Academy Awards Tension Builds

The 83rd Academy Awards ceremony will be held at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood in Feb., 2011. Vince Bucci/Getty Images

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.—The Academy Awards tension is building as 5755 nomination ballots for the 83rd Oscar ceremony were mailed. The ballots went to voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, according to a statement from the organization.

Just making sure the ballots are ready is quite a process. Prior to mailing, the PricewaterhouseCoopers’s staff administers a thorough verification process to be sure that there are no duplicates and that none are missing. In addition to being counted and sorted, the ballots are numbered to guarantee that each one is addressed to the appropriate voter.

According to an academy press release, completed ballots must be returned to PricewaterhouseCoopers by 5 p.m. PT on Friday, January 14, 2011.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is considered the
world’s preeminent movie-related organization. Its members are more than 6,000 of the most accomplished men and women working in cinema.

Contenders for Best Picture 2011 may be: Hereafter, Inception, Toy Story 3,
The Fighter, Get Low, Black Swan, Winter’s Bone, The Company Men, The Kids are Alright, Chloe, and Morning Glory.

The 83rd Academy Awards nominations will be announced live on Tuesday, January 25, 2011, at 5:30 a.m. PST in the academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater, according to the academy website.

The awards for outstanding film achievements of 2010 will be presented on Sunday, February 27, 2011, at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood.

The presentation will be broadcast live in more than 200 countries.