By DAVID GERMAIN
AP Movie Writer
LOS ANGELES – It’s only the 84th year of the Academy Awards, yet the nostalgia factor feels as though Hollywood is celebrating a centennial of some sort.
Film itself has been around for well over a century, and Sunday’s Oscar nominees span every decade of the last hundred years, with an unusual emphasis on the history and artistry of cinema’s earlier days.
Oscar show producer Brian Grazer says that the Hollywood & Highland Center, the hall formerly known as the Kodak where the ceremony takes place, will be redesigned to resemble a “timeless movie theater.” It’s a fitting transformation on a night whose key nominees are “Hugo” and “The Artist,” two love songs to forebears of the flickering image.