With this year’s Oscars ceremony moments away (the ceremony itself is scheduled to begin at 8:30 p.m. EST on ABC, but you can catch lots of earlier red carpet action here), we’re kicking off our live blog.

Besides the drama of the awards themselves, this year’s ceremony will also prove a test of whether the 85-year-old show can appeal to a younger audience. In an effort to "modernize" the proceedings, producers have a number of changes in store. Not only are they dropping the more formal “Academy Awards” from the program’s name, and rebranding it simply as “the Oscars,” but the production team has also said it hopes to liven up the show and inject more humor into it.

For that responsibility, they’ve tasked “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane, who will be hosting the show, held at the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland in Los Angeles.

"Seth provides everything that we were looking for in terms of the host because he is relevant to an audience today and he's funny, charismatic," co-executive producer Neil Meron said of MacFarlane. “He has great charm. He embodies kind of a post-millennium host in that tradition of Johnny Carson, Bob Hope and Billy Crystal. He is the next step in terms of making the show current.”

Let’s hope MacFarlane can rise to the challenge!

Below is a list of the 2013 nominees in the most anticipated Oscar award categories, which will be  updated live throughout the night as the winners are announced.

BEST PICTURE:
“Amour,” “Argo,” “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” “Django Unchained,” “Les Misérables,” “Life of Pi,” “Lincoln,” “Silver Linings Playbook,” “Zero Dark Thirty”

BEST ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE:
Bradley Cooper, “Silver Linings Playbook,” Daniel Day-Lewis, “Lincoln,” Hugh Jackman, “Les Misérables,” Joaquin Phoenix,  “The Master,” Denzel Washington, “Flight.”

BEST ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE:
Jessica Chastain, Jennifer Lawrence, Emmanuelle Riva, Quvenzhané Wallis, Naomi Watts

BEST DIRECTOR:
Amour (Michael Haneke), Beasts of the Southern Wild (Benh Zeitlin), Life of Pi (Ang Lee), Silver Linings Playbook (David O. Russell), Lincoln (Steven Spielberg)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:
Robert DeNiro, “Silver Linings Playbook,” Alan Arkin, “Argo,” Phillip Seymour Hoffman, “The Master,” Tommy Lee Jones, “Lincoln,” Christoph Waltz, “Django Unchained.”

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:
Anne Hathaway, “Les Miserables,” Amy Adams, “The Master,” Sally Field, “Lincoln,” Jacki Weaver, “Silver Linings Playbook,” Helen Hunt, “The Sessions.”

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY:
“Amour,” “Moonrise Kingdom,” “Flight,” “Django Unchained,” “Zero Dark Thirty.”

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY:
“Argo,” “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” “Silver Linings Playbook,” “Life of Pi,” “Lincoln.”

BEST DOCUMENTARY:
“The Gatekeepers,” “Searching for Sugar Man,” “How to Survive a Plague,” “The Invisible War,” “5 Broken Cameras.”

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