Millions of movie lovers tune in every year to see who will be awarded with filmmaking’s highest honor at the Academy Awards.

The Academy Awards, or the Oscars, is an annual award show honoring acheivements in film-making. On May 16, 1929, the premiere Academy Awards ceremony was hosted at the Hotel Roosevelt in Hollywood to honor worthy film achievements.

Over the years, a wide variety of celebrities have hosted the show. While most have hosted more than once, Bob Hope, Johnny Carson and Billy Crystal each have hosted at least four times. This year’s hosts, James Franco and Anne Hathaway, go down in Oscar history as two of the youngest hosts.

The Oscars offer more recognition than for just acting and directing. Categories of awards range from sound editing and makeup to visual effects and costume design. However, the category that people are usually most excited about is the award for best picture.

Best Picture is reserved as the final award of the night and, unlike the other categories, it represents all directing, writing and acting efforts put into a film. The Best Picture category is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible not only to vote on the final ballot, but also to nominate.

For the past 83 years, prestigious films that earned phenomenal reviews and set high standards in the movie making industry have been honored with the title of Best Picture. A few familiar winners include “All Quiet on the Western Front,” “Gone with the wind,” “The Godfather” and “The Departed.”

Last year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) announced that the award category for Best Picture would increase from five to 10 nominations.  This year was the second year that ten highly acclaimed movies were nominated for best picture opposed to only five.

Nominations for this year’s best picture included “Black Swan,” “The Fighter,” “Inception,” “The Kids Are All Right,” “The King’s Speech,” “127 Hours,” “The Social Network,” “Toy Story 3,” “True Grit” and “Winter’s Bone.”