revenant," which recently hit theaters. Although his film is totally badass, he’s got his work cut out for him with his competition. DiCaprio is going up against some pretty well-known names: Bryan Cranston, Matt Damon, Michael Fassbender and Eddie Redmayne, all of which have starred in some pretty noteworthy movies this past year.
So in a month and a half, when we cozy up with our pajamas and popcorn and get ready to watch the Academy Awards—when we’re done judging the styles on the Red Carpet of course—let’s all say a little prayer for Mr. DiCaprio. You know that the camera always focuses on the losing candidates after the winner has been announced, and I simply cannot bear to see Leonardo trying to keep it together because he lost AGAIN. So to the Academy, I beg of you, for the sake of DiCaprio’s emotional stability, and for the sake of his fans’ fragile little hearts and lastly, for all of his brilliant work, please give Leo his f***ing Oscar.
