When Marlee Matlin was a teenager, she didn’t care about the Academy Awards. She never watched the ceremony, opting for Miss America or reading Tiger Beat magazine.

Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night talk show isn’t taping today, but Kimmel’s working. He’s always working. Right now he’s wearing his standard uniform when he’s not on the air - shorts, a Dickies work shirt and black socks.

As far as hit Hollywood movies go, this one couldn't be more unlikely: A linguist and a physicist are charged with deciphering alien communication while ruminating on the relativity of language and the nature of time.

Sunday night is Oscar night, and as always, a few questions await their answers:

Of all the Academy Awards contenders this season, the surest sure thing heading into pre-Oscars week is Justin Hurwitz, the 31-year-old composer of "La La Land."

Opinion

“Moonlight” deserves to win the Oscar for best picture. That might be a crass, clunky thing to say about one of the least self-important American films in recent memory, but then not all truths can be conveyed as gracefully and eloquently as they are in director Barry Jenkins’ beautiful movie.

Q&A

Since the start of awards season, the story has been the same: There’s been the Big Three — Damien Chazelle’s fizzy musical “La La Land,” Barry Jenkins’ poetic coming-of-age story “Moonlight” and Kenneth Lonergan’s wrenching drama “Manchester by the Sea” — and then there’s been everything else.

When I tell people that Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences members often fill out their Oscar ballots without seeing all the nominated work -- sometimes without seeing any of the nominated work -- they’re shocked. Shocked!

This year's Oscar-nominated short films in the animated and live-action categories range from the cute to the transcendent, from love stories to probing political dialogues about immigration and racial identity.

Denzel Washington and Viola Davis played married couple Troy and Rose Maxson 114 times in the 2010 Broadway revival of August Wilson’s “Fences.” That number came up often in a recent conversation with the pair while Davis was on her lunch break from shooting her TV series, “How to Get Away with Murder.”

Q&A

Barry Jenkins never expected his film "Moonlight" -- about a young black boy growing up in the Liberty City neighborhood of Miami, grappling with his sexuality -- to be an industry darling. But after it took the industry by storm, and nabbed the top dramatic film prize at the Golden Globes earlier this month, "industry darling" is an understatement.

“Hidden Figures” — a period movie about three black female mathematicians — is not the kind of movie Hollywood looks to for lavish box-office returns.

Oscar preview

Isabelle Huppert has long had a reputation as one of the most fearsome and fearless actresses in the world. There has always been something both steely and vulnerable about her screen presence, an ice queen willing to show her cracks.

In 2004, iconic American playwright August Wilson was awarded the Chicago Tribune’s Literary Prize at a fall ceremony, part of the Chicago Humanities Festival. Halfway through the lunch that followed, he excused himself.

The Oscars invited a wide ranging class of 2017 animation film nominees to the party Tuesday, from acclaimed studio hits "Moana," "Zootopia" and "Kubo and the Two Strings," to Swiss stop-motion drama "My Life as a Zucchini" and the dialogue-free Studio Ghibli offering "The Red Turtle."

Q&A

Michael Dudok de Wit probably would have been happy to continue making short films forever. But in 2006, something happened that changed everything — or at least the next 10 years — for the Dutch-born, London-based animator, who had won an Oscar for his 2000 short “Father and Daughter.”

Allison Schroeder was on the playground in 1986, chasing a friend around the slide, when the space shuttle Challenger exploded. As a first-grader, she was confused by the blast visible from her neighborhood, just 30 minutes south of the launch pad in Cape Canaveral. So she looked toward her teacher, who’d begun to cry. That’s when she realized something terrible had occurred.

The five-part “O.J.: Made in America” documentary aired last summer on ABC and ESPN — and now it’s up for an Academy Award.

Oscars 2017

Charm will get you only so far if you’re wearing Spandex. And in the case of “Deadpool,” a sly grin and a subversive wink weren’t good enough to get through the self-serious Academy’s door.

Dev Patel, who was nominated for an Academy Award for actor in a supporting role for his part in “Lion,” has big plans for celebrating his nomination news: a shower.

If you feel like Lin-Manuel Miranda is all over the place, well, it’s because he is. And he has the awards to prove it.

The versatile Michael Shannon capped a year that saw him appear in 10 films — including “Midnight Special,” “Elvis & Nixon,” “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” and “Loving” — with an Oscar nomination for his performance as a cynical detective in Tom Ford’s thriller “Nocturnal Animals.”

“Thank you to the Academy for recognizing this extraordinary, important film and my work in it. Thank you, Denzel, for being at the helm!” That’s Viola Davis’ rather humble reaction to her Oscar nomination for supporting actress for her performance in “Fences.”

Following last year’s industry-shaking #OscarsSoWhite campaign, the 2017 slate of Oscar nominations is surely more diverse with the likes of Octavia Spencer, Denzel Washington and Barry Jenkins all taking home nominations. But according to April Reign, former attorney, managing editor of BroadwayBlack.com and the hashtag’s creator, the fight for actual diversity and inclusion is not yet over.

Nominations for the 89th Academy Awards will be announced early Tuesday, and while there's no such thing as a sure thing, Damien Chazelle's "La La Land" is probably going to have a very good day.

Oscar Watch

What does it all mean for the Academy Awards? Time for another edition of Oscar Watch, as we puzzle through the latest news and developments leading up to the academy's revealing of its nominees on Jan. 24.

The perky, pastel-hued jazz musical “La La Land” quick-stepped into an awards-season lead Tuesday, gaining 11 nominations for the British Academy Film Awards, the U.K. equivalent of the Oscars.

Here is the complete list of winners from the 74th annual Golden Globe Awards:

At one point in Marvel’s R-rated superhero movie “Deadpool,” the titular character pauses in the midst of graphic bloodshed and flashes back to a memory of - there’s no polite way to say this - his sexually pleasuring himself while staring hungrily at a stuffed unicorn.

Early awards season front-runners “La La Land,” “Moonlight” and “Manchester by the Sea” made strong showings in the Golden Globes nominations, while potential contenders such as “20th Century Women,” “Hacksaw Ridge” and “Lion” also received boosts.

We haven’t had a December movie take the best picture Oscar since Clint Eastwood’s 2004 surprise late-entry “Million Dollar Baby.” Last year came close, with both “The Revenant” and “The Big Short” winning major guild prizes, only to see “Spotlight,” which opened the first weekend of November, prevail.

All those great movies you've been hearing about since the fall film festivals? They're finally arriving. Here's a top 10 list of films you'll need to need to see if you want to be up on the Oscars this year.

Some images just conjure the traditions of the American West, such as that of lawmen chasing bandits across a barren plain. Even with modern additions like cellphones, cars or foreclosure concerns, the iconography of the western still has a powerful pull for filmmakers and audiences alike. The new "Hell or High Water" also draws great impact from the presence of Jeff Bridges, an actor who has appeared in both classical and contemporary westerns.