So here is all the information you need to know about the 74th Annual Academy Awards and Oscar Weekend. After Steve Martin tried out his hosting skills for the first time last year, we have a familiar face returning to host the Oscars for her fourth time, Whoopi Goldberg.
There is a new Oscar face, however, taking over the producing reins this year ... producer and film executive Laura Ziskin is the producer for this year's Oscar telecast. She has produced films for a number of years, and will be producing one of this summer's potential blockbusters, SPIDERMAN.
The ceremony will be held this year for the first time at the new theater which is now the new home for the Academy Awards. After nearly four decades away from Hollywood in various venues in Los Angeles, the Oscars return home to Hollywood, at the new Kodak Theater at Hollywood & Highland. The new Kodak Theater is located directly across the street from the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, where the first Academy Awards ceremony was held on May 16, 1929. This theater was specifically built with the Academy Awards in mind, and from all the previews I've seen, it is an absolutely beautiful venue.
Oscar winning composer John Williams, himself nominated twice this year for the Music-Original Score Academy Award, will be the music director for the 74th Annual Oscars, a post he has not held since 1975. He will co-conduct the Academy Awards orchestra with Mark Watters. This will be Williams's third time conducting the Oscar orchestra, after stints in 1972 and 1975.
The Academy Awards telecast will take place this Sunday night, televised again on ABC. For the fourth year in a row, the Academy will produce its own Oscar arrivals pre-show a half hour before the ceremony. This year, Chris Connelly, Leeza Gibbons, and Ananda Lewis will co-host the arrivals show. The pre-show, entitled "On The Red Carpet: Oscars 2002", will again begin at 7 PM CST (5 PM PST on the West Coast) and will lead directly into the Oscar telecast, which begins at 7:30 PM CST, 5:30 PM PST. The pre-show will include coverage of the red-carpet arrivals as well as shots from exclusive areas in the theater where other cameras are not allowed. The pre-show will of course have the three correspondents interviewing celebrities as they arrive.
