The evening of 22^nd February will have Hollywood host the 87^th edition of arguably one of the most widely followed Awards Ceremonies across the globe - The Academy Awards, organized under the watch of the AMPAS (Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences).

This year, there have been 120 nominations spread across 24 categories. Alejandro Iñárritu's mind-bending layered film Birdman & Wes Anderson's colourful canvas The Grand Budapest Hotel lead the pack with 9 nominations each. The awards ceremony will be hosted by actor/comedian Neil Patrick Harris. He needed this after the ironic brutal end to his role in Gone Girl in an otherwise enticing setting of accompanying a lass on a bed. Jokes apart, he takes over the mantle from Ellen DeGeneres who electrified the stage & pulled off a coup taking the famous All-Star Selfie in last year's ceremony.

The biggest of ceremonies cannot stay the biggest without having their fair share of criticism & controversies. In this year's edition of the Oscars it has come in the form of an opinion that the non-white race has been sidelined. For only the second time in the last 20 years, all 20 Actor nominations have gone to Whites. Discussions around the contrasting treatments meted out to the under-rated Selma & factually fallible American Sniper have also dominated the social media space. While there is always a suspicion that this is more of a publicity/marketing event rather than a true reflection of the best films/performances of the past year, one can never ignore the event completely for it possesses an innate aura prone to entice.

We have come up with an exclusive coverage of movies providing information on number & categories of their nominations linking our reviews of them on our Oscars Landing page. The couch potatoes in you could use this as a primer to gear yourselves up for watching the spectacle unfold come Monday morning. Share the word with the cinephiles on your network as well.