How To Create Oscar-Worthy Cocktails

No one should be without a cocktail while watching a movie — and no one should be without a specialty cocktail while rooting for your favorite movies at this weekend's Academy Awards. So we turned to the expert of drinking and movies, Jen Marshall, the bar manager at the Brooklyn, N.Y.'s Nitehawk Cinema. Marshall is in charge of making craft cocktails to go with NItehawk's lineup of films each week (and of course, the dinners served there).

Click here for 5 Oscar-Worthy Cocktails Slideshow

"I like to be inspired by the films [when making drinks]," Marshall says. "Then when you're drinking it, it feels like you're a part of an inside joke." So when approaching this year's lineup of Oscar-nominated films, she considered the settings of the films and the characters, and tried to match them with drinks. Take the Candyland cocktail for the film Django Unchained — a sweet, Southern cocktail named after the plantation in the film.

But not all movies lent themselves to drink specials, she said — but that doesn't mean you can't think in terms of beer and wine. For example, for Zero Dark Thirty, Marshall decided to go dark and mysterious with the Founder's Porter to go with the "compound" dinner of lamb and cucumber salad. 

For more cocktail inspiration for this year's Oscar party, click ahead to find cocktail recipes for Django Unchained, Beasts of the Southern Wild, The Sessions, The Master, and Moonrise Kingdom.