By: Katharina Wicht

The night of all nights for actors and actresses, the biggest event in the movie business took place on Sunday, February 28 in Los Angeles. The event was hosted by Chris Rock, who opened with a speech about the underrepresentation of minorities at the Oscars, and pointed out concerns that many celebrities have expressed about the underrepresentation.

Rock said, “If you want black nominees every year, you need to have black categories. That’s what you need. You already do it with men and women. Think about it. There’s no real reason for men and women category in acting. It’s not track and field…Robert De Niro never said ‘I better slow this acting down so Meryl Streep can catch up.’” Since a large majority of nominees were white, a lot of people looked at the Oscars as the “white people choice award”. The Academy Awards were often criticized in the previous weeks and Hollywood in general was called racist. Oakland Mills Sophomore Blen Asres said, “I really liked the Oscars and I thought it was really nice that they made sure to not ignore the controversy with many of the nominees being white and the lack of diversity in the oscar nominations.”

The Oscar for best actor was given to Leonardo DiCaprio – finally. He has waited more than 21 years after his first major role in a movie for his first Oscar in the movie “The Revenant”. The Award for best actress was given to Brie Larson who played a woman who wants the best for her son in the movie “Room”.

The winner of the evening was the action movie “Mad Max: Fury Road,” with a total of six Oscars in the categories costume design, production design, makeup and hairstyle, film editing, and sound mixing. The movie won six out of ten Awards it was nominated for.

The producers Michael Sugar, Steve Golin, Nicole Rocklin and Blye Pagon Faust of the movie “Spotlight” won the oscar for the best picture. The Award for best actor in a supporting role went to Mark Rylance for “Bridge of Spies” and Alicia Vikander won the Award for best supporting actress for “The Danish Girl”. The kids movie “Inside Out” won the Oscar for best animated feature film.

The performers of the night were Lady Gaga – who took a stand against abuse with a great performance of “Till it Happens to You”- ,The Weekend with “Worth It”, the title song for “Fifty Shades of Grey”, and Sam Smith who won the best original song award for “Writings on the Wall” which is the title song for the newest James Bond movie “Spectre”.

According to “People Magazine,” the best gowns were worn by Naomi Watts who wore a long blue purple Armani Prive dress with a chevron pattern -, Charlize Theron – who wore a red plunging costume -, and Rachel McAdams – who wore a dark green dress with a major train and an open back. Celebrity couples such as John Legend and Chrissy Teigen, Sylvester Stallone and Jennifer Flavin, and Pharrell Williams and Helen Lasichanh walked down the red carpet together.

Sophomore Kyle Heflinger commented the 88th Academy Awards by telling The Scroll, “I am happy for Sam Smith that he won an oscar. But in his acceptance speech he said he was the first gay musician to win an Oscar and that’s not true. There are other musicians before him like Elton John that did win.” In conclusion, the 2016 Oscars had a lot of different acts to show problems in our society. Celebrities stand up for issues that people face.