The waiting is almost over and a seemingly endless awards season in Hollywood is about to come to an end for another year (for a few months at least) with the 91st Academy Awards, more popularly known as the Oscars.
Tonight is La La Land's biggest night in film and after the Golden Globes, Critics' Choice Awards, Screen Actors Guild Awards and more besides, it's finally time to hand out some golden Oscar statues (and we don't even need a host of the ceremony to do it).
These past few months in addition to all the movies being released at cinemas, on streaming services and cable channels, the skies of
L.A. have also been full of films campaigning to be considered and nominated for one of the most coveted entertainment industry accolades.
First up are a collection of billboards for
Marvel Studios Black Panther, the worldwide box office smash and first ever superhero movie to receive an
Oscar nomination for
Best Picture.
Ryan Coogler's film starring
Chadwick Boseman as the titular king of the hidden technologically-advanced
African nation of
Wakanda has scored seven
Academy Awards nominations, including for
Best Costume Design for Ruth E. Carter.
These consideration billboards featuring the fearless
Lupita Nyong'o as super spy
'Nakia' and
'T'Challa's' genius sister
'Shuri' (Letitia Wright) about to head into battle were photographed along the
Sunset Strip, Westwood Boulevard and
Santa Monica Boulevard from February 3 to February 6, 2019.
Keeping in the superhero spirit, this year another
Marvel character winning all the accolades is
'Miles Morales' (voiced by
Shameik Moore) in the animated feature
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
This new ultimate take on the web-slinger introduces a teenage
Afro-Latino Spider-Man to a wider audience as he and other spider-themed heroes from across the multiverse race against time to save reality.
This
Oscar nominee billboard for emotionally-charged and visually stunning movie was photographed above
La Cienega Boulevard on February 6, 2019.
Another film up for the
Academy Award for
Best Animated Feature this year is the sequel to the 2004's
Oscar-winning
Disney/Pixar family superhero adventure,
The Incredibles.
This time around the super-powered
'Parr' family face a new nefarious threat and the emergence of baby
'Jack-Jack's' amazing abilities and this sweet billboard for
Incredibles 2 was spotted along
Barham Boulevard on February 4, 2019. And they said superhero movies were just a fad.
In the world of science fiction
Steven Spielberg was mashing up nostalgic pop culture characters in the virtual world of
Ready Player One and garnering an
Academy Award nomination for
Best Visual Effects.
This nominee billboard featuring avatars
'Art3mis' and
'Parzival' was spied along
West Hollywood's Sunset Strip on February 6.
Meanwhile this other version with the
DeLorean car from
Back to the Future was spotted above
Westwood Boulevard on February 23, 2019.
This year
Glenn Close has been snatching all the
Best Actress trophies and was nominated for her seventh
Oscar for her outstanding role in
The Wife.
Will she finally take home the prize this year for playing the spouse questioning her life choices in
Stockholm whilst her husband (played marvelously by
Jonathan Pryce) is slated to receive the
Nobel Prize for Literature.
This winning consideration billboard for
The Wife was snapped along
Sunset Boulevard at
Fairfax Avenue on January 30, 2019.
This year
Glenn Close surprisingly shared the
Best Actress gong at the
Critics' Choice Awards with
Lady Gaga for her breakout performance in
Bradley Cooper's remake of
A Star Is Born.
His directorial debut is nominated for eight
Oscars this year including Best Picture with nods for
Best Actress for
Gaga,
Best Actor for
Bradley Cooper and
Best Supporting Actor for
Sam Elliott.
The marketing team for the movie have obviously had fun this awards season, even using a billboard featuring
Lady Gaga's ingenue alter-ego from the movie,
'Ally', outside the infamous
Chateau Marmont hotel echoing the film.
These
Oscar nominee billboards for
A Star Is Born were snapped along the
Sunset Strip, La Cienega Boulevard and at
Warner Bros Studios in
Burbank, California from February 3 to February 18, 2019.
Another movie receiving eight nominations this year was
Adam McKay's dark comedy biopic,
Vice, about
George W. Bush's Veep, Dick Cheney.
Christian Bale plays the shifty politician and garnered his fourth
Oscar nomination, whilst
Amy Adams scored her sixth nomination for portraying his wife,
Sam Rockwell his second nom for playing
'Dubya' and filmmaker
Adam McKay notched up his fifth
Academy Award nomination with nods for
Best Picture, Best Directing and
Best Original Screenplay.
These
Vice nominee billboards, including the cleverly designed
Star and Stripes version, were spotted along the
Sunset Strip on February 6 and above
Westwood Boulevard the next day.
This year
Willem Dafoe received his fourth
Academy Award nomination for acting, this time for his portrayal of the iconic painter
Vincent Van Gogh in
At Eternity's Gate.
This consideration billboard for the movie about the artist who famously severed part of his own ear was first spied along the
Sunset Strip on February 3, 2019.
Meanwhile
Spike Lee was back with a vengeance this awards season with
BlacKkKlansman based on
Ron Stallworth's 2014 memoir.
The film is nominated for six
Oscars, including
Best Picture, Best Directing and
Best Adapted Screenplay, and is inspired by the true story of an
African American police officer (played by
John David Washington) from
Colorado Springs who manages to infiltrate and expose the local chapter of the
Ku Klux Klan with the help of a
Jewish colleague (
Adam Driver).
This duo of
Oscar consideration billboards for the movie was spotted on either side of the eastbound
Sunset Strip on February 11, 2019.
In the world of documentaries
National Geographic's Free Solo is up for
Best Documentary Feature. The rock climbing film by
Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and
Jimmy Chin follows free climber
Alex Honnold on his climb of
Yosemite's 3,000ft high
El Capitan Wall with no ropes or safety gear.
This billboard for the digital release of the
Oscar nominee was spotted at
Fox Studios along
Pico Boulevard on February 23, 2019.
Pawel Pawlikowski's Cold War was also enjoying
Oscar acclaim this year with three nominations including
Best Director and
Best Foreign Language Film.
The black and white film starring
Tomasz Kot and
Joanna Kulig is set in 1950s and tells the love story of a music director who falls for a singer and tries to persuade her to flee from communist
Poland to
France.
These
Oscar nominee billboards for the movie loosely inspired by the director's parents lives were snapped above the
Sunset Strip and
Westwood Boulevard on February 6, 2019.
Another film snatching a
Best Foreign Language Film and
Best Motion Picture nomination along with eight others was
Netflix's original film,
Roma, by
Alfonso CuarĂ³n.
The black and white film is based on the writer and director's own life experiences and tells the story of a middle class family's maid in
Mexico City in the 1970s during a period of societal and personal upheavals.
Newcomer
Yalitza Aparicio plays
'Cleo', the live-in housekeeper who cares for the children of
Marina de Tavira's 'Sofia' both nominated for
Best Actress and
Supporting Actress respectively, and the film is named after the
Colonia Roma neighborhood of
Mexico City.
This is the first original film from the streaming giant that has received a
Best Picture Academy Award nomination.
It has already taken home industry trophies like
Golden Globes, BAFTAs and
Critics' Choice Awards this season, so it's no wonder the skies of
Hollywoodland have been filled with campaign billboards these past months.
This evocative collection of Oscar campaign billboards were photographed along Sunset Boulevard, Santa Monica Boulevard and Highland Avenue from January 30 to February 22, 2019.
If you like all these black and white ad creatives, make sure you also check out all these other
Roma movie billboards from recent times.
Another original Netflix film receiving some attention this year was the Western anthology from the Coen Brothers, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.
With
Netflix and streaming services often touted as the death knell of cinema, both films received limited theatrical releases to qualify for the
Oscars, and this collection of six stories from the
Wild West garnered three nominations, including for
Best Costume Design for Mary Zophres.
These nominee billboards featuring
Zoe Kazan for
'The Gal Who Got Rattled' vignette were snapped along the
Sunset Strip from January 30 to February 6, 2019.
As you can see it's been a busy awards season and the streets and skies of the
City of Angels have been crammed with consideration billboards hoping to catch the eye of
Academy voters.
Now it's time to throw on your best gown and tuxedo and walk the red carpet. Lights, camera, action.
And the Oscar goes to.
UPDATED: It may not have won the Oscar, but this cool consideration billboard for Ready Player One with its homage to The Shining with the spooky twin girls was spotted above Ventura Boulevard on February 25, 2019.