Also, Indian-American Pixar artist and director Sanjay Patel’s animated short film “Sanjay’s Super Team” managed to get nominated in the Best Animated Short Film category, where it is up against “Bear Story”, “World of Tomorrow”, “Prologue” and “We Can’t Live Without Cosmos”.
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All 20 slots in the four acting categories were filled with white actors for the second year in a row sparking outrage among fans.
Two-time Oscar victor Cate Blanchett has a shot at number three with a Best Actress nomination for “Carol”.
Oscar nominees for Best Actor: (from left) Bryan Cranston, Matt Damon, Michael Fassbender, Eddie Redmayne, and Leonardo DiCaprio.
Besides Inarritu and Miller, others competing for the Best Director trophy include Tom McCarthy for “Spotlight”, Adam McKay for “The Big Short” and Lenny Abrahamson for “Room”.
The best picture nominees spanned a wide range of genres, with nods for the financial crisis dramedy “The Big Short”, the Cold War thriller “Bridge of Spies”, the period drama “Brooklyn”, the high-octane action movie “Mad Max: Fury Road”, the sci-fi adventure film “The Martian”, the Western thriller “The Revenant”, the gut-punching drama “Room” and the fact-based newspaper procedural “Spotlight”. Once again, #OscarsSoWhite was trending on social media.
Putting the issue in even sharper relief, two films with black directors and largely black casts-“Compton” and the “Rocky” spinoff “Creed“-landed nominations only for Caucasians who worked on the movies: Supporting actor Sylvester Stallone for “Creed” and the pair of screenwriters behind “Compton”.
The Oscars have also faced criticism in recent years for focusing on art-house content over blockbusters.
On the other hand, such crowd-pleasing performers as Damon, Stallone, DiCaprio and Lawrence got selected in the performing categories. Ridley Scott’s epic science fiction The Martian received seven nominations, including Best Picture, but he was not nominated for Best Director. Only Walt Disney received more nominations; the studio founder had 59. Instead, it was only nominated for Best Original Screenplay, the writers of which are both white.
Since the best picture field was expanded from five nominees to up to 10, in 2010, every year has delivered nine nominations until this year’s eight.
The Oscars are scheduled for February 28 at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre.
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Comedian Ricky Gervais was just one of the celebrities who took to Twitter to complain about the lack of black nominees, writing: “Why did the Oscars announce all the white nominees first?”
